It’s me, hi, I’m the creator, it’s me. I wanted a place where we could share some of the unique, individual memories or ways we connect to Taylor Swift’s music (and in doing so connect to one another).

I never considered myself a Swiftie. I associated this particular term with superfans who counted down the days to her album drops, had seen her in concert multiple times (sometimes even traveling to other cities), owned her records on vinyl, set notifications for whenever she posted, combed through her content hunting for Easter eggs — none of which described me. But Taylor’s music has come to represent key moments in my life and been a dear companion through a whole lot of tears.

A fellow Sagittarius born the year after Taylor, I had the fortune of her songs often seeming to perfectly accompany my life’s journey. She paved the way, like when “22” was released when I was 22, living in New York, when the term “hipster” was all the rage, and I was feeling happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time, all of the time. From the earliest memory I can recall (watching the “Teardrops on My Guitar” music video on MTV while getting ready for school), her music brings me right back to specific eras in my life. I associate specific songs and albums to certain ex-boyfriends and ex-situationships. I remember my “Red” boyfriend foolishly challenging me in Taylor Swift trivia during the peak of QuizUp, promptly ending up in one of my lacy thongs for losing the bet. And I’ve got particularly vivid memories of weepily singing “Forever & Always” and “Last Kiss” by myself in the different dorm rooms I was living in at those times.

When I had a life-threatening brain hemorrhage at 24, Taylor was there. My boyfriend at the time wrote updates to my friends and family from my hospital bed: “She is much more attentive when she is awake now and we have had multiple conversations that are quite lucid and lasting 30 minutes. She’s been listening quietly to Taylor Swift and snoozing on and off a lot.” That was Taylor’s 1989 era, and I made a poor joke about #badblood on Instagram in reference to the bleeding in my brain. At a time when I couldn’t do much else, Taylor’s music comforted me day after day as I stared up at the same blank ceiling.

Taylor could easily write the soundtrack to my life as we shared some eerie similarities. At 7 years old, I too was swinging “high in the sky with Pennsylvania under me” before later moving to the South. In our 20s, we both loved the energy of living in Manhattan — I still listen to “Welcome to New York” whenever I go back to visit the city. Maybe most extraordinarily of all, Lover came out 4 days before I met my London boy, whom (spoiler alert) I married 6 months later. I listened to that album nonstop while running on the sands of a Peruvian shoreline (a trip I had already planned prior to our meeting by happenstance), thinking about how I had told him I’d marry him in a heartbeat (my version of “with paper rings”) after only having known him for 4 days. Then I relocated to London.

We eloped in Central Park ("back and forth from New York"), just the two of us, our photographer our only witness. During the intimate ceremony, our officiant read lines from “Daylight,” a song that fully captured how I felt about him, our love, and my personal journey. When we met, I had just emerged from my Reputation era as well, having been recently bullied by insecure men and feeling like my love was as cruel as the many cities I had lived in by that point. “And I can still see it all in my mind; all of you, all of me, intertwined. I once believed love would be black and white, but it’s golden. And I can still see it all in my head, back and forth from New York, sneaking in your bed. I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden. Like daylight. I don’t wanna look at anything else now that I saw you; I can never look away. I don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you; things will never be the same. I've been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night. Now I'm wide awake. And now I see daylight.”

Then we were thrust into the throes of the global pandemic, an interesting start for newlyweds who had only known each other 6 months. Our small friends-and-family London wedding ceremony got delayed and delayed and then cancelled, and my husband and I had to spend months apart in our respective countries awaiting the visa that would allow me to settle down in the UK — folklore was such a comfort during that year of uncertainty and unwanted isolation. The long pond studio sessions came out on Disney+ the day before my 30th birthday, the best present as I had never imagined I would be spending that milestone birthday separated from friends and with my husband an ocean away. Two days after we reunited back in London, evermore was released. If folklore got me through the beginning of the pandemic, evermore got me through a miserable official start to my life in the UK and a months-long Tier 4 lockdown. Both pandemic albums captured and helped me cope with the melancholia I felt.

Once the lockdown lifted, we headed to “the lakes,” a beautiful, perfect place to decompress. And that summer, we finally got to have another wedding (a vow renewal ceremony) in the presence of a few friends and family in London. I created a slideshow of my husband and me growing up in parallel before meeting and merging our lives, to the tune of “Invisible String.” I wanted to walk down the aisle to “State of Grace,” another relationship-defining song for me, but I couldn’t find a good enough acoustic instrumental version. My husband ordered a bunch of sound equipment and recorded himself playing it on the guitar — his rendition always makes me cry. But truly, to my husband, “I never saw you coming, and I’ll never be the same.”

This is just a sampling of the historical memories and very personal meaning I’ve come to attach to Taylor’s music. But most recently I unexpectedly became a mother, and this is one life experience where I didn’t have Taylor paving the path before me. Entering motherhood has been the most massive personal transition, and I certainly could have used her words. I had spent my pregnancy getting into the best mental and emotional place I could for my baby and had thoughtfully planned an empowering, therapeutic, and embodied home water birth. Instead, a series of strange events led me to the polar opposite experience: an emergency Cesarean. I sobbed from the moment we had to make that decision until I was holding my daughter in my arms. It was so unexpected, and, in light of my past hospital trauma and temporary paralysis, it was not at all what I wanted. I was overwhelmed when they asked what music I wanted to play in the operating theatre. I told my husband to just put on a Taylor Swift instrumental playlist. She had gotten me through my last hospitalization and she would get me through this one. Her music reverberating through the theatre ended up uplifting everyone, ushering my daughter into this world. Now, I’m holding my girl in my arms, and we get to listen to Speak Now together (Taylor’s Version obvs). Thank you, Taylor Swift, for all of the support I've needed as I've lived my life and grown up over these last 16 years.

So does any of this make me a true Swiftie now? Well I’m assuming creating a website compiling open letters about Taylor’s impact on people's lives qualifies me at least somewhat for Swiftie status.