Who the heck is Natalie Brown?

This is my rather rambling bio up until this moment in my life.

If you want to read my professional music bio you can click this link and have a read.

Hi, I’m Natalie Brown.

I’m sitting here writing as I watch the heavy snow of a long winter melt and feel the new growth of spring as the birds come back, thinking of how to reintroduce myself to you after quite the journey.

I started this story years ago bathed in Ugandan sunsets, wondering the same thing – Who is Natalie Brown?

A singer. A songwriter. An adventurer. An entrepreneur. A person who loves people. A meditation guide. A master coach. A burnout survivor.

Most of my life, since I can remember really, I have been a singer and loved acting in musicals. Then at about 12 I started to write (really crappy) songs to pop/R&B and smooth jazz instrumentals, classical music even, because I could not play a note of piano to save my life. So, I would instead sit there with a stereo system playing the ‘track’ and my micro recorder recording my ‘songs’, singing them down the best I could. Music has been my life since I can remember. There really wasn’t a time I wasn’t singing. Even sleep had me singing songs. Singing was life!

When I got old enough, I tried to find ways to record these songs. My first songs were recorded on a makeshift setup in the basement of the church I was attending at the time. We had an amazing music director and I was encouraged by him to pursue my craft. So I did. I pursued it all the way from British Columbia to California. I had stars in my eyes, I wanted to be the next Mariah! Lots of people ‘in the biz’ thought I would be ‘the next Mariah, the next big thing’. I pounded that LA and New York pavement hard. I spent every cent I had on demos. Nothing. So many ‘almosts’, but nothing ever materialized. Everyone in LA and New York wanted to change me. Change my music, change my vocal style, have other people write the notes and words I would sing… shit they even wanted me to become anorexic and hack my nose and lips up. No one really wanted ME. That did not sit well for this very independent, headstrong girl. NOPE!

So this radical new music format called an MP1 was invented and that became an MP3 and I started to network with techy types in the San Francisco Bay Area in the days of the tech gold rush. Freaking awesome times! Digital recording equipment began development and I got heavy into ‘the Bay Area scene’ and the online music and promotion world. I decided to try my hand at marketing and promoting my music via that medium. Maybe Tommy Mottola would discover me online!!?? I was an early adopter of all this new music technology, one of the first artists to use the internet to promote myself and one of the first to upload my music to Mp3.com. There were a lot of digital music ‘firsts’ back in those days. It was a crazy trip through years of huge technology strides and buying digital gear to record music became affordable, so I did all I could to research how I could set myself up so that I wasn’t working on spec or cheap overnight time at local studios.

During my time as a ‘for hire session vocalist’, I met an amazing songwriter and musician who turned life partner/co-creator/BFF. His name is Jeremy (Jem) and we said fuck the labels, let’s do this shit ourselves!!!! So we did. We started our own label together (Identity Music Group) and built a studio together (Studio 302). Up to this date, we have self-funded and self-released 4 full length albums, 1 EP and 5 singles. We delved into the world of music licensing for film and TV for a while. We did a lot of music for film and television through the 2010’s until the music started to be farmed out to production houses (and now it’s a lot of AI music). Making decent money off of selling CDs and downloads waned due to the glut of available music freely downloadable or streamable. It’s been a wild ride, an awesome adventure with Jem producing and performing glorious tracks, co-writing with me and yelling at me not to ‘overthink my vocals and produce on the mic’ (he does this occasionally!! Haha, I can’t help it, I’m a Type A).

Fast forward… my Mum died in 2013. I knew she was going to die. She had been fighting Breast Cancer for a very, very long time, a very long fight, and every day was a bonus from the day she finished her first round of surgeries, chemo and radiation. But when I got that fateful call the morning she passed, it hit me like a ton of bricks and shook my entire world. It made me think. Hard. It made me question everything. I suddenly didn’t know who I was looking at in the mirror every day. My entire life had been very stubbornly dedicated to music only. Every single thing I did, every single day I breathed air was dedicated to furthering my music career in some form or fashion. I hadn’t taken a vacation or really ‘looked up’ to see the world around me since 1996! After some serious soul searching and discussions with Jem we decided, for many reasons, to move to Kenya in late 2015. It was a crazy adventure selling up and packing our lives and gear into 6 suitcases and 2 carry on bags and landing in Nairobi to explore a new chapter in our lives.

