Creating things, especially songs, has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. I vividly recall sitting down at a piano on an elementary school field trip and plunking out “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Something lit up in my brain. I just had to have a piano! I begged my parents for one and they delivered.

The first song I wrote was for my cat, Spider, in memorial. The next songs were about God. I still write a lot about God. By the time I got to middle school a lot of my songs were about crushes or other feelings. I always looked forward to sitting at the piano as soon as I got home from school to write my songs and record them on a little tape cassette recorder that I would set on top.

I picked up my mom’s (recently deceased) dad’s guitar one night and started trying to play it. To my horror, the treasured heirloom’s pickguard came off as I was attempting to strum. I was horrified and so worried my mom would be angry. I feared I would not be allowed to play a guitar again.

As the future would have it, I did get to play a guitar again and that instrument ended up being a huge part of my teenage years. I continued to compose on the piano, but also started to write voraciously using acoustic guitar as my instrument. Enough people enjoyed my musical expressions that I was able to experience “gigging” life at the young age of 14.

I played small performances locally. My song “Good Intentions” was soon selected to be track #4 on Planet Radio’s “Native Noise” compilation. This led to more opportunities, including playing a number of venues in Jacksonville, FL, and opening for acts as diverse as John Mayer, Styx, Little River Band, Huey Lewis & the News, David Crosby, and Foreigner.

Not so great at being focused, my energies were scattered, and my music “career” fizzled out. The next years were spent working toward graduating with my Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy/Religion, a battle with a cancer called Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and pursuing a graduate degree in Music Therapy at Florida State University. I became a mother on Mother’s Day 2013 and that shift has been a huge catalyst for much of my current life as I know it.

I currently work as a {creative} Real Estate Agent (Broker Associate, if you want to be exact). I am also married to another creative who builds amazing houses for a living and I have two precious daughters. So, life is wonderful - plenty of “wonder” and also quite “full.”

But I’ve got to do my art. I’ve also got to share my art. This has become quite vivid and apparent to me as of late. A fire has been ignited, for real. It’s time to be the “me” I once was, in a way I wasn’t capable of being before.

So, in a nutshell, that’s why I’m here, writing this bio for you and creating this website dedicated to inspiration & creation!

If there’s a project in your heart to do that you’ve been putting off, I hope this site will help light the spark of motivation for you. Life is short and we never know which day will be our last. So make it awesome and you do “You.” No one else can.

Anastasia Forrest

March 2022