Rejoice by Julien Baker Practices Gratitude by Appreciating Your Struggle.
Emotional nutrition comes from
self-reflection, practicing gratitude and using your trauma as fuel.
You need emotional nutrition to grow, and it’s not as easy as chugging some pre-workout then taking 27 pictures of your butt in the gym mirror. Learning to own your struggle and being grateful is fuel for growth, and that’s what Julien Baker sings about in “Rejoice”.
My commentary is a space where I want to enable people to feel like they can talk about their trauma, instead of letting it caustically rust them out and give them Tin Man joints. Yes, I’m an enabler, the best kind. “Rejoice” is a meaningful song of gratitude in my journey through struggle, and when I hear it, I empathize with an artist who is sincerely grateful to appreciate what it’s like to keep breathing.
I don’t know the specific source of all the pain that filled Julien Baker’s first two albums, and I don’t need to. I recognize and empathize with the realness of the loss, self-abuse, and the searching for an affirmation that you still exist. You mean something, and your pain is not all of you, but a piece of you. It doesn’t own you.
so F*** off, pain!
Recognizing these things is a reason to practice gratitude. It reaffirms a stream of thought that promotes love instead of numbly laying in the shower with a beer.
Once upon a time for most of my twenties, I was a robot built in an underground lab out of wood putty and junkyard parts. What I mean is, I drank and laughed with people while being quietly inundated with numbness. But I wasn’t ignorant. I talked about my experiences openly to people I had just met. I was caught in a space where I felt like nobody really cared but I also knew that I had to be vulnerable to expel all the oil sludge that blocked my soul arteries. I was still in a mindset of escape, but searching, and I was adamant that I could still feel gratitude for life.
Julien Baker addressed this in an April, 2018 interview with The Shepherd Express, which appears to be some kind of Milwaukee sheepherders blog forum:
Like, if we have a painful memory or we have trauma and we allow it to rest unfettered in our memory and we never confront it, we never work through it and we never talk about it, they’ll fester and take on these other forms of aggression and resentment and bitterness. And when we confront them over and over again it’s as if we rob them of their power. And once they’re stripped back to just factual events that happened to us, we can apply whatever meaning or significance we want to them. And so for me songs about death of close loves ones, or songs about my friends or heartbreak are like a collection of lessons and experiences that have ultimately helped me grow into a stronger and more balanced human. So they’re triumphant to me.
Dang, those sheepherders know how to get a good interview.
And yeah, I know, things got heavy in this commentary. Get off my back, escapists!
Unfortunately for me, I had my tear ducts removed recreationally when I turned 18, but if I were still capable, I would shed tears to “Rejoice” by Julien Baker. It’s from her first album, Sprained Ankle, and from the vulnerable opening strums of her guitar, to the appreciation of life you can see in her face when she sings it – Baker shares her hope and gratitude with any person searching for a piece of music they can relate to in their own struggle.
Healing takes time –
it’s like washing tree sap out of Wookie hair.
“Rejoice” is a song that speaks to those in the midst of a storm who are desperate for empathy and hope. It resonates for anyone who appreciates struggle, and for those who grow by owning their vulnerabilities – you can see this running theme in the commentaries with this and Really Scared by Lil Dicky.
Own who you are. Practice gratitude for breath. Express your hurt. Unless your hurt is like, you went to the mall and they were all out of the new iPhone, and now you’re devastated. If that’s the type of thing that devastates you, the only solution for that kind of nightmare is to find the nearest deep well and dump yourself in.
Once upon a time I was a junkyard robot, and I know I am no longer, because my once-numb heart feels something when I hear “Rejoice” by Julien Baker.
Artist links:
Julien Baker website
Julien Baker Insta
More songs by Julien Baker to get you bothered:
Souvenir (with Boygenius)
Stay Down (with Boygenius)
Tokyo