1986–2007 Diaries of a Woman Musician in Search of Voice and Home, A Two-Decade Chronicle of Ambition, Body, and Identity from Straight Relationships to Queer Domesticity Across Los Angeles and Dublin

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On offer is a remarkable archive of five diaries kept by a woman born in the Midwest who moved to California with dreams of becoming a singer. This woman is a musician and author w ho keeps these diaries from age 19 through 40, from 1986–2007.We follow our author’s evolution through three decades—from a frantic teen falling in love with a musician to a middle-aged woman planning the structure of her company. She writes it all: the loss of her virginity to a man in 1986 contrasts her spiritual marriage to her female life partner and established lesbian identity in 1995. She writes of her move from Los Angeles to Dublin after a negative experience with a well-known 1990s record producer and her struggle to overcome childhood trauma and an eating disorder. Through it all, one thing remains constant—her passion for artistry and drive to have her music and writing resonate around the world.She sums up her drive in her first diary: “Success is important to me because of my background. Small-town girl with loads of talent who had the opportunity to go to the city to begin nurturing that talent” [June 16, 1991].Identifying details remain anonymized to protect the identity of the author and other living people. Anonymized BIO NOTES can be found at the end of the listing; a de-anonymized version will be provided to the buyer to establish provenance. Her first full entry, dated August 26, 1986, introduces an open, chatty 19-year-old musician focused on building her career, overcoming sexual abuse, and finding a safe romantic relationship:“...My car got repaired thanks to my daddy. He was a real sweetheart and loaned me $500…Louie is a friend of my band and he is so sweet. But he was already with this gorgeous girl named Tina…[My] band was performing at this wedding and Louis came up 2 me ..offered words of praise and encouragement.Anyway... I had a friend at the wedding...her name is Sandy…Sandy told Louis. Louis told Sandy that he liked me 2. I was overjoyed…He's a wonderful man, and he started kissing me... my heart began beating faster and faster, but so did my insecurities. I was sexually abused for 3 years by [a male family member], and I haven't really been with anyone since…” After some drama related to Louis, our author, true to the spirit of a teen seeking freedom, moves on quickly to the man to whom she would lose her virginity and become engaged:“Today I became a woman. It hurt like hell but I did it. I closed to doors to my past and made room 4 my future. Bobby is my 1st…” [Sept 24, 1986].“..Everything still hurts and every1 acts sort of distant, meaning Bobby….It’s just human nature. The hanging on each other has ceased now…My [family member who committed assault] wasn’t a man he was a beast. And no matter how bad Mother Nature can affect us we can’t help it. Not all men aren’t still affectionate after sex even if they aren’t beasts…” [Sept 25, 1986]. She keeps the diary until Sept 30, returns briefly on February 4, 1987 to share her and Bobby’s engagement news. In March 1991, about to turn 25, she resumes regular entries. She tells her diary she and Bobby are over because she “didn’t want to marry a drug addicted musician.” She is living with a new man named Mark (together since 1989) and is focused on recording demos, teaching singing lessons, moving to New York, and hitting her goal weight (95–100 lbs). She self-identifies as bulimic. Her partner Mark supports her dreams financially and emotionally, but she spends much of the diary flip-flopping on her feelings toward him—discussing marriage one day, confessing attraction to others the next. She eventually admits to cheating and the guilt that follows. She also references same-sex attraction:“...Bernadette and I worked pretty well together. I really like her. I even fantacised [sic] a bit. It was weird. Power. Turns me on and that along w/energy in me is a deadly lethal combination…” [April 10, 1991]. Alongside her relationship struggles, she spends 1991 trying to get a record deal by connecting in the LA music scene, writing songs, and trying to get her music into the right hands (at one point she asks her friend Maynard to help get her demo to his agent and contemplates giving it to Lenny Kravitz). She performs at Magic Mountain (and is later fired), and runs into trouble with a music manager named Mike, all while making new connections. She ends her first diary in December 1991 with a plan to beat her eating disorder, further her career, and become more spiritually enlightened. Diary Two:We meet her again in July 1995, now 28. She is in lust with a woman [name protected for privacy]. Mark is a memory. She seems at peace:“Happily I find myself a grown up after one of the longest childhoods of all time. I feel I have finally attained some personal wants that were long overdue. Someone who loves me the way I love them, a very active, productive city life…” [July 22, 1995].“I want to be a famous musician…This is the third and last time I have gone without music for more than a month. Once as a child when my managers and I parted ways and my uncle left…Second after I began living with Mark and my Warner deal fell through and now…” [July 27, 1995].