The wildest part of Machan Taylor’s story isn’t the backstage access or the legendary names. It’s the quiet moment when she realizes the life that looks “made” from the outside is still built on old trauma, old shame, and a nervous system that never learned safety.

I sit down with Machan, a singer, songwriter, educator, and author of the memoir “Naked Out Loud,” to talk about what happens when you stop saving face and start telling the truth. We get into her Japanese American upbringing, the early rupture of leaving Japan as a child, and the long shadow of not belonging. Machan shares how family dysfunction and an alcoholic father shaped her self-worth, and how those patterns echoed later in an abusive marriage she ultimately had to leave to survive. We also talk candidly about panic attacks, anxiety, and the way trauma can imprint on the body for years.

From there, the conversation opens into the healing tools that helped her rebuild from the inside out: chanting and Buddhism, meditation and yoga, intuition and energy, and the sacred, demanding work of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Machan explains her guided experiences with MDMA and psilocybin, why intention and integration matter, and how those sessions helped her find the “original” wound that talk therapy never fully reached. We end with the part I want every midlife listener to hear: reinvention is real. Machan goes back to school at 54, becomes a professor at NYU, keeps performing, and proves that turning 70 doesn’t mean shrinking your life.

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