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When that song first came out, I have a very embarrassing journal entry where I was like, get ready, Sarah, your life's gonna change and this song is gonna change the world. It's like I was just like, my I don't know if I'm gonna be able to handle how famous I'm going to become. And then, of course, you know, that song came out and nothing happened.
Hello. I'm Naima Brown, executive producer of No Filter and your host for this special episode. Sarah Burrellis has always written songs that sound like they were meant just for you, songs about heartbreak, courage, and finding your way back to yourself. You know her for Love song Brave, and She Used to Be Mine. But behind those hits is a woman who's constantly reinventing herself. She's been a pop star, a Broadway composer, an actor, a mentor, and lately, a newlywed
learning what real peace feels like. Over the years, Sarah has stepped away from the pop machine, faced her own reflection and found her way back to joy, creativity, and love. In this conversation, Sarah opens up about the insecurities that shaped her the song she never thought would be a hit, and how she learned to stop proving herself and just make the art she believes in. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I clearly did Sarah Farelli's
Welcome to No Filter. I am delighted to have you here today for this conversation, and I wanted to start with that five six seven year old girl in Eureka, up in the mountains in northern California and ask you, well, you're one of three daughters. Where are you in the birth order? Sarah?
I was the baby?
Yeah, did you feel like they? Do you feel some of that birth order stuff?
For sure? I think also because so my sister, my two older sisters are three years apart, and then my mom actually had a miscarriage that was also another three years apart, So I was like a little bit further away from my sisters in terms of age. So I was very much the baby, and also kind of like, you know, they had gone through this very challenging time of losing a child, you know, losing a she carried full term, so it was a really really hard time for my mom, but then got pregnant again and I
they always only ever wanted to have three kids. So I got in some ways really blessed by that tragedy because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten a turn. And I'm so grateful to be here, and so I did feel very much the baby, Yeah, spoiled rotten, spoiled rotten, But.
I'd love to think about, you know that that again, that child, that five six seven year old baby Sarah at home with your two older sisters, with your parents, Bonnie and Paul. What were they listening to? What was on? Was it? Was it a record player or you know, a tape player? What was coming through the speakers in your childhood home.
There was a lot of you know, I think back on it now. It's something I noticed when I got to college because once I lived on my own, I always had music playing, and I would come home and I was realizing, like, oh, the family doesn't. They didn't put on music that often. We didn't listen to music except around Christmas time. So it's one of the reasons why I loved Christmas time. So much is because we
were always listening to Christmas music. But there was my older sister, Stacy, the firstborn, did a lot of musical theater growing up, so I did listen to a lot of musical theater. And then it was like the influences of my other our middle sister. She was really into like Pearl jam and she was really into oh God, like some of the eighties like rock bands, and my dad really loved more like Golden oldies. It was a
real mishmosh. We had everything from Marvin Gaye to Peter Setara to like the Miss Saigon soundtrack or Chess or something like that. It was all over the place.
Which was serving you're young, you know what would become this songwriting artist as you grew older. How great to have had all the colors, Yeah, on the palette totally and kind of know exactly the range of things you could work with and draw from. Did you have a tape player in your own room?
I sure did. I had a tape player. I would do the thing where I would record my favorite songs on the radio and make mixed tapes so I could listen back to my favorite songs. Yeah, I mean I loved I really loved like sort of story songs, you know, so the musical theater canon really spoke to me. I loved listening for character and someone sort of getting from point A to point B throughout the the journey of a song. I just always loved all kinds of music.
So it definitely informed my ear as a writer too.
And so with an older sister Stacey, and musical theater and all of these kind of musical influences around you, were you, you know, doing the Three Sisters performances in front of the fireplace kind of jam.
Yeah, big time, yep. Yeah, we were doing a lot of amazing grace covers. We would make up little songs, a lot of three part harmony. Yeah. It was you know, music in the family being to this day, it's always you know, some of the most joyful memories are when we would put on music and have a little family dance party or you know, everybody. I think so many people relate to this. There's just there's so much to
hold people are, you know, families. Everyone's got a lot of worries they carry around, and sometimes music is just like a really beautiful permission to put it down for a moment. It's almost just like a meditation and being present, like let's just be here with this one song all together, and then we'll go back to worrying about something at work or what's happening at school or this or that.
