205. Summer Song Series; Stay Or Go with Elizabeth Garnett

Introduction

Welcome back to the Summer Song Series. Today I am joined by my friend and former client Elizabeth Garnett — Zabe — for a conversation I have been wanting to have for a while.

Elizabeth reached out to me not long ago and sent me a song she had written. The title alone stopped me: Stay or Go. Even though I am not in that place in my life anymore, the moment I read those lyrics, every part of me that lived this experience recognized it. I knew immediately it needed to be part of this series.

Before we dive into the song itself, I want you to hear a little of Elizabeth's story in her own words.

Elizabeth's Story: Turning Pain Into Music

Elizabeth: I have been trying to release everything that has been living in my head and my heart in a way that actually feels like letting go. Writing in a journal helps, but it does not fully capture the emotion and the rawness of what I sometimes feel.

I am a creative writing major, and I have been writing poetry for a long time, so I started there. But most of the time I spend alone is in the car — pickups, drop-offs, commuting — and I need to be able to cry or scream at a stoplight if I need to. You cannot really do that with poetry. So I thought, what if I turned these words into actual music?

With AI, I was able to take my own lyrics and generate something I could listen to in the car on the way to work, on the way home, whenever I needed to release something. I cannot carry a tune, so this is not my voice singing. But every word is mine.

The Question That Started Everything

Amie: Where were you mentally and emotionally when this song came out of you?

Elizabeth: I had been stuck in this question for years. I had kind of buried it because it was just easier to keep taking one step forward. But as I started writing these songs, things I had buried started coming back up.

I was listening to another song and heard a line about paying a price for your choices. And that got stuck in my head: what is the price I paid for being so stuck for so long? What price am I paying now for finally making a choice?

Once I had that question, everything else followed. I paid a heavy price to stay stuck. To wait on someone else to make the decision for me.

Amie: That question — at what cost? — is one of the most powerful and most avoided questions there is. What I hear in your story is that actually letting yourself lean into the answer is what finally helped you move.

Elizabeth: Yes. At some point I realized: I am paying a big price. My kids are paying a big price. My future is going to keep paying a big price. And the price of staying comfortable in my discomfort was no longer worth the price of not knowing what the future held. That was the tipping point.

The Lyrics: Verse One

"Standing where our love split in two. One choice leads to somewhere, the other stays with you. To stay is a slow fade, a silent numbing gray. Constant reminders of words you will never say. To go is a heavy step, a map I cannot read. Trading the familiar for a desperate kind of need. I'm caught between the costs, keeping our love alive or admitting our love is lost."

Amie: Every single line lands. But the one that caught me most is this: trading the familiar for a desperate kind of need. How many of us convinced ourselves we did not need the things we actually needed — because honoring those needs felt almost embarrassing? Like wanting more made us desperate? I remember dismissing my own wants and needs over and over because I was not willing to trade the familiar discomfort for the unknown. That trade felt too big, too scary, too much.

The Chorus

"Should I stay or should I go? What's my price to pay? If I stay, it's my soul I slowly lose. If I leave, my lonely path I choose. My home is a prison where the walls are closing in. The other an unknown hope — can I begin again? I'm paying for the choice I need to make, counting up the hurts of a heart I must break."

Amie: This is where I lost it completely.

Elizabeth: To say I felt like I was losing my soul is not an exaggeration. And the loneliness of that path — I did not fully understand how lonely it would be until I was already on the other side of it. There is a grief in leaving that I was not prepared for at all.

Amie: And that word choose — it can feel almost cruel. Because so many of you listening did not want to choose this. This is a life-saving divorce. Someone else's choices forced your hand. And yet here you are, having to make the hardest decision of your life anyway. There is a choice inside a choice you never wanted to make.

Elizabeth: I fought so hard to not have to make this choice. I tried everything. And I am still here, doing it. So yes — it is incredibly lonely. But I will say this: to now have space that does not feel as restricting, as tight, as burdened — it is just easier to breathe.

Amie: And I want to pause on that because you are saying it from the other side now. But years ago when I told you it would feel completely different in your body, you did not believe me for one second.

Elizabeth: Not for one second. I thought you had found some kind of rare exception. I did not believe you could go from that kind of trapped, gray, scared feeling to color again. But the stretch is so much smaller than it used to be. And it really does start with one small step.

