Life is tough, but Joni Mitchell is tougher. Mitchell has been through heartbreaks, tragedies, and feuds that would’ve broken anyone else. Instead, they drove and inspired her to create music that stands the test of time.

At just 20, Mitchell moved to the big city to pursue her musical dreams—but there was another reason she fled her hometown. She was pregnant and she wanted to hide it from her family. After giving birth to daughter Kelly, Joni gave her to foster care.

Mitchell’s firsthand experiences with abandonment—her distant parents and time in a polio ward—exacerbated her agony. But she clung onto hope that she’d improve her circumstances and come back.

Mitchell married her first husband, Chuck, dreaming of the day that she could get her baby girl back—only for it all to fall apart. She and Chuck finally returned to Kelly’s foster home. They held her. They marveled at the mother-daughter resemblance. But then Mitchell made a devastating decision: She finally signed the papers to surrender Kelly to her foster parents. For good.

But Kelly haunted her. Music turned out to be a conduit, not an escape. All her experiences—good and bad—found their way into the lyrics. While Mitchell still technically kept Kelly a secret, her music was an open book.

She pumped out song after song about her daughter, yet no one picked up on these not-so-subtle hints.

In 1995, one of Mitchell’s oldest secrets came back to haunt her. That year, a “friend” from art school sold a story about her to a tabloid—or, more accurately, a story about the daughter that Mitchell had given away. Mitchell clung onto this secret for decades, but when newspapers blared it to the world, she told the truth. As violating as this betrayal is, there was a silver lining. Joni could now publicly search for her daughter. The hunt was on.

This time, fate was on her side. Her daughter, who goes by Kilauren Gibb, went looking for her birth parents around the same time. And finally, in 1997, mother and daughter happily reunited.