Today we’d like to introduce you to Xtina Del Valle.
Hi Xtina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
As soon as I could put words together, I was writing. It’s always been what I reached for to try and make sense of the chaos within me and around me. I felt so much as a kid — I remember consciously thinking, “I need these feelings to be anywhere but inside of me.”
The more I wrote, the more I noticed a pattern: it almost always came out as a song or a poem, even if I hadn’t intended it to. That’s when I realized music was something I was meant to do — I just didn’t know how to begin.
I didn’t have a roadmap. I didn’t have connections. What I had was a relentless drive to make something beautiful out of everything I was supposed to be ashamed of.
There were years where I felt like I was just screaming into the void — trapped in toxic relationships, stuck in dead-end jobs, surviving in rooms where I had to make myself small. But every single thing I went through is now stitched into the fabric of my art.
However diluted I had to become to survive those circumstances, nothing has ever made me feel emptier or smaller than not creating. If you’re a creator, the only thing that will ever quell the noise inside you is to create. It’s not a choice — it’s a need.
I’m at the beginning of my journey. People are starting to resonate with the vulnerability, the rawness, the refusal to look away. Most importantly, I’m building a body of work that’s intimate, spiritual, confrontational — and something I’m proud of. Not just for me, but for anyone who’s ever felt like they had to hide, bend, or disappear.
I’m an artist today because art was the only place I could alchemize pain into something that made sense. I come from a long line of silence — of stories buried under shame and survival. But I’ve made it my mission to unearth them — in my music, my writing, and my voice. And I want others to feel the same liberation.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
“Smooth” is the last word I’d use to describe my journey — I actually laughed out loud when I read this question. Like, audibly.
If anything, my path’s been less a road and more a minefield. With a blindfold. In stilettos. Naked. During an earthquake. While someone yelled Bible verses at me.
I grew up queer in the church, where my existence was treated like a problem to fix — or a demon to cast out. (Literally. There was oil. There were prayers.) I didn’t have a father — I had silence, secrets, and shame, cosplaying as salvation in an ill-fitting polyester blend dress at 10am Sunday Service.
I learned to shape-shift before I ever learned to read. Safety wasn’t a given — it was a strategy. Smile just enough. Shrink when needed. Don’t be too much, too loud, too anything.
I survived childhood sexual abuse. Spiritual abuse. Adults who taught me how to pray but not how to protect myself. I grew up believing that suffering and glory were two sides of the same coin — and that belief nearly killed me.
Add to that: stage 4 endometriosis. I was in excruciating pain for years and medically gaslit by doctors starting at age 15 — told “every woman goes through this” and “it’s just your time of the month.” The pain got so bad I couldn’t even walk. It took over seven years just to get a diagnosis — and only then was I finally able to get surgery.
So yeah — my uterus has been on this healing journey with me. So have my bladder, my ovaries, and my spine — all of which the endometriosis had to be surgically lasered off of. Because apparently, the rest of my organs saw what was happening to my uterus and decided they wanted to join the party too.
There were whole years where I was barely functioning. I ended up in abusive relationships that felt hauntingly familiar — because I genuinely believed love and pain were inextricable. I worked soul-sucking jobs, bled myself dry for people who wouldn’t have offered me a Band-Aid if I was bleeding out in front of them. And the whole time, I tried to outrun the grief lodged in my body like shrapnel.
Spoiler alert: grief always finds a way to speak. For me, it speaks through art. And once I actually allowed myself to listen — there was so much wisdom there.
I’ve had to rebuild myself more times than I can count — and not in the cute “hot girl healing” kind of way. I’m talking blood-on-the-floor, snot-in-your-hair, drag-yourself-across-the-pavement-to-a-better-life kind of rebuilding.
I’ve had to escape people I loved because staying meant abandoning myself. I’ve lost everything — more than once. And every time I thought I hit bottom, I somehow found a shovel and kept digging. I never hit pan.
Sometimes I’d think, if there is a God, He wakes up every morning and thinks of new creative ways to fuck with me.
But every time I thought my life was over, an angel would appear — in the form of a friend, an opportunity, a song, a sentence — and remind me why life was still worth living.
The last time I felt like my life was over was less than a year ago. I had just escaped something that nearly erased me entirely. I was lying in my best friend’s bed with her at 2am as we were falling asleep, and I told her I didn’t think I’d ever feel normal or okay again — that my life felt like it had no purpose anymore.
With absolute certainty, she said, “You will find your way.”
