Then there are times when music takes you to where you've been, kind of like on a train ride. You just watch the years that came before. Who you were, the people that came and went. How you used to wear a scarf or a hat or high-heeled shoes and now you're all about understated comfort.

When you write about being an "easy target," you risk becoming one again—to critics, to trolls, to people who don't understand. But that vulnerability is also what makes memoir powerful.