Shawn Marie Graybeal-Sellers

The Song That Named Me

I’ve always known I was named after a song. At least, that’s what my mom always told me.

She grew up in Louisiana, but after she married my dad, they moved to Alaska for his military service. She was young, pregnant with me, and desperately homesick. With my dad at work all day, she spent her hours alone in a small apartment, waiting for my arrival.

So she listened to the radio.

Country music became her constant companion, filling that little apartment while she dreamed of home. One day, a song came across the airwaves. She never caught the artist’s name, and she never saw the title in print. Back then, if you missed the DJ’s back announce, the song simply drifted away into memory.

But she heard a name.

Or at least, she thought she did.

She was certain the singer was crooning “Shawn Marie.” She loved the way it sounded—the rhythm, the sweetness. More than anything, it reminded her of home.

So when I was born, that’s the name she gave me.

For more than sixty years, she carried that song in her memory.

As I got older, she told me the story of how I got my name. We both knew there was a song out there somewhere, but neither of us knew the artist or the title. She always thought it might have been Cajun country because it reminded her so much of Louisiana. Every few years, one of us would search for it, hoping we’d finally solve the mystery.

We never did.

Then, just this week, I stumbled across a recording of Wynn Stewart singing “Sha-Marie.” The moment I heard it, something clicked. I posted it on Facebook with one simple question:

“Mom…is this the song?”

Her answer came almost immediately.

“YES!!!!!!!! ❤️ That’s the one. I never saw the name in writing anywhere, so I thought he was saying Shawn Marie. And it sounded sooooo beautiful. That is the song.”

Listen to Wynn Stewart’s “Sha-Marie”:

https://youtu.be/p8-QxnqT6W0?si=2tek6Eqp51zLqiYn

1965 Capitol Recording.

Reading her response made me smile.

After more than six decades, we had finally found the song we’d both been looking for.

But as I listened, I realized something else.

I’ve always been drawn to country music that feels lived in. The polished Nashville sound has never resonated with me the way the storytellers have. My playlists are filled with Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, Buck Owens, Cody Jinks, Reckless Kelly, the Turnpike Troubadours, and so many others whose songs tell honest stories about ordinary people.

Finding out that Wynn Stewart recorded the song that inspired my name felt like an unexpected homecoming.

Stewart is often credited as one of the pioneers of the Bakersfield Sound, the raw, guitar-driven style that helped shape Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and generations of artists who followed. Without ever realizing it, I’d spent years gravitating toward the musical legacy that began with the man whose song gave me my name.

Maybe that’s why his voice felt so familiar.

Maybe my love of storytelling through music didn’t begin with my first novel.

Maybe it began before I was even born, in a tiny apartment in Alaska, where a homesick young woman from Louisiana spent her days listening to country radio while she waited for me.

Looking back now, I can see those threads woven throughout my life.

Music has always been more than something I listen to. It has become part of the way I tell stories. Every one of my novels has a playlist. Sometimes a song unlocks a character. Sometimes it inspires an entire chapter. My newest novel, The Space Between Songs, was born from that relationship between music and storytelling.

For years, I never questioned where that connection came from.

Now I think I know.

Long before I ever put a story on the page…

My own story began with a song.