Heidi Stevens: The Chicks don't know it, but they're helping me raise my children. (And doing a darn fine job.)

It’s fair to say The Chicks have helped me raise my children.

On cross-country road trips, during late-night brownie baking, when I was newly divorced and terrified I broke my kids’ spirits and determined to start each morning with joy and hoping that a Dixie Chicks dance party would do the trick (they were the Dixie Chicks back then) — there they were.

Singing about wide open spaces and cowboys and the untimely demise of Earl. Blending beauty and wit and mistakes and nostalgia and righteous anger and heartbreak into something that always managed to resemble my life in that moment, if only my life had more banjos.