Why I started writing
songs for strangers.

I grew up somewhere that saying your dreams out loud could get you laughed at. I said mine anyway — I wanted to see the world — and then I did it: years working on cruise ships, building a life for myself from nothing, one country at a time.

Somewhere along the way I became a mother, and everything I thought I knew about being brave got rewritten. I learned that the biggest gift I could give the people I love wasn't a big gesture — it was helping them feel truly seen. A memory said out loud. A feeling that finally gets words.

That is exactly what a personalized song does, and exactly why I started Studio by Maggie. On every order, I ask the same question I once needed someone to ask me: what is the one true thing you want this person to know? Then I write until I find it, and turn it into something they can play again and again.

This isn't a side project or a template factory. It's the thing I left everything else to build, because I believe every person deserves at least one song that could only ever be theirs.

I didn't know it at the time, but the years I spent living far from home — changing countries, learning new languages, building a life in places that weren't originally mine — taught me something that now sits at the root of my work: how much weight a small detail carries when someone actually remembers it. A song your grandmother used to hum. A phrase your dad always said. The name of a village that only exists on a map inside your own memory. When you live far from the people and places you love, those details become precious in a way you don't fully understand until you've gone without them for a while.