Jenni Rivera Quotes

I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia.

It's kind of chased away a few demons for me and, um, it's educated me a little bit more.

I try to dig deep into my soul to figure out something positive in the pain. I think I go to certain places when I play to heal.

Everybody has their demons that they face, and I went through a time when I thought it was impossible to love myself.

There was a time when I stopped singing, between 16 and 19, but that was done on purpose, maybe as a punishment, maybe as a cure.

I wrote 'Road Less Traveled' to make myself feel better and process what I was going through.

I've been writing books because it's been my way of dealing with the demons. The act of sitting down and writing the books down has started healing process that's been long overdue.

Talking about darker stuff from my life was definitely very cathartic and at times confronting.

You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them.

Most things I go through I have to write about.

It's pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.

In the last couple of years I've been facing down a lot of the demons of the past and trying to find out, who I am, It's something I think I'll be doing for the rest of my life.

You don't need to exorcise your personal demons onstage.

I'd gone through the ups and downs and curveballs that life throws at you. I found writing to be very therapeutic and it helped me with a lot of the stuff I was going through.

I wanted to tell my story in a way I haven't done before, things I've been going through in my life.

You can't heal what you don't acknowledge.

I think a novel has to be about where you are at a given moment in time. I think it really needs to represent some specific pain you're going through. it's not just a story.

For people like me, who have blocked out a chunk of their past, you wonder - if you open that door, if you walk into that room of your memories, what will happen? Will it destroy you or will it make you stronger?

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

A lot of people say they want to get out of pain, and I'm sure that's true, but they aren't willing to make healing a high priority. They aren't willing to look inside to see the source of their pain in order to deal with it.

You're always searching for the thing to heal you, and I thought therapy would give me that. But it didn't - it just helps you recognize your demons.

In that I found being able to talk to my family about my feelings, praying for strength and realizing that our lives have a deep purpose and the journey of our lives is to find out what that is and express it, was the only way I could have gotten through it.

Issues deals with the issues I had, the fears I had and it isn't a 'nice' album but fears and depressions are not particularly nice.

My journey through life has led me through both light and dark places, and it's because of those experiences that I have learned how to work through my character defects and to help others do the same.