It's All Coming Back To Me Now - A Letter Of Love to Chrissy Amphlett

Dear Chrissy

by Jo Michelmore

Dear Chrissy,

Hi. It’s me, Jo. We never met and I'm just a little blogger, someone who adores music in all it's ways. So many will say so many things now you’ve gone, so many will pay tribute in so many ways. Real life journalists and musicians and people who probably have a lot more importance and right to say things than I do will have said a lot already. It almost doesn’t feel right having the audacity to write something to you, and although it might not mean much, as a fan of music, there’s just a little something I want to say. 

I don’t even know everything about you, I don’t know everything about the Divinyls, but I do know I owe you this. 

It’s a thank you.

It’s the ones like you, the women of rock who have always been there for me. I’m a girl who never quite felt like I fit in. I wasn’t one of the pretty ones in school; I wasn’t one of the girly ones after school. When the other girls didn’t get me, it was women of rock like you, bouncing around, screaming with venom that I turned to. Women like you have comforted me when I felt like my own peers couldn’t. 

 

It’s the ones like you, the women of rock who have always been friends. When the boys who broke my heart didn’t deserve my attention, women of rock like you are the ones who made me stronger than those boys could ever have understood anyway.

 

It’s the ones like you, the women of rock, who’ve always made me question things. When I’ve not quite understood society, when I’ve not accepted things as they are and wanted to stand up for what I think is right, or wrong; it’s women of rock like you who have given me the courage to know what I know is ok. I may not always be right, but I’m ok. You have understood me, you have been the ones I hear when I didn’t feel like anyone was hearing me.

 

Above all else, it’s the ones like you, the women of rock like you that have given me the confidence to face the world everyday as the person I am. Music is the thing that keeps me sane when I need it, that drives me insane when I need it and it’s women of rock like you that have paved the way for so, so many artists I adore. The reason your most famous song is your most famous song is because you are one of the women who had the strength and confidence to show the world who you are, to be yourself and to be comfortable with that person. That’s something I might not have quite achieved yet, but it’s women of rock like you that help me get closer and closer everyday. 

 

Thank you Chrissy Amphlett, for being the woman of rock you were, for inspiring the women of rock I’ve already loved and for inspiring those I’m bound to adore in the future. Most of all, thank you Chrissy Amphlett, for in being yourself, you have inspired me.