“Peace, Love and Gratitude”
Twenty years after exploding into our pop-rock consciousness with her critically acclaimed, platinum selling debut Union, two Grammy nominations (including one for Best New Artist) and an east coast tour with childhood idol Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter Toni Childs emerges from a much too long musical exile to deliver a crucial, heartfelt message for these trying times: Keep The Faith.
Beyond affirming her role as an important voice of inspiration for an entirely new generation, Keep The Faith is her first album since a full self-healing induced recovery from Graves disease.
This new album marks a long-awaited creative resurgence with producers David Tickle and David Ricketts. Tickle, Ricketts and Childs produced Union together. Ricketts co-wrote many of the tracks on Union and was Child's co-producer and co-writer on her 1991 follow-up House of Hope, which featured one of her signature tunes “I've Got To Go Now,” a huge hit for her in Australia. The two were also credited producers on her massively popular 1996 compilation The Very Best Of Toni Childs, the fifth biggest selling album in Australia that year (with over 500,000 copies sold), which featured her riveting cover of Jimmy Cliff's “Many Rivers To Cross.” The disc also became her third platinum selling Top 10 album in New Zealand.
Thousands of Childs' fans worldwide who had been wondering when she'd do a fourth studio album (her last, 1994's The Woman's Boat, earned her another Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Performance) can credit Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues and Until The Violence Stops fame) with inspiring the singer to dig deep again and let the emotions that had been brewing for so many years come to the surface. Childs was acting in a local production of The Vagina Monologues to raise money for the island's YWCA Sexual Assault Treatment Center when Ensler, a longtime fan of Childs' music made a special visit to support the production. They fast became friends and by night's end, Ensler asked Toni to write an anthem for Eve's documentary, Until The Violence Stops.
Childs, a native of Southern California who signed her first publishing deal with Island Music in London in 1981 was moved by Enlser's encouragement to return to music for a great cause. Eve hit a chord with the artist by providing a lofty goal, to write a song that would inspire people to end the violence that is inflicted on women and girls for all time. In contemplating Eve's request, Childs had an insight that if violence was really going to end against women and girls then perhaps women first needed to stop inflicting violence upon themselves.
In the years between being diagnosed with Graves disease — a serious thyroid disorder characterized by goiter, exophthalmoses, and hyperthyroidism caused by an antibody-mediated auto-immune reaction — and getting her music career back on track, Childs learned the value and emotional and physical healing power of self-love. Shortly moving to the island, Childs began seeing a therapist on Kauai who told her that all disease stems from a lack of self-love. She invited Childs to touch every part of her body with love every time she showered, thanking her body for all the gifts it gave her. The impact lovingly connecting with her body was noticed immediately. Childs' overall well-being improved, and sparked her to create a line of Chakra Body Polishes to help anchor in her loving intention through out the day. Toni began to use her daily water meditation as a way to heal what she calls her “beauty wound”, and slowly weaned herself off medication with her local doctor looking on. Today Toni, no longer has Graves Disease, and is now back on the road touring in Australia and soon the US and Europe.
At the same time Childs began her daily water meditation practice she discovered that mercury poisoning and allergies from chlorine in the tap water, as well as allergies to sulfates in shampoos and toothpastes were playing a big part in her illness. Toni woke up to the fact that she had been ingesting as well as adorning herself with poisons. This inspired her to create a conscious lifestyle, and life style changes are not always easy to do. In trying to find shampoos she liked that didn't contain sulfates, Toni started making her own products with no harsh chemicals or known carcinogenic ingredients. This led the entrepreneurial-minded singer to launch Feminine Mysteries, an organic natural body care company: she calls affirmation body products - I Love My Hair, I Love My Face, I Love My Pits, I Love My Tits***, etc. Presently, Feminine Mysteries works with a Certified Organic Manufacturer in Melbourne, Australia and six distributors through out Australia.
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