You know. I just think it's there's an immediacy around music that I really love how it transports people into the present moment.
Absolutely, And you were raised Catholic. I've heard you talk about the fact that that's not your spiritual expression any longer. But growing up, was there choir at the church or did that church experience have any sort of musical influence on you?
Yes, most definitely. And there are some church songs that I still really love. But you know, the Catholics are not known for their robust musical expression.
I think of like the you know, the Gregorian Chance that we all got really obsessed with for like a month and the night.
It's a little more somber. Yeah, it's a little more of a somber experience at church. But there are some of the church songs that were saying you know on Sundays that I still think have just really extraordinarily beautiful melodies. And the thing that I loved actually about growing up within a religion was just the idea that there is something bigger, that it's not just you know, that we are not alone in this life experience, that there is
that faith is worth nurturing and exploring. And so, you know, Catholicism obviously has a lot of issues, and I have a lot of issues with some of what still is at play in the church these days. But I did appreciate growing up in a faith community, and I think in a way that that's even what like a beautiful set of friends can offer you, is like these little mini faith communities where we you know, you share values and you share ideology and you sort of look towards
the future with each other in mind. I feel God everywhere, not necessarily in church for me anymore. But some people that's where they really feel that experience of connection and communion with something bigger than themselves.
I think so many people relate to that, and do you when you think about that idea of something bigger than ourselves and what it means for you to connect with what God means to you, is that where you think that creative spark starts.
Yes, one, and that has been my sort of like faith practice from little from when I was six seven eight, you know, writing songs for the first time. There was some you know, I hear people refer to it as source with the capital S, and Obrah talks about it, source with the capital S, whatever that thing is that we're plugged into, and we all are plugged into this
life force in some way, shape or form. But that channel for me always carried music with it, and so every time I felt really moved by being alive, it was related to music, whether the making of music or the listening of music, or that artistic exchange was always present. And so yeah, songwriting for me very quickly became like prayer.
It was like an offering, was to try to create a wide open channel for something to come through that hopefully would be of service to the world, but was also selfish because I was working through my own shit and trying to make sense of a broken heart or you know, grief in some way. But it definitely feels connected to creator.
Well, you started to share more and more of that expression, maybe outside of the privacy of your own journal in your own bedroom and your own cassette player. I've heard you say that it was around the kind of adolescent's early teen years, that eighth grade time when you started to feel for the first time that kind of external validation about your v local talent. Tell me what you remember about that moment.
Oh man, I feel like, you know, my childhood was almost bifurcated into some pretty challenging experiences at my Catholic school. Growing up, I was kind of singled out and bullied like a lot of kids are in, you know, in elementary school. And then I had these like sort of incredible free experiences in the theater. I started doing community theater at a pretty young age, and so I was
having these very different experiences. And so when I started singing at school and got kind of like the integration of that piece of me that felt so free, it really felt like vocal expression was the thing that brought me there where people could finally see my I hate to say, but it was almost like I just I didn't have value until I was singing.
Well, at that age, it would have felt very much like value. Right, Like, looking back now, with the wisdom as a forty five year old woman, you might reach for a better way to phrase that, right with the work you've done to this point, but at that time, it's like, oh, here is my words, here's that dopamine hit, totally of external praise.
And that sense that we're always just we just want to belong. Yeah, and I just didn't. I was being told over and over again that I didn't belong. And then all of a sudden, Oh, we like you, you come close, let's you know, let's be friends. It was really interesting. It makes me think about the actually fast forwarding many years into the pandemic, when like sort of that part of you know, being an artist goes away, and I was very confronted with like, who am I
if I'm not singing? Like? Who am I if I'm not making music for people? Is anybody like that person? Like, It's so funny how those seeds of the self doubt or just those pieces of your identity get planted so young, and they're still very much at play all these many years later.
