Adoptee/Singer/Songwriter Mary Gauthier

Mary was orphaned at the St. Vincent’s Infants Home in New Orleans in March 1962 .  Mary was eventually adopted by a couple from Thibodaux – Italian, Catholic and doomed.  Raised in Baton Rouge, Mary felt a deep alienation – from her cookie-cutter neighborhood of little boxes, from school, and from her adoptive parents.  “I felt like I was dying.  My father was an alcoholic.  My mother cried all the time.  Both of them were suicidal.  There was chaos and pandemonium in the family.”  The only thing that was saving her was the music, the “truth-tellers.”  But Mary was decades away from finding her muse as a songwriter.