"Stand Here" - Thoughts Behind the Song
On July 4th, 2024, I heard the tragic story of Jayda Woods-Johnson, a local 13-year-old girl who was shot and killed at the food court at Alderwood Mall. The 16-year-old boy who fired the shot had an altercation with a group of boys. He aimed at one of them, missed, and struck Jayda instead, someone simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This story devastated me. I had dropped my own kids off at that exact spot many times to meet their friends. I kept thinking about the parents. What were they experiencing? How do you survive a tragedy like that?
As I processed this, I felt compelled to create.
"OSCILLATE" -THOUGHTS BEHIND THE SONG/PAINTING SERIES
What started my journey to uncover this song and series of paintings was a solitary walk at the nearby beach and a free-write in my sketchbook, some of which I will share here:
About the song “Let me Try”
The concept for “Let Me Try“ this was born out of a connection and conversation with another mom, a friend of mine.
We hadn’t seen eachother in awhile, and we decided to meet up for a hike. As we walked through the forest, we caught up on all the usual topics, laughing at the kid shenanagins, venting our common parenting frustrations, etc. When we talked about raising the kids through this crazy pandemic it seemed like just another topic, just another learning curve, and something that we had to figure out as we went along, much of what my whole entire experience of parenting has been…a moving target. There’s no such thing as perfect parenting. As soon as you figure something out that works, the kid changes. We each have 3 kids ranging 8-16 years, so it’s easy to see that what works for one kid doesn’t work for all of them.
About the song “Grow Away”
“Grow Away” was written with a particular person in mind, and at the time of writing, it was a moment where I couldn’t express my feelings directly. Many of my songs come from that because, to me, that’s why I started writing songs in the first place…