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When I prepared the segment on GIRLS LIKE US: Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon – and the Journey of a Generation for Soundcheck I had no idea that it would resonate with me, a gen-Xer. Among the many stories author Sheila Weller novelistically recounts is how Joni Mitchell, then Joan Anderson, finds herself pregnant and unmarried at 20. 8 years before Roe vs. Wade, there were frighteningly few options for women in this predicament. Joni decides to give up her daughter, a painful decision, which, it’s suggested, may have fueled Mitchell's remarkable career and artistry. My mother, who died in a car crash two years after Blue came out, found herself in the same situation, the same year as Joni Mitchell. Before she met my father, she became pregnant and unmarried she gave up her daughter (my unfound half-sister) for adoption.

As revealed in the book, Joni wrote about her daughter in Little Green, track 3 of Blue, a song I’d listened countless times without ever knowing what it was about.

“Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you are sending home
So you sign all the papers in the family name
You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you're not ashamed
Little green, have a happy ending”

Today I’m happily married, with a baby boy and toddler girl, who's roughly my age when I lost my mother. Reading these lyrics, really for the first time, I finally have a sense of what both my mother and Joni went through, along with presumably many women of their generation.

“There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there’ll be so-rrow.”

Alysia Abbott

Tell us: Have you ever made sense of your life by listening to music?