Maybe You Don’t Need a New Identity. Maybe You Need Yourself Back | Sarah Koussevitzky

This week on Talk2Tamara, Tamara sits down with saxophonist and 613 Music Academy founder Sarah Koussevitzky for a conversation about what happens when the identity you’ve built your life around suddenly disappears. Sarah spent years immersed in music, performing at jazz festivals, studying jazz at the University of Texas at Austin, and building a life around being a musician. Then COVID brought that world to a halt, and somewhere along the way, Sarah stopped playing, took down her websites, deleted pieces of her musical past, and eventually stopped calling herself a musician altogether. What followed was a journey of searching. Through Judaism, community, teaching, marriage, and eventually motherhood, Sarah continued to redefine who she was. But becoming a mother brought another unexpected identity shift, forcing her to confront the parts of herself she thought belonged to an old life and decide which ones she wanted back. Sarah shares how Jewish music ultimately helped reconnect her to the part of herself she had walked away from and inspired her to create 613 Music Academy, a space that brings together her love of jazz, Jewish music, education, and community. Tamara and Sarah also talk about burnout, hustle culture, learning to listen to yourself, letting go of labels, balancing ambition with motherhood, and realizing that growth doesn’t always require becoming someone new. Sometimes, it means finding your way back to who you’ve been all along. It’s a conversation about identity, faith, motherhood, music, and learning that every version of yourself can belong in the same story.