“I feel kind of disappointed in some things…and grateful for others…[I am disappointed in] marriage and music. Marriage because it seems like we don’t get one and music because…I haven’t fully gotten my hands on it yet…same w/marriage - so close to my reach…” [Aug 11, 1995].Later that August, she writes: “I am married now - but really have a best friend that I get to plunk whenever it's allowed...which I wouldn't mind as much if everything else was cool. ([my wife] called me an asshole for writing that)...” While gay marriage was not yet legal in the United States or Ireland, she writes, “...I married myself to her and committed to her for life…” [Sept 12, 1995]. She and her wife struggle with being openly gay and committed in the 1990s:“...My beef with [my wife] is…she is very uptight about our relationship in public…I can’t understand why [my wife] would allow me to marry myself to her if we are something to be ashamed of…We don’t have sex with [her daughter] in the house and we’re not blatant as we used to be…All signs point to her being ashamed of ‘us’...Tonight she was worried about a mark I had left on her neck. She was worried that her gay brother [name withheld] …had seen it…”[Sept 12, 1995]. She also struggles to coexist with her wife’s teen daughter:“I've had a lot of fun smoking [week]...It was interesting being near [my wife’s daughter] in an altered state…I would take the ultimate care of her if ever it was needed, but I find her very very ridiculously arrogant and spoiled…because of the constant competition for [my wife’s] affections - I find it unbearable..." [Sept 18, 1995]. Other topics she covers at length include her musical aspirations (producing a new album, opening a club), current events (she has much to say about the O.J. Simpson verdict), 1990s music, songwriting, earning an income (at one point teaching aerobics and cleaning houses), life in Dublin versus Los Angeles, and her constant belief that fame and fortune will come. Her final entry is October 28, 1995. Diary Three begins two days later, October 30. She is seeing a woman named Monna. They visit the mountains together, work on music together. This diary covers Nov–Dec 1995 in great detail, with long introspective entries about her career, her father, her wife’s child, and current events (like an interview with Lady Diana). Her mood fluctuates, with a bulimia relapse recorded: “...[my wife] and I are trying this new schedule that I read about. It’s based on Ayurvedic principle that the body cannot properly heal itself except in…[between] 10-2…” [Nov 21]; “Don’t know why I wound up in the bathroom last night. I was in such a good mood and really hopeful…I can’t even blame a lack of money…upon waking - I am wearing the white sweatshirt that…makes me feel like a Cathy Bates [sic] lookalike…and I have my sweatpants too. They make me feel..fat..” [Nov 25]. As always, her belief in herself is strong: “I really really want to have books in the bookstore and am looking forward to publishing books and the coolest journals through a subsidiary of Legacy…I have been envisioning this huge success for [my record label] with [my wife] running [record label] and me running Legacy and both of us helping each other always…” This diary also includes lyrics she was working on:“The audience gathers/awaiting the act of the night/the curtain goes up and/the opening is denied…She sits in the bathroom/and counts all the cracks in the tile/She knows there’s a reason…The critics debate over why the main character stays/She made an incision/and felt the division inside/as she walked down the aisle…” A December entry recalls her step-grandfather and highlights our author's poetic writing style, which becomes more eloquent as her writing matures over the years:“I remember my step-grandfather fondly. Teaching me that great game of poker at the age of five and sending me home with his caddy of chips and cards to my stingy grandmother’s dismay. And God how I loved to comb his hair!...I remember being in my room 3000 miles away…playing with the poker chips in my hand…letting one fall on top of the other and listening to the mundane sound of one plastic chip hitting another…my mother asking me why I was so sad…I didn’t really see him that often…[but] I knew him enough to love him…after all he sat still for hours when I was five letting me comb that little bit of hair over even giving me a sip of…beer while no one was looking…” Diaries Four and Five bring us into the 21st century. She begins Diary 4, a small red book marked Carpe Diem, as an inspirational quote book in 2002–2003, then resumes it in March 2005, aged 38 and “in the throes of ‘mid-life crisis.’” She keeps it until late October 2005. She writes of her health regimen—water, vitamins, weightlifting, affirmations—and her goal to “earn my $5 million from music and film” within three years.She revisits the topic of the family member who assaulted her:“I let everybody in the family know. I did my best to protect [female cousins]...That Memorial Day Weekend…was it 1985 or 1986? My god - I was brave….it was so important to let him know that I didn’t fear him otherwise the predatory beast would smell it from me…I didn’t run away from the confrontation…HE KNEW!” [March 23, 2005]. Her wife’s daughter is now 21; she still has conflicting emotions toward her. Yet she’s working on an album, revising a business plan, discovering her passion for animals, and ready to leave Ireland. In the mid-2000s, she writes less about sexuality, more about power and ambition:“Sitting here listening to my album…[my wife] is about to meet one of the smaller investors in the record…so excited about turning this record into a success [and] going to LA and getting an American aspect of life set up…Really ready to…achieve this life-long dream of having a hit record. After that...I want to be a film musician!” [Aug 6, 2005].