Missy Higgins has tried therapy. But there's always a gap between what she wants the therapist to hear and the truth.
So, she writes. "With songwriting, there's nothing between me and the instruments, it's just like an extension of my soul," Higgins tells Australian Story. "It just feels like this kind of channelling; this way to exorcise all those difficult things."
The singer-songwriter has guided us through many difficult things – teenage angst, secret love, depression, writer's block — ever since her breakout single Scar debuted at number one on the ARIA charts when she was just 20. The girl who was always singing as a child had been "discovered" in Year 12 after winning triple j's Unearthed.
But nothing in Higgins's life has hurt so badly, made her feel more of a failure – and more in need of some songwriting therapy – than the break-up of her marriage to Dan Lee and explaining to her two children why they didn't live together anymore.
"My God, I've never been more vulnerable in my life," Higgins, 41, says of the songs on her recent album, The Second Act. "I'm definitely not pretending to have any of the answers, or to be strong or to even like myself much at the moment. But I've learned over the years that honesty and vulnerability is ultimately the thing that makes you feel more connected to people."
It is a break-up album, she says, "but it's ultimately about me moving into the next phase of my life".
She knows many others know her pain: that all-at-sea feeling when the anchor of your identity – happily married mum — pulls adrift. "You come to a point in your life where it's like, 'Oh, no, actually, that's not your narrative anymore. That's burned to the ground,'" she says.
"All those things that I thought were the pillars of my identity and the things that were going to make me feel secure and stable and give me the illusion that I'd figured everything out, what do I do once they're gone?"
One pillar stands strong. Music. She walked away from it in her mid-20s, overwhelmed by touring, exhausted and unable to write. The depression that had been diagnosed when she collapsed in her school's food hall in Year 11 was back and she decided to do "normal" things, like going to university.
But an invitation by her idol, Sarah McLachlan, to perform at the all-female line-up of Lilith Fair in the US in 2010 relit the fire and Higgins realised music was "still the thing that makes me feel alive, the thing that I can turn to to help me through the difficult parts of life".
"That's what made me realise how important music is to me," Higgins says. "And nothing is going to ruin that again."
'It's not working': How Higgins's world crumbled
With her heart breaking, Higgins slipped on a blue velvet dress and strode on stage to sing at the ABC's 2021 New Year's Eve broadcast.
She'd been crying all day. Her marriage had ended.
"I remember after that performance standing around with the girls in my band, and we just all watched the fireworks above us explode, and I was crying and they were all holding me," says Higgins.
"My world was completely crumbling … and these fireworks were going off signalling a new year and a new chapter, new beginnings. And I was just straddling the past and the future."
Her song Blue Velvet Dress is about that night, a metaphor for the end of her marriage. "I had to let go, I had to take it off," she says.
The couple met in 2013 in Broome, the remote WA seaside town where Higgins likes to escape. Lee, a playwright, was the new housemate of a friend.
"We were both creative and neurotic and very, very emotional and very excitable," Higgins recalls. "We just talked and talked about books and art and plays and music and I felt like he was my creative equal in that way. We just became inseparable."
Soon after, Sammy, now nine, then Luna, five, came along. "Having kids in general is really hard for a relationship; it's like putting little bombs into your partnership and, for us, we just didn't know how to make it work as a family," she says.
"There was just too much of a clash with how we wanted to do things and both of our coping mechanisms with loudness and chaos were different."
They never fought, she says. "There was just kind of a sadness of, like, 'Yeah, it's not working.'"
They co-parent now. Emma Goodland, Higgins's friend and tour manager since the first album, Sound of White, says Higgins and Lee work hard to create a loving environment for the kids.
"She has so much love for Dan and so much gratefulness to him for what they built together and what they still have," Goodland says.
Higgins has an incredible capacity for love, Goodland says, even when love has ended. She knows this personally. "News flash," she says wryly, "Missy and I went out together."
That was in the heady days of Sound of White's success and although they loved each other, they kept their relationship hidden from the public as Higgins's fame grew. Higgins's song "Secret" from her second album is about Goodland.
"It was really hard because we were going through the early phases of exploring our sexuality," Goodland says. "I was definitely a bit ahead of the game than she was but it was still a sensitive thing."
Higgins welcomes the way Australian society has changed and is glad there is less judgement now about sexual fluidity.
"I feel like kids coming up today really don't seem to [put] any label on themselves, like some people are very comfortable being like, 'I'm completely fluid in every way, gender fluid, sexuality fluid,'" she says.
"I think that's kind of amazing. I think if it was me coming up at that age right now, I would probably be the same. Just no labels. I'm not interested in labels."
She never was. From the beginning, Higgins refused to be moulded into a commodifiable brand, a pop princess. Such acts can burn bright then fade but Higgins's approach and talent have given her longevity and credibility. In November, she will be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
"Holding onto my individuality felt like I had control," she says. "It felt like that was the one thing that I had power over.
"I didn't give them anything to work with other than my music and my songs. And that's how I wanted it."
'Honest and unfiltered': Higgins returns
It occurs to Higgins that, given she tends to write when she's grappling with something difficult, her fans have a skewed view of her as a tortured soul.
She does feel things deeply and has dark times, she says, "but I also have a real light side to me and a real sense of humour, and I just like to be a complete goofball and have fun".
Her kids are a source of joy.
"Watching my kids discover something for the first time, that just makes my heart explode," she says.
And Higgins feels a bit more light is sneaking through. She's been on the road again, performing songs from her new album and celebrating 20 years since Sound of White. At the beginning, during rehearsals, the pain of her marriage break-up was so raw, she couldn't get through her new songs without crying.
But getting it out on stage, sharing the "so honest, so unfiltered" songs with her audience, has been cathartic. "It just feels like some sort of movement has happened and it's not as close to the surface as it once was," she says.
Sometimes, Higgins says, she wishes she had a more "calm, solid, steady personality". But, she reasons, if that was the case, she wouldn't be a songwriter.
"I think I'll probably always be a little bit tortured," she says. "I think that's just who I am. But that's probably what will keep me making music. So, I can't get too comfortable."
Watch Missy Higgins's Australian Story, This Is How It Goes on ABC iview.