Do you see that as one of the gifts almost of that just surreal time that I think so many of us are still metabolizing, And every time somebody brings up the pandemic or COVID, I almost feel like the memories almost seem foggy and fuzzy. It's just this collective, bizarre trauma that we all experienced on different levels. But I think so many people did experience a kind of break down of identity or a shifting or reshuffling of self.
Would you say that was one of the small silver linings that came out of that experience, for you to have to ask yourself those questions about what is your currency if it's not bringing us music?
Definitely, I think that was as confronting and uncomfortable as it was, it was very helpful even just to pose the question without knowing the answer. Thank God, I don't have to answer that question who am I without it? Because I get to that is a part of my expression here on earth right now, you know. But yeah, it was a really it's a really interesting that, you know, the places where we get rigid or solid about who we are and who we are not, it's I find
that to be really fertile ground for exploration. And definitely, you know, my meditation practice got much stronger during that time. I also got on medication for the first time, which was a real life saver because I was not metabolizing that time in a healthy way. So yeah, there were a lot of silver linings that have really stayed with me from that time. And though I'm not dying to go back, I guess in a way i'm not. I am glad it happened in some kind of way that was necessary.
Don't go anywhere after this break. Sarah Burrellis revisits a letter to her seventeen year old self and opens up about the pressures of fitting in. You've always alchemized. You know, these periods of grief and tumult in your life. I know that the bullying experience that you mentioned, your parents' divorce, some of just the kind of rough and tumble tumult of our early adulthood and stepping out into the world
as ourselves through to COVID. Why do you think that that's such a crucible of creativity for you, those moments, those periods of time.
I think it's so related to It's like the thing that I'm really after, ultimately, like my life's purpose, I think is just connection, And it's like those sharing those most vulnerable moments seem to be like a key to the lock. Every time I've managed to fashion another one of those keys out of a really dark moment. What I get back from it. In the sharing of it
is so much recognition and connection. It's so helpful to feel less alone selfishly, so I continue to want to sort of name those dark corners of myself again selfishly because it's medicine for me, but also I hope that it is medicine for someone else as well. But I just think human beings, we are so hardwired to carry so much shame about what is ugly or misunderstood about
our own psychees. And the more I get into it, and the more I understand it and look at it and share, I just see how similar we all are and how much we all just want to belong. It feels like that same theme is that we just want to belong to each other and we don't quite know how. You know, Yeah, it's like part of life's work, soul work.
It's absolutely true. You make music. I know when many times when I've reached for your music, it's in those moments where I'm like, I'm a weird alien on a weird planet and don't know how to be, you know, And then I'll listen to your music and be like, so is she and she's she's got words and melody and structure and texture to these, to these feelings, and speaking of those times where we feel particularly weird and alien.
I'm going to fast forward to your thirty six year old self, if I've done the maths right, twenty fifteen ish, when you penned a letter to your seventeen year old self. I don't know if you remember this. I'm going to read you a little snippet of that letter. Okay. I had good friends that I spent a lot of time with,
but also who I felt very lonely around. I obsessed over my body and convinced myself if I was fat and ugly, I was messy and emotional, broken hearted, lonely, a goofball, sensitive, silly, playful, a singer, an optimist, fearful, careful, care less, a writer, a joker, and a million other things. I was seventeen. I want to ask you if you remember why you wrote that letter, Why, at that time in your life you felt like connecting with that seventeen year old version of yourself.
When I started writing, I had a book called Sounds Like Me, which is a collection of essays that I wrote the year I moved to New York City. I guess I would have been thirty four, thirty three or thirty four write around there. And in the writing of this book, I have a chapter where I started writing
letters to myself. And I had heard of doing this as a journaling practice, as sort of like a like a therapeutic practice, and I found it to be incredibly helpful that I would sort of look back at a younger version of myself and with my wise and more experienced lens sort of see myself with some usually some sense of compassion there was I had no access to
at the time. So I did start doing this as a practice where I started looking back, and from time to time I would see myself at sixteen, at twenty three, you know, just any out around any kind of major event of my life, and with this distance and perspective be able to sort of see what I think I was holding, and yeah, at seventeen. I mean, I'm imagining that that letter probably came out of this practice, and maybe I turned it in for an article or something.