Verse Two

"Memories dance, shadows on the floor. Echoes of our love still calls me for more. Every step I take feels twice as hard. Our love burned hot, now cold and charred. To go feels like stepping in the dark, leaving the hope of us behind to lose its spark. Torn between the past and what's ahead. Our love is dying, but I'm not quite dead."

Amie: That last line. That is my favorite line in the entire song.

Elizabeth: I felt dead. I was doing what I needed to do as a mom, as a functioning adult. But I was not living. I was barely enough alive to be barely enough alive. And I am only now starting to understand how almost dead I actually was.

What helps me is separating those two things. I was not dead. But the connection we had is dead. It was not me. It was the relationship — the lack of honesty, the lack of trust, the lack of any real connection.

Amie: What I hear in that is how completely we can fuse our identity with the marriage. When the marriage starts to feel like it is ending, we experience it as ourselves ending — our worth, our value, our lovability. Separating yourself from the relationship is some of the deepest work there is. The relationship can be dying and you can still be very much alive.

The Bridge

"Just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do, just tell me what to do. I don't trust myself, and I don't trust you. I ruminate on the choice until my logic is gone, paralyzed in fear of simply being wrong. Spinning in circles of a mind that's never still, caught between a broken heart and my broken will."

Amie: The repetition here is so real. It is not just tell me what to do — it is tell me, but also maybe do not, but please, someone just tell me.

Elizabeth: That is exactly it. I would say to Amie, just tell me what to do. I would pray for a clear answer and get one and think, are you sure? Because that was not what I wanted to hear. Even when someone who knew me and loved me told me what they saw, I could not receive it.

And I was so stuck in my logical brain. A plus B equals C. If I just put all the right pieces together, I can make this work. But my body was already telling me something completely different. I could not eat. I lost my voice when I tried to speak. I just kept ignoring it and trying to make it make logical sense. And it was never going to make sense. So I just kept spinning.

Amie: Caught between a broken heart and a broken will. Two things true at once. You are brokenhearted. And you do not have the will to take a step. That is a real place. A painful, real place.

On the Kids: The Part That Keeps People Stuck

"Counting up the hurt of a heart I must break."

Elizabeth: That heart I must break — it is my heart, and it is my kids' hearts. That was such a massive part of what kept me stuck. What am I doing to my children? How does this affect them?

Amie: What are you noticing now, having made these steps?

Elizabeth: I have had to learn that heartbreak is just part of life. It does not mean I did anything wrong. It does not mean I failed. I cannot protect my kids from life, but I can be present with them. I can sit with them and say: this is really hard and I am not going anywhere.

Letting go as a parent and letting your kids just be sad without trying to fix it — that is incredibly hard. I got so caught up in thinking: if I end this marriage, I have to fix their broken hearts. Because I am a child of divorce myself. I know what that feels like. I wanted so badly to fix it. And I cannot. But I can walk it with them.

Amie: And what your therapist told you is worth repeating here for every woman listening: it was not your choices that created this heartbreak. It was his. And choosing to leave is what allows your children to begin healing from harm they may not even fully understand yet.

Elizabeth: I know. And if I had stayed, I would still be exposing them to things I never wanted them to see. At least now they have a peaceful home. I am more regulated. I can actually be present with them in a way I could not before. The difference is already real, even this early in.

Closing

Amie: I love that you tapped into your creative self to bring this song into the world. It is beautiful, and I am so grateful you were willing to share it and talk about it today.

Elizabeth: I have actually put together an album of the ten songs I love best — out of over thirty I have written. Every word is mine, even though the voice is AI-generated. It is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and every major platform.

Amie: Those songs will be added to the Healing After Divorce playlist on Spotify — linked in the show notes. And to every single listener in that stuck place right now, in the middle of your own stay or go — you are the chooser in your life. You get to create the life you want. One step, one lyric, one small brave choice at a time.

Because you can.

Resources

Stay or Go by Elizabeth Garnett — Spotify / Apple Music / all platforms 

Elizabeth's full album — all platforms (link in show notes)

Healing After Divorce Spotify playlist — link in show notes

Self-paced course: Should I Stay or Should I Go? with workbook — amiewoolsey.com

Work with Amie: amiewoolsey.com | lifecoachingwithamie.com