Through music, a Heber City woman found her ‘Brave.’ Now she’s sharing it with others.

Heber City • Kristen Lloyd stepped into the train station of the Heber Valley Railroad — with its colorful train cars, some operating, some retired — with a sense of familiarity.

Today, Lloyd is a singer-songwriter, a cowboy poet and a children’s author — and it’s an indication of how far she’s come that her albums and her book, “Find Your Brave,” are on sale in the station’s gift shop.

Not long ago, she was a train robber, Krazy Ani, a character performing for the entertainment of the railroad’s passengers.

Lloyd jokes that she went from “making kids cry with [my frightful robbery antics] to making them happy” with her performing skills — like spinning guns and doing rope tricks. On this visit to her old stomping grounds, Lloyd whipped around a lasso, jumping through it easily, showing that the talents honed over 10 years of practice haven’t left her.

Lloyd said that, for as long as she can remember, she has used her creativity to deal with the hard times in her life.

“I’ve definitely found the creative aspects of my life as wonderful outlets to help me cope with the anxiety that I had growing up,” she said.

With that creativity, Lloyd said, she found her groove and confidence.

Help from Honeybee

Lloyd grew up in southeast Idaho on her grandparents’ dairy farm, after her parents got divorced when she was 10 years old.

Growing up, she said, “because of the things that had happened to me, I had developed these rather negative stories about myself and my place in my family and my life.”

She would focus, she said, on what she didn’t have — like parents and a traditional education.

Lloyd taught herself to play guitar and sing songs, spending hours practicing in the barn, with the cows as her audience.

“I use my songwriting as a way of processing all of the really intense emotions that I had at that point,” she said.

When Lloyd was 19, she recalled she had a particularly hard day.

“I told myself that I was worthless and I was no good because my dad was living his life in Utah, taking care of my half-sisters,” Lloyd said. “And that because he was spending time being a father to them, that must mean that there’s something wrong with me — that I’m not good enough.”

Lloyd went out to the barn to feed the milk cows, she said. She sat down and put her head in her hands. Her border collie took a seat next to her. Then, across the field, she caught sight of one cow, Honeybee — who, Lloyd said, walked all the way around the barnyard to be near her, nuzzling into her with her nose.

At first, Lloyd said, she brushed off the cow’s gesture. “She’s just a cow. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get all these emotions,” Lloyd recalled thinking at the time.

Then, she said, “it just touched me so deeply that I was like, ‘Wow, I may not feel like I mean the world to my dad. But I sure seem to mean the world to this cow and this dog.’ … It helped me be able to completely shift what I focused on.”

Krazy Ani and Kristen

When her grandparents decided to retire from farming, and sell their cows, Lloyd had to deal with a new fear: Finding a new home. She moved to Heber City.

Her life as Krazi Ani, robbing trains on the Heber Valley Railroad, started in 2010. She also performed as a singer.

On one pivotal day, Lloyd said, she had to perform as Krazi Ani, then go from the train station to a singing gig. She didn’t have time to change from her cowgirl costume, she said, so she decided — after a shudder of confidence — to perform on the train as herself. As Kristen.

“I’m, like, ‘I can’t do this. There’s no way, because Kristen can’t do this,’” she recalled. She did it anyway, and had a Eureka moment, she said: “I was, like, ‘Oh my gosh, Krazy Ani has been Kristen this whole time.’ …

“For me to emotionally acknowledge that Kristen does have value and Kristen is someone that other people want to be around,” Lloyd said, “that’s what kind of started my journey into finding confidence to be Kristen.”

Part of Krazy Ani’s costume, was a cowboy hat. Lloyd said it was part of the character’s armor, giving her an instant boost of confidence and protection. She said she used to wear it everywhere, but didn’t have it that day at the train station.

Writing a book and songs

Lloyd retired from train robbery just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, as she and her husband were about to welcome their daughter to the world.

Lloyd took up writing and cartooning. She wrote and illustrated a children’s book, “based on how Honeybee, my favorite cow out of the hundreds of cows we had, helped me face my fears,” she said.

The book, designed to help children deal with anxiety, is “Find Your Brave.” (The book is available in many bookstores and online. Sometimes, the packaging comes with a plush cow, with ribbons and all, like the original Honeybee.)

One of the fears Annie, the character Lloyd based on her young self, must deal with, she said, “is Annie’s fear of being alone. And she can’t face that until Honeybee goes away to a new home.” That passage, she said, was inspired by her grandparents’ retirement, and her move to Heber City.

While she was still performing at the railroad, Lloyd enrolled at Brigham Young University, where a songwriting class allowed her to pick up more skills. In that class, she wrote “Grandpa’s Chevrolet,” with the lyric, “Life don’t always turn out as you plan. / Sometimes in the scheme of things / you’re dealt a tougher hand. / It wasn’t easy without mom and dad, / but some things seem to ease it all away, / like riding home in Grandpa’s Chevrolet.”

At her 2022 convocation ceremony, Lloyd performed her song “My Brave,” whose lyrics include: “It took a little fear to find my brave, / but I stood my ground even in the rain. / I surprised me, I found the brave inside of me.” As she performed, illustrations of her book that inspired it screened behind her.

With Honeybee, Lloyd said, it all came full circle.

Helping kids ‘find their brave’

Today, Lloyd is still recording her songs, and working with one of her former professors on making the Honeybee books into a series. And she still performs for children — mostly at school assemblies — but she doesn’t make them cry as often anymore. At least not on purpose, she said.

Recently, performing for second- and fourth-graders in her home county in Idaho, the kids asked Lloyd if she had a song about Honeybee — so she sang one. Some of the kids cried, and it even made her emotional.

“I love being able to connect with them,” Lloyd said. “When I started sharing some of the more difficult experiences I had, like my parents getting divorced or having anxiety, I realized that a lot of the kids, especially at these Title One schools, were really perking up, like ‘I resonate with this cowgirl.’”

The song about Honeybee isn’t recorded yet; Lloyd said it took her a while to get right. On her recent visit to the Heber Valley Railroad station, she sings it, smiling, her voice joyful and soft, the sky behind her a bright blue.

Finding her brave can still be a game of hide-and-seek, Lloyd said. “I’ve realized that we all have the courage inside of us to do whatever it is we want to do,” she said, “but it’s up to us to uncover it.”

That also means, she said, giving herself the grace to be afraid, and embracing that — while also breaking the cycle for her own daughter.

“I’ve long wanted to hold on to this idea of: We may not be able to control what is put on our life’s stage,” Lloyd said, “but we can definitely choose where we put the spotlight.”