But I highly recommend it because sometimes if you can go back into these they sort of feel like very formative moment, like my parent's getting a divorce, for example, twelve years old. There is some part of me that got stuck right then because my world fell apart, and I think it created an underlying root of mistrust because I was so surprised. I just I remember being like, I did not see this coming at all. And if I didn't see this coming, what else am I not
seeing coming? You know? So I think it created a sense of not quite paranoia, but some degree, some cousin of that feeling that carried on with me many many many years into the future and in relationships and being
worried about what I wasn't aware of like this. I've talked about this trapdoor feeling that I had, which also related to being bullied because the people who would do the bullying were also my friends on Sundays, so like on Monday they'd be really sweet to me, and then all of a sudden, on Tuesday, I'm getting made fun of and I could never figure out why, why today
what happened? So yeah, when I look back on that young version of me who was trying to metabolize all of that or make sense of it, and I can just see like, it doesn't make sense. There's no sense to being made baby, like, oh, you're just doing the best you can, and all you can do almost at every stage is learn to carry more compassion for yourself that you really most of the time that we really are doing the best we can, and that's like the best we can do.
Well. You were carrying that seventeen year old self and all those other versions of yourself within you into the early two thousands when you were signed to Epic Records and you had a debut album that you'd been working on for years. You'd experienced that rejection that so many artists do up until that point, and then finally they
with a capital T saw you. Right. What was that moment, like that kind of extraordinary validation of here you are, You're a signed artist, We're going to put a record out in the world.
Oh man, it went. It was a direct line to imposter syndrome the whole I would say the first maybe ten years of my career as a working musician, I was like, who is going to come and tap me on the shoulder and tell me to get out of this party because I don't belong here. I was deeply insecure. I felt very sure about the music. The music always felt like from a young age that was always like a very I trusted the music, I really trusted where it came from. I trusted my intentions for it and
with it. But in terms of the industry, I found it to feel. My therapist at the time used to talk about it like you've gone to the Mad Hatter's tea party, and I think that's really what it's like. I say that to young artists, like it's bizarre, and this whole, like the industry that's built around celebrity and having a big public platform and people wanting access to
you in its own ways very dehumanizing. I mean, we all or I don't know, a lot of people have a lot of curiosity about it, and I understand that, but the feeling tone of being inside those rooms is really unsettling, I think for me. So I was grateful that I was a little bit older when it actually when I signed my deal and I started touring, and
I had the best people around me. My bandmates were my best friends, and I think I was able to navigate some pretty sticky situations because I was surrounded by really good people and I kind of have never drank the kool aid about the industry. I just I feel like it's really shiny, but there's not a lot to it.
Up. Next, Sarah Burrellas tells us what love Song is really about, and it might surprise you. What I'm finding so interesting about this insight into your experience of, you know, a decade long imposter syndrome, as you say, is that what came out of those those early years, the gift that you gave all of us, one of many, was
obviously the song Love Song. Right yeah, And as I said, you know, longtime listener, first time conversation, But I am embarrassed to admit that it was only in the preparation for today that I realized I'd misinterpreted that song. I, like so many people, also thought that it was about, you know, a page out of the diary of a love story, of an experience of a relationship. It's not.
And I'm going to ask you to tell listeners what that song is really about in the context of how interesting it is to me to hear you say that you felt this sort of as you say, imposter syndrome, maybe not a sense of belonging, and yet still a lot of courage to push back and protect yourself as an artist and protect your work so what was love song? What is love song really about?
