As a South African multi-genre singer-songwriter now based in Berlin, music has remained the quiet constant through every season of my life. From my teenage years strumming guitar and shaping raw emotion into lyrics, to performing in bands such as Ragged Moon, Shiva (alongside my brother Dwain du Plessis and SAMA award winner Peter Auret), Harem, Closer2Free, and later collaborating on BlackBeak’s debut Heaven and Her Demons with Ralf Globisch, Marco Errath, and Conley van der Westhuizen — songwriting has always been my first language. That independent release caught the attention of Dawn Patrol Music and was welcomed onto their Artist Roster in 2020 through the She Is The Music organisation. In recent years, life unfolded in ways I could not have scripted. While upskilling in graphic and digital product design through an intensive UI/UX bootcamp — determined to re-enter the workforce on my own terms — I was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer just days after graduating in August. It was a profound interruption, but also a reckoning. Revisiting The War of Art by Steven Pressfield reminded me that resistance often guards the very work we are called to do. After shelving my solo album Sacred Journey for two years due to lack of promotional funding and industry know-how, I finally chose to release it — not from a place of certainty, but from courage. Now, as I focus on healing and the possibility of remission, I am returning consciously to my first love: songwriting. The journey of a woman in her late forties choosing creative authenticity is not always met with applause. In a world that often mistakes self-expression for selfishness, especially in mothers, I feel a deeper responsibility — not just to myself, but to my two daughters — to demonstrate what it means to follow the path one is intuitively guided toward, even when it defies expectation. Music remains my anchor, my protest, my prayer — and the truest expression of who I am becoming.