#480: Miranda Lambert, ‘The Weight of These Wings’
eRCA Nashville, 2016
I was always very neutral about Miranda Lambert until this gigantic album. Miranda had just gone through her divorce from Blake Shelton.
This album is really good though. I am now a big fan. The songs have a load of range and are just good listens in the way pop-country does have a dusty bubblegum vibe.
I did too much research on the Miranda/Blake divorce and there seem to have been a lot of issues there. She didn’t want to move to LA, they were apart and never had time for each other. ~Supposedly, I don’t know them~
What Miranda does here in this album is reclaim her territory, her perspective and her time and vision for herself. Big stuff, empowering stuff.
Miranda has remarried. She continues to make bangers. When this album came out though, critics called this her most creative exploration and credited the freedom she felt from her divorce for her creativity.
I am learning to hold onto myself without white-knuckling my time, and my goals while also nurturing all those different relationships that are so important to me. The allocation of my energy is a tricky balance.
this is a universal problem and we can blame lots of systems that contribute to unhealthy boundaries but I want to highlight one thing:
There are too many examples of women in and around the periphery of my community that have been completely swallowed by their partners. They are white-knuckling those relationships and might only ever have that creative opportunity when the cracks in those relationships break open.
Historically, it is women in that scenario because legally there were not systems that encouraged any boundaries for women nor held men accountable for breaking those boundaries.
But I also see a lot of men swallowed up by their partners, their jobs and their community obligations.
I don’t want that. I don’t want to get lost and only found when everything else falls apart around me.
I want my big Miranda Lambert moment to happen while I am working through different ideas and issues but with a support system refilling my hot water bottle for my joints.