SPOTLIGHT: Forced to Sit Still [ESSAY]

Editor's Note: Sera Cahoone, whose new LP titled I've Missed You All These Years is due out August 28 via SubPop Records, is No Depression's Spotlight Artist for August 2026. Read more about Cahoone in this featured profile and stay tuned for more from her all month long.

I don't meditate or go to the gym or do Pilates. I walk. Walking is my exercise, my meditation, my therapy. Usually, I walk along Lake Washington in Seattle, listening to music or a podcast. Often in the gray and the rain.

On one of these rainy days this past April, I slipped and fell. I broke my foot and ended up in a knee-high walking boot, unable to walk. It wrecked me. I had so much going on: I was about to release a new record, film a video for “Say Something,” and it was spring. It was beautiful outside and I couldn't walk or do much else for eight weeks.

Friends told me to join the YMCA and swim laps, but my Scottish skin hates chlorine.  I can't do much at a gym with a broken foot.

Defeated, I drove back down to Lake Washington and sat on a bench, depressed. I forced myself to do this daily to get out of the house and establish some kind of routine. If I didn't go, I felt worse.