Love song is really about the tension between being in a commercial field as an artist and understanding that there was this sort of tacit request from my record label at the time to write not a love song per se, but a pop song, a hit song, a radio song. And I knew that's what they wanted from me, And if I'm honest, if I had known how to do it,
I probably would have done it. I think love song that the irony of love song is that it came out of me saying, literally, like on my knees, praying, saying, let me, please help me write something that helps me remember who I am because I don't keep trying, and they're saying like, Nope, it's not that, Nope, it's not that,
and I was losing the thread. So Love Song sort of tumbled out one afternoon in my little rehearsal space, and I turned it in being certain would have bet my last dollar on the fact that they would have hated that song and said, Nope, it's not that. But hilariously, they loved it and also didn't know it was about them, So we just kept that our cheeky little secret for a long time.
It is the best little secret. I love it. I love it so much. It's actually quite I'm actually kind of enjoying discovering that now because it's giving me it's almost like a re release in my own mind. You No, Like, it's like I'm hearing it differently. I'm enjoying it differently. It's feeling a little bit more subversive and rebellious. And it's in my life again now in a new way now that I know that, I think it will be for a lot of people who might be learning that
for the first time. Another song of yours I want to dig into is Brave, which you released in twenty thirteen. Another song that's in high rotation in my life and so many others. And what I really love about this song is how it became such an anthem for the LGBTQ community. And again, thinking about six year old Sarah in her bedroom with her cassette tape, right, that must have been an extraordinary feeling when something that was born inside of you becomes a source of strength for other people,
and in this case, marginalized people. What was that? What's that feeling like?
Oh? It is transcendent it's the best. It's the most I could ever have asked for. I mean, just there is no better feeling than watching something you sort of helped like usher into the world. My sort of philosophy on music is like that doesn't belong to anybody. It's just like I caught the Tale of the Meuse that day along with my friend Jack Antonoff, who wrote that
song with me. But that to just help usher something into the world that feels like it already belonged to other people, I think is just a tremendous source of pride. And yeah, I think it's always been important to me to do my best to be an ally to people who feel disenfranchised or feel othered. And I think in some ways it comes back to, as silly as it may be, to being like a kid who got bullied, and I know what it feels to be ostracized and to be less than and I don't ever want to
make people feel that way. I really believe in the value, on a soul level of really putting effort towards inclusivity. That acceptance and love and truth and the courage to show up as one's authentic self is actually the medicine that the world needs. I really believe that with my heart of hearts. So this song was a love letter to a friend who was struggling with coming out, one of the most my one of my north star most beloved friends. And it was a very personal note to
this person and then put it in a song. And I think because it carried the resonance of truth and just like a lot of love for this person, it kind of ballooned out into this bigger story. And yeah, it's very proud. I'm very proud to be a part of the story of that song. Oh.
I think it's incredible because, you know, source of the capitalist, the universe, whatever you call it, does like to play pranks on us sometimes, I think, keep us laughing at ourselves sometimes. You know. A few months after Brave was released, Katy Perry Roar came out and was instantly kind of compared to Brave in a very simplistic kind of way. There's a similar chord progression, similar message in some ways too, you know, a bit of a fight song. You've always
been incredibly gracious about that. Is it just a kind of quirk of the fact that there's there's a limited number of notes available in the world. Sure, sometimes this is just gonna happen. You know, how do you think that something like that kind of comes to pass?
Well, it's not the most inventive chord progression in the world. Like I like, it's what they've been doing that people are making that song over and over again forever. I again feel like my I have a lot of faith in the way that life moves. And I actually think when that song first came out, I have a very embarrassing journal entry where I was like, get ready, Sarah, your life's gonna change and this song is gonna change
the world. It's like I was just like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle how famous I'm going to become like it was.
I hope you framed that page of your diary.
I'm going to have to find it. But if I find it, I'll send it to you. I promise I would love to see that.
Yes.
