Favourite Daughter

Through panic attacks and broken backs

It’s March 2017. I’m in New Southgate and if you’ve never heard of New Southgate, I don’t blame you. It’s in Zone 4 of London, where I’ve just moved. I’m sitting on a bed that’s now mine, on the other side of the world, in a flat with strangers. I could’ve moved in with my friends but I didn’t. I could’ve done a lot of things differently that year. But that’s the eternal magic and mockery of hindsight.

I’ve just had my first knee surgery and am about to slip into the first of two depression spells whilst living in London. Obviously unbeknownst to me. But there I am, sitting on my bed with my left leg in a thigh-to-ankle metal brace that doesn’t bend. I wake crying, fall asleep crying and spend hours alone in my room. And then I hear Green Light by Lorde for the very first time.

I can recall it all so clearly. How those first beats reverberated through every crack of my unbroken bones. And made me feel brand new. That song is some sort of religion with the power to transport me back to standing on the edge of the world and feeling like my own person for the first time.

2017 was one of the most hedonistic, wonderful, heartbreaking years of my life. And I would live it over and over until the end of the time if I could. So I listen to Melodrama and remember the time I did something for me. Not for everyone else.

Music is the closest experience I have to religion. It is the only way I can make sense of inexplicable devotion and elation. And I was raised very religious. No surprises, I no longer am.

2013 I was in my final year university trying my best to be an adult and failing miraculously.

2017 I was in London giving into every indulgence and crying on public transport.

2021 I moved home to Auckland, engaged and pregnant. The latter being unplanned.

2025 I’m now a mother of two. Still coming to terms with living in Auckland. Parenting the people who made me, which isn’t new but is fuelled with equal parts guilt and rage, like anvils shackled to my ankles, threatening to drown me.

Then Virgin comes out on my dad’s birthday. While he’s in a care facility no less and it feels like I’m standing in front of 2017 me, then 2013, 2007, 1998, all the way down to the child who learned how to be their favourite daughter. To the little human who held a parent in each of her tiny hands, twisting herself into every version they needed, without anyone ever asking if she was ok. Why would anyone wonder, when you learned how to smile perfectly while the house was on fire and the flames licked your spine? When you can smile through panic attacks and broken backs, why would they ever ask how you are? They simply don’t.

I have listened to the album on repeat since Friday. I cried through most of it but listening to Favourite Daughter felt like standing in front of a mirror and seeing every tormented, terrified and performing version of myself synthesise into someone I might be. Sometimes I wonder what parts are me and what pieces are for others. If there is a distinction between the two or if I’m simply all of it. If I’m the kaleidoscope I’ve spent a lifetime twisting. Flashing expectation with reflection and a bit of truth through it all.

Thankfully, I restart therapy tomorrow. But Lorde on high, thank fuck for music that feels like therapy. Not just the kind where you say all your worst traumas out loud to a stranger, but the kind you find dancing in a field, holding hands with your best friends, singing your favourite songs at the top of your lungs.

Like I did in 2014 at Silo Park to Lorde. Then in 2017 at Alexandra Palace, and the year after in London’s Victoria Park. But there was nothing quite like singing Ribs with my dearest friend in 2023, after becoming a mum in 2022 and realising I can be every version of myself. Not one or the other, but all the broken, glittering pieces. Even when it hurts. Even when it feels like magic.

I’m my parents Favourite Daughter, their only daughter. I am my parents’ parent. Sometimes my brothers. I don’t think I’ll ever stop twisting myself into knots. I don’t think I’ll ever stop pushing to the surface after drowning. I don’t think I’ll ever stop dancing until I’m sick.

Praise the Lorde. Praise a lifelong coming of age. Praise to all the favourite daughters. Praise an album with no fucking duds on it. What a Pure Heroine.