Songs from Songbird Sings

Eyes On You

Eyes On You was written in one of the “A Woman’s Voice” programs by Carol Finneren and me. I think the subject matter, as bleak as it is, speaks for itself. Drugs and money and broken little girls. The topic in this song was “lived experience” by some of the girls I worked with at Roxbury Youth Works in Boston. Listen to their own song “Stronger.”

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Fly With Broken Wings

Fly With Broken Wings was written by the prison ladies at Western Massachusetts Correctional and Alcohol Center (Howard Street) in Springfield MA. All of them were just sitting there waiting to see what I was going to do for them. They were hesitant, making comments such as “We’ve never written a song before” This song is the second one they came up with. It speaks to the possibility of transformation and that we hold the key to our own healing and the ability to change our lives. I really think you “get” this idea in the songwriting programs. The powerful experience of bonding with others who haven’t chosen wisely or realized their own worth and as a result have had similar experiences from addiction to mental health issues to extremely bad relationships. I firmly believe singing your song, telling your story can set you free…at least get you on the way to freeing yourself from the past.

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Stronger

Stronger was written (at Roxbury Youth Works) by young women trafficked into the evil sex trade. These young women had never written a song, hadn’t used their voice. This is a beginning for them to shout out that there are terrible things happening out there in the world, right here in our city of Boston, but they are picking up the pieces, putting their lives together, realizing they are not defined by the things that have happened to them. They can use their voice for their own healing and for social change. We need to hear the voices silenced by trauma, we need to break the silence that abuse and violence hides behind. If we don’t illuminate it, so it won’t fester in dark places, our hearts and the world will never be at peace.

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Turning Beautiful

After tragedy, after all hope is gone, coming together with other women who have gone through some of the same things, validating each other, supporting each other, realizing our stories matter, our lives matter we are so not alone and we don’t have to stay in the dark place. Perhaps our songs can help someone else.

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Everything Changes

This song was written in my first A Woman’s Voice workshop. Denise Blair just sang her song as I played the guitar. Later on this song was a favorite of the prison ladies at Chicopee Women’s Prison in western MA.

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Free Your Power

Written at the Rowe Conference Center. The retreat focused on consciousness raising, awareness of environment as a means to healing, and freeing our own unique power. This power so often lies dormant in those who have gone through emotional upheavals. Trauma shuts us down, puts us into an unreality where we think we don’t matter, that our lives are not important enough to care about. We need to care about ourselves; this takes work. Retreats with others who have gone through some of the same things help us to understand we are indeed worthy of living our life, of freeing our power which is essentially our own unique self.  Chorus: “I’ve always been who I am, now my eyes can see, the power deeps within me is finally free”

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Blame It On The Boys

This is pretty funny. Girls between the ages of 5 and 10 wrote this. The kids were having a hard time coming up with something. I said why don’t you girls write one about the boys and you boys write one about the girls. It’s so age appropriate, reminds me of growing up with my brother and the neighborhood kids always being up to something. The boys song is “Those Girls Are Evil, They Belong In The Time Medieval”

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Clarity

I facilitate the The Artist Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity written by Julia Cameron. During one of these 12 week courses I had the group write this song. I love it. It tells exactly what we were discovering during this workshop. I highly recommend buying this book and finding a few other people to do it with. It changed my life.

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Candle Of Peace

This song was written in my first Giving Youth A Voice program. The youth ages 15-19, and I sat around talking about 9/11 and if we should go to war, what were the reasons for going to war and why were we about to invade Iraq when it seemed that was not where the perpetrators of 9/11 were hanging out. We also discussed if there is ever a reason for war and killing, were there perhaps other ways of solving or coming to terms with a group of people attacking our country. All of us together decided that war was not the answer.

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