And then, of course, you know that song came out and nothing happened. Nothing happened with the song, and so the sort of quote unquote controversy with Katy Perry was a part of what kind of steered eyeballs towards this song, in addition to another kind of simultaneous little mini story that was happening out of a children's hospital in Minnesota where these little beautiful young patients, some bald from their cancer treatment with superhero capes like the nurses had made
this music video to the song Brave. So that video went viral, and so with it the song, and then there was this other kind of piece where it was controversy and what really felt to me. I mean, I've known Katie a long time, we were in La together, I've shared hotel rooms with her. I did not consider ourselves like adverts serial in any way. It felt like we were being pitted against each other in a way that like, I just don't really ascribe to I'm a feminist to you know, as far as it'll take me.
Not your style, yeah, not my style.
No. So I think in some way it even helped the visibility of the song. And there was nothing stolen from me. There was nothing taken from me that I needed to fight for in that moment. There could be another scenario that happens where I might feel differently, but in that moment, I really I'm very much at peace with how that all kind of transpired well and.
Brave and all of your music. You know, still it's got such a long tail. You know, there's still new people discovering it all the time, and a part of that is because of Waitress the musical, which I'm very excited to talk to you about. What I love about this too, is that I've heard you say that if you could go back and do it again, you might have studied musical theater, and instead I think you study communications or something like that.
Yeah, yes, that's right, that's right.
So I feel like there must have been a theater kid just lurking inside of you that was like, when is my time finally going to come? And it came and you made it happen. I'm very curious about the Chicken and Egg, you know, did you fall in love with the film and was the concept for the musical your idea or were you approached? How did this come to be a part of your exciting creative expression.
I was approached. So after my second record, Kaleidoscope, Part, I very quickly. I'm a Sagittarius and I get very antsy when things start to look too much the same all the time. And I started very quickly to be able to see what the long road of being a recording artist look like. It's very cyclical. It looks you make you write songs, you make a record, you go on tour, you take a break, you write songs, you
go make a record, you go on to it. It just started to look really solure and I started to get a little claustrophobic, and so I took a little a break and I went to New York City, and I thought that I would audition for something and see, like what if I took a break and did a show. And I did this terrible audition for a show called Into the Woods, and I did not get the part. And I was so embarrassed by my audition because I really had no idea what the hell I was doing.
And in that same little I took a month and went to New York and in that same month I had a meeting with a woman named Diane Paulus, who was attached as the director at this point for Waitress. So this was in its nascent stages. There were producers attached, there was a director attached, and they were looking for a composer. And I had an interesting meeting with her. I had not seen the film. At the time, I had never in a million years considered writing a musical.
I really only thought I would go and audition and try to be a part of something as an actor.
Really, so there was never a little part of you, even with your sister in musical theater and all of that that was like, oh, and growing up listening to musical theater, there was never a party that thought I want to create that now.
Wow, did not even occur to me. Never thought about it, not even once.
I loved that. I loved that it was such a new thing that just swooped in and entered your life totally.
And actually, I have to say I have to give Jennifer Nettles of the band sugar Land a lot of credit for this, because we toured together and she always wanted to write a musical, and she's like, Sarah, let's write a musical. So we would sit in her dressing room and we'd like fart around on the keyboard and we were writing musical theater songs. And I think in a way it started to make it feel like, oh, is that a thing that I could do? It feels
so playful and so like childlike. But then this opportunity presented itself, and I watched the movie and I did not fall in love with everything right out the gate. I felt a lot of questions, but I curious. And then the first song after watching the film, the first song that I wrote, was she Used to be Mine. And I was feeling a lot of synergy between the sort of state of mind of the character and what I was going through at that time. As I mentioned, I was like, I can see down the road a
million years. I'm getting claustrophobic in my life. I made the decision to move to New York. I made the decision to leave my bandmates who were my very best friends, my family. I left my manager, I left a long relationship. I sort of did this wipe the slate clean. We'll call it a mid life crisis. And I moved to New York and I just felt unmoored and I didn't know which way was up, and I just I think that's part of why I said yes to this project. And I do often speak about my life falls very
solidly into two categories. It is before waitress and after waitress, and everything about my life is better because of this show. I love this show. I am so excited it's coming to Australia. It's been such a long time in the making.
We are very excited too. And does that possibly mean that you might come to celebrate the debut of Waitress Musical in Australia with us.