“3 out of 4 investors have dropped out so far which is devastating - mostly because I’m ready to get out of Ireland…I’m just tired of living life…broke and stressed….I want money to make myself famous, to help people, to buy a house…”[Aug 11, 2005]. Her last entry, October 24, 2005, ends with a prayer that an investor deliver promised funds so she can return to the U.S. The final diary covers August 2006 to April 2007, ending just after her 40th birthday. Some excerpts show how she has matured in marriage and business:“...we're leaving Ireland for awhile. My dreams in tact... I'm in tact...unscathed by life - only enlightened...Today got a great guitar…I was thinking about getting a new Yorkee...but realistically it has to wait until after we are done working my record...I am looking forward to putting in so much work on the album” [Undated, mid-Aug 2006].“...We paid for the album yesterday and that deems it officially finished from where I am sitting. There is nothing more that I can do creatively…” [Sept 3, 2006].“…Well I have found my work footing and I actually finished our [business] plan. I think Jimmy is going to end up buying [name of business venture] for a million. That means [my wife] and I will have about a hundred grand at the end of the day... Not as much as we thought initially, but we can do everything we need to…” [Jan 17, 2007].“[my brother-in-law and his male partner] went through a final break up. I feel bad for [my brother-in-law] in the short term and really good for him long term…He deserves to find that perfect relationship - Like [my wife] and I have - no nonsense - trust (even in PMS!!)...” [March 31, 2007].In her final entry, April 22, 2007, she and her wife are leaving Ireland for the U.S. and she has big plans:“...I have been a little irritable…just moving, etc…Today I looked at some car insurance estimate and it said ‘Age:40’...and my heart skipped a beat…it was freaky! Good news? There’s time…I saw the perfect El Paso house today…Nice $215,000. I wish we could buy it…I began working on [a new film script]...It could be a cute tightly packaged little movie. Sebastien Bach or Bon Jovi could be good leads…I also started writing a new song today…Several goals…Book the birds and the dog cargo flights…finish move-out…Move into [name of neighbourhood]...record Joe’s song…Work religiously on the record and [name of another neighbourhood] house…sort out my mom’s and dad’s present…lose a little touch of weight and get a tan…I have been enjoying my new life of meditation and no sugar…Here’s to new beginnings…and striving toward my absolute best.” An additional item is a photo album featuring her wife’s daughter, showing a young adult social life in Los Angeles in 2007. Taken together, these five diaries form a rare longitudinal primary source tracing one woman’s passage from a 19-year-old Los Angeles striver in 1986 to a 40-year-old transatlantic artist in 2007. Across that arc, the pages document the formation of lesbian identity out of early heterosexual scripts; the aftershocks of childhood sexual abuse and bulimia; the textures of queer domestic life with a female partner and step-parenting a teen; and the daily labor of songwriting, gigging, and independent label-building inside (and against) a male-dominated music economy. Because entries move from L.A. rehearsal rooms to Dublin flats and back toward the U.S., the set uniquely supports transatlantic studies of queer migration, visibility, and community formation in the 1990s and early 2000s—before marriage equality, and while stigma still shaped public self-presentation. For Gender and Queer Studies, the archive is immediately teachable and deeply researchable: students can follow, in first person, the shift from compulsory heterosexuality to a self-declared lesbian life; analyze body image and celebrity culture as gendered regimes; and read creative process alongside intimate partnership, step-family dynamics, and economic precarity. For methods courses, it models feminist life-writing as both survival practice and cultural production; for seminars on queer modernities, it anchors discussion with a dated record of language, law, and everyday negotiation of “outness.” The inclusion of original lyrics, business plans, and a related photo album broadens the evidentiary field beyond narrative to material culture and creative artifacts. Acquired as a unit, the diaries will serve as a cornerstone teaching and research collection for courses in feminist autobiography, trauma and recovery, queer domesticities, and the sociology of art. Identifying details are responsibly anonymized for classroom use; a de-anonymized research dossier and provenance will be provided to the purchasing institution. In short, this is a sustained, candid, and assignable life record of a queer woman artist—precisely the kind of multi-decade, cross-geography testimony that advances scholarship and sparks undergraduate engagement. ANONYMIZED BIO NOTES:The author, a woman born in the American Midwest in the late 1960s, was raised in a working-class family that separated during her childhood and later reconciled. By her teens she had relocated to California, where she pursued a career in music and performance. A gifted vocalist and songwriter, she performed with several regional bands before moving into independent production. During the 1990s she became active in the Los Angeles recording scene and collaborated with well-known industry figures. After a negative professional encounter with a prominent producer who pressured her to alter her image and sound, she relocated to Dublin, Ireland, where she re-established her career under a stage name and co-founded an independent record label with her long-term female partner and manager. Together they produced and released her debut album in the mid-1990s, later returning to California to launch a new creative enterprise and a self-funded follow-up record in the 2000s. Across her diaries, she identifies as a musician, writer, and entrepreneur, documenting the realities of life as a queer woman artist navigating two continents and multiple creative industries. Her published music and writing—credited jointly with her partner—remain accessible online. Show more