TOPIC: Last Days of Life
A Mother on her Deathbed Says Goodbye to a Loyal Son

THE STORY
Jen commissioned me to write this song as a gift for her husband Tony in the days leading up to his mother's death. Jen's goal was to honor Tony's mom and to create a focal opportunity for Tony to grieve, when the time came. In an unexpected twist, Tony’s mother died after I had sent Jen a rough cassette of the song and before I had recorded it in the studio. So Jen, a singer herself, got her father to quickly learn a guitar part, and he accompanied Jen while she sang this song, live, at Tony’s mom’s memorial service. A few weeks later, the finished studio version arrived, and provided a powerful and timely opportunity for Jen and Tony to grieve together…

I have become rather transfixed with a non-profit organization that teaches at-risk girls to find their voice, to step forward from a centered and considered place, and to believe in themselves anew.  The organization is called Girls' LEAP, and it very specifically helps girls develop a diverse set of responses to violence, beyond the extremes of passivity and escalation. Every time I get near any kind of LEAP event, I find something astonishing happening. And I find tears welling up in me, in response to it.

TOPIC: Miscarriage

THE STORY
I get invited along on some pretty intense journeys with commissioned songwriting. This one took me to a place few people even talk about beyond the boundaries of quiet whispers and private family conversations. Jen came to me two years ago asking for a song to help her heal. She and her husband Dan had one child and were in the process of trying to conceive another. But they had been beset by a painful miscarriage which seemed both to stand in the way of Jen's moving forward toward conception again, and, too, of Jen's ability to feel the support of Dan. Jen brought her journals and the one book I have ever seen containing poetry about miscarriage to the song-interview. It was at that point that it hit me how very "unspoken" this kind of loss can be in our culture. She described to me the circumstances of her miscarriage, the shock, the sadness, the confusion, the doubt. And then she told me of how she had made the decision to plant some flowers--called daphnes--in her garden as a way of commemorating the life that was lost. I was particularly struck by the image of a flower rising up each year come spring, and that image became a central piece of the song.

TOPIC: Adoption

THE STORY
Jackie and Kathy came to me wishing for a song to celebrate their family and to tell the story of their daughters' adoptions from Guatemala in a way that would make sense to their girls now, at their current ages (3, 6) and would also hold deeper levels of meaning that they could come to appreciate anew when they listen again to the song as adults. I learned of their trips to Guatemala, of the many ways in which their family began to take shape and turn into something real and amazing. I got to draw on my own time in Guatemala, having visited the cabin where my husband lived for two years in his "Habitat for Humanity" days. But the very crux of what makes this song feel so special to me, as the writer, came from out beyond the stories, out beyond my experience of Guatemala. It came from something Kathy said that shot right through me when she said it--it was so unadorned and obvious. It made me understand and feel on an even deeper level how much is true and the same for all children in all families, regardless of how those families came together. I turned her comments into the bridge of the song, and I love the way it makes the specificity of this story suddenly feel so universal:

We can't know all of where you've been,
Just like we can't know all of where you're going.
And it's not always easy here.
It's not always easy anywhere...

"John" came to me, deeply concerned. His wife was thinking about leaving him after many years together, and he wanted a song that would celebrate her and persuade her to stay. What we ended up with, though, was a surprise to both of us. Our song-interview journey pointed the way to an unexpected question: What if John stopped trying to persuade, and instead sought to deeply understand his wife's predicament by "walking a mile in her shoes."  What emerged was profoundly moving to him, and to me as well. And wait till you see what international harpist Deborah Henson-Conant brought to the mix when we took the song, and Deborah, into the studio!

A SONG FOR ALL MOMS
I l-o-v-e to crank this song at top volume and feel it course through my veins.

I think this song is one of my proudest accomplishments.

Which is funny because I didn't even do all the work!

This song comes from someplace else, and I can sense my connection to that place, every time I play it. 

This song is dedicated to You, if you are a mom. To your Mom if you have one (everybody does!) It is also dedicated to my own mom. And, most importantly, it is dedicated to Erika Whitmore Godwin and Susan Godwin who collaborated together with me across the spans of time and, well...consciousness...to bring this song to you. 

When I asked Katie if she'd be open to my featuring her new song as Song of the Month this month, her reaction was utterly "Katie." Said she,

"WOO HOO!! HELL YES!! Thank you for asking.
That's like being asked to be a centerfold
or Employee of the Month!"


That's Katie for you--wide open, smart, sassy, lively and quirky in the most delightful of ways. I can't say Song of the Month has ever been compared to a centerfold shot before, but hey, I will take my compliments any way they fall out of the sky.  So here we are with Katie's song. 

STORY: THE SONG PROJECT TAKING SHAPE
Florrie came to me filled to overflowing with excitement about the idea of commissioning a song for her stepdaughter Virginia's wedding. Florrie had just received my Song-of-the-Month on the song "Bright Eyes"  (a father in the late stages of Lou Gehrig's Disease leaving a message for his daughter).  She was particularly moved by this song because her own husband suffers from a similar disease. We conducted a fruitful song interview, and I was on my way. But WAIT!! Florrie's level of enthusiasm about the song was so great that she wrote me the next morning to tell me that she had started hearing lyrics in a dream. She promptly typed them up and emailed them to me--careful to say "Please feel free to ignore these."

I had the wonderful good fortune to get to create the song recently (from the video above) that's all about the profound power of CHOICE. It's a song I've been playing frequently at women's gatherings in the last few months. And when I do, someone inevitably comes up to me afterward and says, "I have got to have a copy of the lyrics to that song." I think it's because we all like to be reminded of what we all, on some level, know is true (although sometimes we forget): that life feels amazing when we remember how powerful we really are, especially when we choose to exercise that power with an open heart. I love this song, called "I Have a Choice," for the way it makes me feel, and for the gift it has become to so many others, already, in the few months it's been "out there."