I was always destined to be a country girl. My dad was a farmers boy and my mom was a city girl. The cliche right? Opposites attract. I was surrounded by country music since it overpowered whatever my mom listened to before she met my dad. I fell in love with the deep twang of the men in country music like Randy Travis and Alan Jackson. But loved the soul and power from the women in the same industry like Faith Hill and Shania Twain.

I remember my mom driving me to kindergarten and in order for me to have a good day, we needed to listen to those two women. They gave me the encouragement I needed with songs like "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" and "The Way You Love Me".

As I got older though, not many of my friends listened to country music. I drifted away from an industry that made up most of my childhood. Going along with whatever they were listening to like Justin Timberlake or Jessie McCartney.

Then life started happening and I would listen to the music of country music and see how much it related to me and helped me. It made me see how much I needed it, a genre of music, isn't that crazy? It really hit me when I was in college, I sent my mom a song by Miranda Lambert called "Mama I'm Alright" about a daughter telling her mom things like, "Mama I'm okay out here." and "I'm strong just like you prayed I'd be." Having her respond, "That's cause I always think about u I luv u so much." My mom trying to be cool and text me like I did in high school. Listening to that song now, makes me really think about how, I do feel like I felt her praying for me. And how she prayed for me to be strong because she knew someday she would be gone.

Then she was. And I dove right back to country music to my rescue. With songs like "He Gets That From Me" by Reba, "Tonight I Wanna Cry" by Keith Urban, "If Heaven Wasn't So Far Away" by Justin Moore and many others. These songs saved me because, they helped me see that other people, famous people, felt the exact same way I did. I related to these songs. And they are my roots.

These songs helped me express the emotions I needed to. People say that one song can bring back memories, for me, it's a whole genre of music.

You can take the girl out of the country and plop her right in the suburbs of a city, but she'll still be jamming away in her car with the windows down and her hair flying everywhere like she's back home.