What the Presley Family Taught Me About Generational Healing
Lisa Marie Presley and her father, Elvis Presley.
Credit: Frank Carroll via Random House
“We're caught in a trap. I can't walk out because I love you too much, baby.”
— Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley
Those lyrics have triggered me for years. Even today, those words still hold power over me. They sting, but from afar now. Why? Elvis Presley and his family’s path towards healing… you know, from trauma, has intersected with my own since before I was born.
It’s a long story, equally wrapped up in legend. I will try to be brief as it relates to my origin story. I am one of those Mozart babies, so the story goes. Classical music was played to my developing cells in utero with the hope that I would be intelligent. Now watch closely, here is where I turn from brainiac to demi-god of rock and roll.
My father switched out the tapes at some point.
Elvis is his hero. My father needed a hero. Growing up, he was surrounded by goons, thugs, and the worst kinds of men. The search for a role model stopped when he landed on an American king. I would later connect these three personas together, quite naturally. Hero, Elvis, Dad. I moved from Mozart to Elvis, guitar licks and love songs weaving themselves into my heart while it was still forming. I only believe this fetal phenomenon because I had an overactive obsession with Elvis before kindergarten. Obviously, other children found me quite strange because of my mismatched fixation. I knew all the lyrics, could curl my lip, do the voice, name the movies, and so on. Super weird. Tell me about it. Elvis was my first crush and my first death. I remember when it happened. I remember being very young and very unaware of the fact that human beings died.
I didn’t know death was part of the deal when it came to life.
I also didn’t know how death could hurt those left behind. Or rather, I didn’t know what that hurt could feel like. Ironically, I would learn this inevitable lesson watching Elvis’ E! True Hollywood Story, crying as the motorcade zoomed past me in pixels, twenty years after his death. I was born loving this voice and I could never understand why I felt this love so viscerally. Decades later — I understand the complexity of Elvis Presley’s truth… and the wonders of prenatal science.
The King and I?
Believe it or not, our familial orbits were woven in ways out of my control and for some reason, I cherish this connection like I would a cashmere. So much of myself is wrapped up in music; it’s one of the things I love most about myself. Music cements my foundation. It always has. Now, is all of this super strange? Why yes, yes it is.
Is it also extraordinary? Yes, yes it is. Why?
Well, as a result, I find myself running parallel to his granddaughter Riley Keough all these years later. Running through generational trauma, family addiction, grief, healing, legacy — simultaneously. I am moving through it all still and from what I am gathering, so is Riley Keough. My story, entirely different in format, but eerily the same in so many heartbreaking and harmonious ways. Remember, this is a story of light.
Let’s cut to the other night.
There I was, on the edge of thirty with my new life in Hollywood, sitting directly across from Riley Keough, herself. A vignette, thirty years in the making. And there she was, up on stage, talking about the joint-memoir she wrote with her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley… From Here to the Great Unknown. She would go on to speak rather candidly about completing her mother’s memoir, in her memory. She would speak about grief — how it impacted her mother and how it impacts her, now grieving the loss of both her younger brother Benjamin and Lisa Marie. Keough didn’t stop there. She would dive straight into shedding light on the universality of addiction; it having run straight through her family just like it has my own.
She would share her family’s truths with vulnerability, humor, and light — despite the glare of an intrusive spotlight. Despite all us onlookers blinded by our wanting of more.
In these thirty years, my life has spiraled into its own little tornado and amidst all the magic, there have been moments of trauma that have left me wounded. I hesitate, wanting to say broken. I have been affected by addiction in a few cruel ways. In ways that made hearing the music of Elvis Presley incredibly difficult. Up until this year, I would have to turn it off immediately. Concurrently with Keough, I went through the excruciating task of writing the story of my trauma out in a book, now sitting in a Google Drive for no one to read. “Suspicious Minds" was actually playing during one of my life’s more saddening scenes, as if on cue. Oh life, how insidious you can be sometimes. That song would become a climactic chapter title in my story. I wrote in order to process and get through it; I didn’t know that then, but I do now. Taking pain from heart to page was not easy, but I am better for it.
Riley Keough and Taylor Jenkins Reid at Live Talks Los Angeles on November 18, 2024 for From Here To The Great Unknown.
Now, I want to tell you what I’ve learned from this rock and roll allegory and specifically, what I have learned from Riley Keough.
While up on stage, with all those eyes on her, Keough was asked how she doesn’t just fall into becoming a hardened person after everything she’s been through — and she has been through a lot. Her answers shot straight through me like an arrow because they were words that I desperately needed to hear that evening. Riley Keough, the sole trustee of Graceland, gets through it by choice — and she does it while holding the keys to her family’s legacy, alongside her daughter and young sisters. She chooses to look at the unknown, even death, with wonder instead of fear. Chooses to give off warmth. Chooses to be open-hearted not despite tragedy… but in light of it. Keough chooses to feel empowered by her own narrative rather than fall victim to it.
She chooses the light.
So, I choose to say that my E! True Hollywood Story is just beginning, even though I have felt like it was ending so many times before. I choose to always speak the truth and I choose to always speak kind words. I choose to be open-hearted because that is how the light gets in and out. I choose to look at my history, head on. Face it with wonder rather than fear. And this is why artists and storytellers are the most magical human beings to me. Through their expression, I am made brave. We all are. Case and point — watching someone (who has nothing to gain from sharing these intimacies) talk about the reality of addiction, rather than the shame, was important to me.
It felt BIG and here I am, feeling braver because of her truth.
I have followed Keough’s work for years because of her lineage and I have observed how she has completely come into her own as an artist. It has been wonderful to watch. Though, what I am most proud of her for is this piece of the puzzle: healing from trauma, across generations and in the public eye. I am reminded that I am not alone in my own journey towards healing. I have someone I can look up to for all the reasons I need my own hero. Though, the greatest gift I can give back is not to call Keough a hero, but to call her a human. In doing that, someone like me becomes human, too.
POSTSCRIPT
Funnily enough, Riley Keough went on to play a fictionalized version of the witchy rock goddess from that soap opera of a band we all know and love. The same band I adopted as my own when my soap opera of a life was imploding those few, short years ago. Serendipity doesn’t even begin to cover it. However, that’s an entirely different saga worthy of its own cosmic analysis. Though not completely unrelated. Together, we have become our own kind of gold dust woman. Still here and still with a song in our hearts.
Healing. It’s very rock and roll.
Me (Age 3)