Oh my god, I hope. So this will all be dependent upon schedule. So things are still kind of shifting a little bit for me as I'm working on a new record and I'm trying to also tend to my you know, other duties. But of course, oh my god, if I can be there, you know, I'm going to be there with bells on my hand is up.
You know, you can put your people in touch with my people. I don't know, I have no people to be your you know. Your American Guide to Australianisms. I love it because there are a lot of very funny but sometimes very confusing ones. We would love to have you and to host you, and I do hope that you're able to make it. While we're on the topic of celebration, celebrating Waitress coming to Australia in this extraordinary kind of new chapter in your life, you, my dear,
are a newlywed. Like a week a week ago.
Yeah, just about you and.
Your husband, Joe Tippett, the incredible actor. Joe Tippitt only got married a week ago. I don't know what you're doing talking to me. I don't know why you're not, you know, sipping Margarita's on a beach somewhere. I hope that that's in. Maybe that's where you're going as soon as soon as we finish.
Kidding it a plane.
Yeah, I would. I hope that for you. I wish that for you. I was looking at your wedding photos on Instagram and I just felt such immense happiness for you, Sarah, you know, because I've been studying you and your work, and I felt like I understood the journey that you've really been on to understand yourself better through a lot of the mental health struggles that you've mentioned, navigating a
really tricky industry. And I feel like I looked at those pictures and I'm like, that was on an easy road to that day, and look at this incredible moment of celebration and excitement about future and what's next. And I just really want to ask you, you know again, starting with that six year old in your bedroom right now, in your life in this moment, forty five year old woman newlywed, really at the top of your game creatively, How are you? Where are you with yourself right now?
I love that question, you know, when you were talking about the looking at the photographs of that day. One of the things that I came away from that day feeling. And I say this for anybody listening who finds themselves to be have a fear of commitment or vulnerability. I think I've always felt very guarded and self protective, especially
in relationship. And I can't believe, in knowing me, that I got to get to a place where I stood across from someone and I was not carrying any pit of anxiety, any worry, any low grade hum of anxious need to extract, which has always been present for me. Is just like I got to keep one eye on the door, one foot out just a little bit, just to be safe, to make sure I take care of myself.
And So the journey with Joe, who I also met on Waitress by the way, he was that's I met this I met my husband because of this beautiful show. The journey was really about loving myself and learning to trust someone. And I can't believe that it was possible. So I just say that to encourage anybody who's on that journey still or just like can I could I ever? I mean, I think for at a certain point, I
I just never thought I would get married. I never thought I would even really learn to open myself up that much to someone. And so it's a really it's a really beautiful feeling when you get there and you it is hard one. Like you said, there's I would never use the word easy to describe our relationship. We have fought every step of the way to get here, and now it feels there's an ease to it, but no very hard one. And I'm really really proud of that. Yeah,
so I'm good to answer your question. I'm good. I feel really in a way, I feel really proud of myself. And there's so much vulnerability in letting yourself be joyful. I think, you know, it's impossible to look at the context of the world right now and how much fear and anguish and paranoia and othering is happening. And so to allow it to be true that there is also still joy and also still connection and also still hope, I think is an act of resistance and is important here here.
I couldn't agree with that more. And what I love about that is, you know, if I a stranger admiring you from a distance, can learn a bit about you, look at that photo of you and feel genuine joy for you. It only makes me think that that six year old we've discussed, that thirteen year old we've discussed that seventeen year old you wrote a letter to, would be really proud of you right now too, Sarah.
That's such a sweet thing to say.
Thank you for this conversation. Thank you so much, friends, that was Sarah Barelli's a woman who's built a career on being brave enough to tell the truth even when it hurts. Her hit musical Waitress is coming to Australia. And if you've ever needed a reminder that it's never too late to start again, her story and her music will give you exactly that. The senior producer of No Filter is Preplayer. Audio production by Tina Mattalov, video editing
by Josh Green and I'm Naima Brown. Thank you for listening to No Filter.