How AI Helped Me Heal a Broken Heart
Technology didn't heal me. Art did.
During a particularly dark time in my life, not that long ago, I needed help processing a broken heart.
Since I can remember, writing, journaling, and creativity have been my go-to means of working through hard emotions like heartbreak and grief and anger.
I owe my beautiful late mother credit for pointing me toward pen and paper for those purposes.
I was 10 years old, standing next to her at the kitchen sink. She was washing dishes and I was drying them when she randomly said, “You know, MaryLou, you might like journaling.”
And just like that, a lifelong habit was born.
That very afternoon, I walked downtown to the mom and pop variety store on Main Street, and purchased for myself, with my allowance money, a hard-covered lined journal that had gold edging around all the pages and a tiny lock and a set of two tiny keys.
I wrote my first entry on the first page that same afternoon.
I still have that journal.
Fast forward all these years later and I’m still writing as a means of processing my thoughts and emotions. Old fashioned pen to paper still works wonders.
But, like any other method, pen to paper alone is limited.
What happens when a creator needs more?
Before I answer that question, enter stage left the suite of generative AI tools, carrying its enormous baggage behind it and the millions of people who are using it as their favorite punching bag.
These days, AI in every form is taking the blame for everything from climate change to why your toast burned this morning. Pick a problem and somebody is blaming AI as the cause of that problem.
I’ve made it clear throughout my tenure here on Substack and in other writings that I like using AI tools for specific strategic tasks. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’m also clear that what I write is mine, not some product of a prompt.
I do not outsource my thinking to it. I do not copy and paste the AI slop that is initially generated. And in all fairness, because I have been using ChatGPT daily for almost four years, it knows me, my style, my preferences, my voice. It doesn’t always get it right. I have learned through trial and error how to intelligently interact with it. I also cross-reference information that it gives back to me if the context warrants it.
In short, generative AI can be an incredibly useful tool.
So when I needed to do something more with my writing as part of healing my broken heart that I can’t do on my own, I found a generative AI tool that could help me create songs out of lyrics I compose.
Music along with words has helped me get through some rough times. The fact that an AI tool could help me make music was revolutionary.
Using AI to make music is a super controversial topic in the creative space. And I get it. I do.
I have written extensively about how tech companies have scraped my work as a writer without compensation or acknowledgment. Certainly not a thank you. The ethics of what they did to train their models are at the center of countless posts, memes, and videos.
But that’s rear-view mirror stuff. I can’t change the past or what they did.
What I can do is look at my life and ask questions about ways of solving problems I’m experiencing, including working through a broken heart.
Writing original lyrics on paper with my pen was the first step.
Next came an AI tool to turn those lyrics into songs that I then worked with to shape and mix and produce.
Not copy and paste and say “Ta-da!” but actually do the work of creating something original the way artists have been creating since the dawn of time.
I didn’t just prompt AI with something as lazy and unimaginative as, “Write me a song about getting over heartbreak.”
Ugh.
No, I immersed myself in a process that included using AI tools alongside my brain to bring to life songs I needed to help me heal.
Science says that making art is one of the most powerful means of healing.
And maybe that’s why this matters beyond my own story.
When I heard my words, my experiences, my feelings for the first time in songs with a voice and instrumentation that I can hear in my head but have absolutely zero ability to produce on my own, I was blown away. My alter ego in the music scene is a male progressive rock lead singer with a prog rock band behind me putting out songs that touch hearts and souls and uplift people and make them feel less alone.
As a woman, I will never be able to do that. But AI helps me do that. And it’s incredibly cool.
My songs have not only made me feel less alone, but they’ve also helped me see there is life beyond a shattered heart. Beyond loss and grief and disappointment.
And Lord knows, we all could use more of a way through the chaos of modern life.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m out and about in the world, I see a lot of people in pain. I definitely see it on the socials.
In the real world, they may not be as forthcoming as in the comment sections, but I sense the cartoon bubbles floating above their heads filled with the heaviness of being human today aren’t getting any smaller.
The heaviness of economic uncertainty.
The heaviness of massive change that we can’t stop.
The questions about the meaning of life.
I recently met a woman who, after I mentioned having lost my mom a few weeks ago, brought me into her thought bubble when she said to me, “I’m losing my brother right now. I thought I had already grieved that loss because he succumbed to addiction years ago. But now he’s dying. Literally. In a hospital room.”
And she’s meeting grief face on again.
It’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of life and forget that we are all carrying a broken heart in one form or another. It’s easy to think no one else understands how much you’re suffering, how much everything hurts.
Some people walk around with the shattered pieces of their heart rattling around inside them, not knowing how to put those pieces back together.
Other people, like me, have chosen a path through art to forge a stronger heart with gold in the crucible of sorrow and grief and loss and pain.
And if AI can help a person do that, how can that be wrong?