Imagine, if you will, a lonely little 12-year-old girl who just moved from her rural childhood home in Pennsylvania to a suburb of Houston, Texas. She's timid, quiet, sensitive and excruciatingly shy. She's doing her best to make new friends and build a new life but she feels isolated and bitter. Her childhood has essentially been torn away from her and she's suddenly surrounded by surly, adolescent city kids whose capacities for kindness towards others are non-existent.

Now imagine this girl spending two years essentially alone.

Desperate to fit in, this girl, who was classically trained on piano and violin, tentatively began to listen to popular music in hopes of closing the gap between her distant peers and herself. She couldn't find anything that suited her classical tastes and was ready to give up when she happened upon a dark, brooding music video on MTV in 1998. The song was "Ava Adore" and the band was Smashing Pumpkins, who she'd never heard of before. Adore was the first CD she ever bought.

This little girl listened to Adore and cried like she hadn't done since before she'd moved across the country. She listened to bittersweet melodies and words of sorrow and hope. Her heart broke and found itself again, and when the sorrow passed she felt like a full person for the first time. And so, broken and re-built, she faced the world as a complete person and found the strength to create her own happiness.

And that girl has been a loyal Smashing Pumpkins fan for 10 years now. A grown artist now, she will forever be grateful to their amazing music, which always provides her with inspiration.