Today is World Mental Health Day, and I wanted to celebrate it differently: with a song.

When I went through severe mental health issues, music is one of the things, maybe the main one, that literally saved my life. So today I'm celebrating the things that brought me joy and happiness, the things that helped me get out of it. And if I can mix music with other things that helped me, I'm doing it.

One of them is this project. It lets me get out of my body and express my experience and my story, and it connects me with cultures and their people. In this case, American people. I wasn't very at ease communicating and truly connecting with others, and the US showed me how much more positive, and how much easier, social relationships can be. So this is me giving that back. The song is about everything my relationship with this country, and my discovery of it, made me feel and see.

I also want to keep one thing omnipresent in everything I do: the musical vibes of my territory, Guadeloupe. That's why this episode takes the form of a song, inspired by Caribbean styles like zouk, tropical soul and compas.

Authenticity is one of this podcast's core values, and I know content made or supported by AI can sound like the exact opposite. But I put all the gold in what the song says, not in how it's made. I don't have a singer's skills yet, so technology helps with what I can't do. The words and the story are mine.

If celebrating this day this way makes me happy and reminds me of all the good things, and I can share it with you on top of that, here we go.