The astonishing voice of Grace Cummings: ‘The peace I found in music is a legitimate lifesaver’

Grace Cummings at the Commercial Club hotel in Melbourne. ‘I grew up thinking that there was something wrong with me, or I was difficult, or too sensitive, or too much,’ she says. Photograph: Charlie Kinross/The Guardian

One of Grace Cummings’ earliest memories is going into the lounge room to tell her parents about the night terror she’d had. The four-year-old was tormented by the possibility of what happens after death, her imagination stretching the possibilities into grim eternities. When she padded into the lounge room to tell her parents, she saw exhaustion shadow their faces. So when they asked what was wrong, she lied: “Witches.”

“I thought, what would a child say?” she tells Guardian Australia.