Recording 'Honesty' was a journey of growth for Guelph duo The Lifers

I hadn't known about this before she shared the songs with me and so I learned a lot about her and the main the main kind of takeaway for me is resilience and strength that so many women in our lives have and it's just a beautiful reminder of when we can be open there's a whole other layer of becoming and it's been really beautiful to witness that in her. Ultimately it brought us really close together and in a way that maybe we didn't even know was possible and so every time we would have a session together there would be another thing that we would look at and say oh that's something that we can explore together this is a way anytime we go into something that's potentially conflict if we can see it as an opportunity for growth within ourselves and within each other it makes us feel like we can arrive with openness and we've gotten really good at looking at those conflicts and and being able to hold space for each other's growth this is the first album where it's been the majority songs written by Anita instead of this being a little bit more of an equally shared songwriting experience and so it was sort of another layer of vulnerability for me where it was me stepping into her voice more and giving space for that and it felt really good to do that and at times it was also a bit like oh this is unfamiliar and so anyway the last song on the album is a a song about our relationship between Anita and I and so we were able to write in a completely new way together where we were cutting up these pieces of paper and arranging them and it almost took something that could have been an argument and we were able to work it out through the songwriting. What are you hoping people take away when they listen to this album? What are you hoping they learn or what's something that you want them to feel? Yeah, well it's different depending on who is listening. Some people, anyone who has experienced sexual assault, I really hope that it is something that can bring additional healing to their lives, that can help them feel less alone and also help them move through it physically. The songs on the album, some of them are kind of meant to be danced to, some of them are meant to be cried to and all of that is a part of the healing process and for especially men who are listening to this I hope that it can bring them softness and accountability to to each other to figure out how we can strip away more of the chains of patriarchy within our society