Maybe it was because we were in that liminal space between sleep and wake, maybe it was the pitch black of the room, or maybe it was the conviction in her voice — but those simple words snapped me the fuck out of it.
It felt like God spoke directly to me.
And she was right — I did find my way.
It took fighting for myself to love myself again, but I got there. And the payoff was so fucking worth it.
So no — it hasn’t been smooth. But it’s been sacred. In the most brutal, back-alley baptism kind of way.
For a long time, I thought my story disqualified me. Now I know: it is the qualification.
This isn’t to say hardship makes you an artist — it doesn’t. But if you’ve experienced deep pain and you’re a creator, you’re in a unique position to make something with real depth, meaning, and intensity.
I think the best art makes you feel something viscerally. That’s what I try to create — and that’s what I resonate with most in other artists.
What you’ve been through absolutely matters.
What you do with it matters more.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m an artist, which basically means I’ve turned all my trauma into content you can cry or make out to. I write music, I write, I perform, and I specialize in articulating the things most people can’t (or are too afraid to) put into words. Words have always been my thing.
My work is rooted in the raw, the intimate, and the confrontational. I try to write lyrics that are specific enough to hit viscerally, but open enough for the listener to see themselves in the story. I want everyone who listens to my music to feel like the main character when it’s on.
What sets me apart is my perspective. The way I see the world, the words I choose, the way I use my voice, the way I craft a story: it’s mine. It took a long time to get here, but I found my voice, and I trust it.
I’m most proud of Interlace, a performance art series I created with one of my closest friends and collaborators, artist Rachel Berkowitz. It’s an immersive, live experience that blends music, painting, movement, and fashion into something ceremonial and alive.
As I perform original songs alongside reimagined covers that have become crowd favorites, Rachel paints directly onto a gown that we designed specifically for that performance. Each show is entirely unique. Each dress tells a different story. Nothing is repeated. It’s art that happens in real time, in real emotion, with real stakes.
We’ve performed Interlace in intimate spaces, gallery settings, even rooftop bars. The energy is always the same: visceral, enchanting, collaborative. It blurs the line between performance and ritual, between vulnerability and spectacle. It’s not just something you watch. It’s something you witness.
It’s one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever created, and it reminds me that there really are no rules when it comes to art. You can do whatever you want. If you have a wild idea, go for it—because if you’re doing what you’re meant to do, the right people will find you on that path.
I’m still early in my career, but what I’m building is real. Not just a sound, but a body of work people can return to. Whether you’re screaming it in your car, crying in the shower, or texting someone you probably shouldn’t, I want my words to meet you exactly where you are.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was sensitive, joyful, artistic, dramatic, and extremely intense for someone under four feet tall. My mom says I was adorable, inquisitive, intelligent, and full of empathy -and to be fair, I was.
I felt everything at full volume. If I was happy, I was bouncing off the walls. If I was sad, the world was ending, and someone needed to write a song about it immediately (and I would). I expressed myself in everything I did: how I dressed, how I asked questions, how I drew, how I spoke. That was always really important to me.
At the same time, I was super outdoorsy and athletic. I loved climbing things, getting dirty, dancing, running, and just being outside in general. I was lucky enough to grow up in beautiful Northern California, so I was constantly surrounded by nature. I used to scare the shit out of my mom at the park by climbing those 30-foot-tall redwood trees all the way to the top. I had no fear when it came to physical risks like that.
I was always, always singing. No matter what I was doing, I’d be humming or singing under my breath. I was always performing -I was really into both theatre and film acting, I sang in my church’s choir for some years, and I was constantly choreographing dances for the songs. I was always trying to figure out how to make the performance more interesting.
I loved hard. I questioned everything (probably to a degree that was annoying to a lot of people). I was definitely a handful, but I’ve always cared deeply about others, I’ve always had a lot to say, and I’ve always had a unique perspective on how to say it.
Now I sing better, I write better, I pay my own bills: but the core elements of who I was as a kid haven’t changed. The older I get, the more I find myself returning to that version of me. I’m the same person -just with better eyeliner and the cognitive upgrades needed to pull off the shit I used to just imagine.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://xtinadelvalle.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xtinadelvalle/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEbHajk2us8
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7oG5PyFl3hIj5A5P4tTjGR
Image Credits
Photos 1 & 2 (in the black plain dress) were taken by Reinhardt Kenneth
All the rest of the photos were taken by Don Q Hannah
