What happens when we let go of who we thought we were?
Surrender is not easy. We crave control, even when it slips through our fingers like sand. Gripping tightly gives us false security, as we believe we can dictate the outcomes of our lives. But what happens when we let go? What if we simply allow things to be what they are instead of resisting?
For Eleri Ward, that question became a guiding force. Her journey is not just about music—it’s about the act of trust, of falling into the unknown and learning to exist in a space without anchors. “It’s in the moments that I finally let go and practice trust that I actually feel whole and fulfilled and connected,” she reflects. That suspension—where gravity ceases and resistance dissolves—is terrifying, yet it is in that weightlessness that truth is found.
Perhaps that’s why there has been such an explosion of music embracing detachment, dreaminess, and transcendence. There is a collective longing for something beyond the tangible, beyond the overstimulation of modern life. Eleri finds her sound in the contrast between groundedness and expansiveness, between acoustic intimacy and celestial synths. The music itself embodies that duality—a voice that is both close and distant, a sonic landscape that stretches infinitely yet remains deeply personal.
The process of creation, too, is an act of surrender. Without label support or external resources, every piece of this project has emerged from Eleri’s hands. There is no illusion of delegation, no safety net of a larger machine. “When all you have is what you have, you make do, and that is what I’ve been doing,” she says. It wasn’t by choice, at first, but by necessity. And yet, looking back, it was exactly what the project needed to be. The solitude of creation became its own form of transformation.
There is a deep sense of self-actualisation in this journey, an understanding that every piece of art, every song, is a reflection of where she is at that moment in life. “I’ve never written music that I’ve loved more than this,” she admits. And in that love, there is a shift—not just in how she creates, but in how she moves through the world. The music has changed her. It has changed how she sees herself, how she perceives time, and how she listens to the world around her.
It is rare to stand at the centre of your own artistic vision and feel as though you have arrived, fully, in the place you were always meant to be. But when that moment comes, it is not through force. It is through surrender.
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