What lessons has your life journey taught you?

Rosalie | Kirikiriroa

Rosalie had to address her instinct to ‘people-please’ in order to embrace her true self, finding confidence and authenticity through her music.

“Maybe even the biggest mistake I’ve made over my life has been a lot to do with people-pleasing. Just the mistake of letting people into my energy or into my space all the time. Growing up, and through songwriting as well, I’ve come to understand that I’m very much quite a big people-pleaser. As I grew up, I was often labelled, as well as labelling myself, the ‘shy kid’. Even when I started gaining a little bit of my own confidence, I still was living in that mindset of having to give everybody 100% of my energy and time and space all the time.

As I started to understand who I was more, it became a bit harder to find myself authentically because I was giving everybody else a version of myself that I thought that they wanted. I feel like it’s a mixture of many mistakes but it definitely changed the way that I was able to grow as I got older.

It’s helped me understand that there are people like me and that for people that are listening and connect with my music, that they also know that they’re not alone. I hope they can find a feeling of safety and comfort through my own stories in a way. Through performing, being able to gain my confidence and find myself as an artist it’s just been really cool to know that other people feel the same way and being able to provide that feeling back to them too.

The main piece that I feel like I share in my songs is just finding your own authenticity. And I guess sometimes a lot of my music and the lyrics can be a bit all over the place but I feel like at the heart of it, it’s always around identity. For me it’s been a huge journey learning about my culture, my sexuality and all of the things that make up who I am.

It’s been really exciting to be able to share that with people and know that they feel the same way too.”