We moved to Uganda in 2016 after spending some time in Kenya. We settled in Kampala for a while, mentoring small business owners, working remotely, and diving into different entrepreneurial efforts. The first couple of years were spent thinking, exploring, eating (you have no idea how nice it was to not have to starve myself to try to look ‘acceptable’, after being on a diet my ENTIRE fucking life!)… it was spent sorting out the big question… do I still even WANT to make music?

After 30 years of grinding in the music industry, always chasing the next opportunity, the next song, the next connection – my body and mind simply collapsed.

I tensed up when Jem hit record. I felt complete discomfort singing, my throat started to close up, the love for the entire process was really gone. Bitterness and resentment replaced that once magical feeling of ideating and creating music. It was so horrific to go through this. The thing that once gave me life felt like it was killing me! My brain fogged over when I attempted to write lyrics. The melodies that once flowed through me like water now felt like an overwhelming ocean of confusion and I was drowning. I’d stare at the microphone, unable to perform or write anything that felt authentic, and for the first time in my life, I had nothing to say. Nothing to sing.

I was experiencing what I later understood was extreme burnout. The depression weighed on me like a heavy blanket. My identity – the “singer” I’d been since childhood – seemed to disintegrate before my eyes, leaving me wondering who I was without the music.

A few years ago, we started an off-grid house building project for our family in Southwestern Uganda close to Lake Bunyonyi. We planted a banana plantation that stretched across the hillside, green fronds waving in the breeze above rich red soil. Those sunset meditations on our little piece of land weren’t just pretty moments – they were lifelines. As I sat cross-legged on our porch, breathing in rhythm with the chirping insects and distant village sounds, I found the one thing that gave me the same relief singing once had: meditation.

I dove deep into learning about personality typology, especially the Enneagram, which helped me understand my Type-A tendencies and perfectionism that had fueled both my success and my burnout. I underwent therapy, studied mindfulness techniques, and slowly began to rebuild myself – not just as a singer, but as a whole person with many dimensions.

I became a certified meditation instructor. The woman who once chased record deals now found herself guiding others through their own mental storms. I immersed myself in an intensive one-year master coaching program that taught me about life coaching, business coaching, executive coaching, and Enneagram typing and coaching. The notebooks piled up in our Ugandan home, pages filled with frameworks, methodologies, and self-discoveries. The long certification calls connected me with a global community while roosters crowed in the background.

I launched Peaceland Haven, my meditation and mindfulness platform. Soon after came KeyFinder Consulting, where I offer business, executive, and life coaching, helping others navigate their own identity questions and career crossroads using the Enneagram and other tools that saved me.

I wrote a book on meditation. I created courses. I found my voice again – but this time it wasn’t just singing. It was speaking truths about burnout, about identity, about finding peace in a chaotic world.

In 2024, we made the decision to move back to Canada. The Uganda chapter – with its banana trees, red soil, and healing sunsets – had served its purpose. I came back not as the same Natalie who left years before with stars in her eyes, but as someone who had fallen apart and put herself back together in a new configuration.

Music is still there. It never really left. But now it sits alongside meditation guides, coaching sessions, writing, and a sourdough addiction that followed me from Uganda. I no longer need to be “the next Mariah” – I’m finally comfortable being the first and only Natalie Brown.

So, back to the question. Who is Natalie Brown?

She’s a singer who found her voice in silence. A coach who had to be coached through her darkest days. A meditation guide who had to learn to quiet her own mind first. She’s an artistic, expressive, curious, unconventional, musical woman who loves people and loves to explore life and the things around her. And now she knows that forests have many trees worth seeing.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey so we can explore all of life’s awesomeness together.

Want to see what else I’m up to? Check out Peaceland Haven for meditation resources and KeyFinder Consulting for coaching services.