This one is about my mum.
I wrote it to fix something. Not to describe it, not to get it off my chest, but to actually mend it. That is a lot to ask of four minutes of music and I had no idea whether it would work.
Everything in it happened. The shouting, the room we ran to, the phone call, standing there too young to choose a side. I was the middle, and the middle is a strange place to grow up. Never left out, never quite seen either.
What I wanted to reach by the end was the thing I had always known and never managed to say. That she did her best. That the silence between us was never the same thing as not loving each other.
And I hoped that if writing it healed something in me, it might do the same for somebody else carrying a family thing they cannot put right.
It is safe to say the song worked.
Full lyrics
I remember the shouting, the wall shaking loud
Your voice and his like thunder in a cloud
We run to a room, just me and my kin
And I'd hold them tight while you held it all in
I was the middle, never left but never seen
Caught between the chaos in what love used to mean
You were just trying to love through the storm
And I was trying to make it alone
But silence became our form of war
And I don't wanna fight no more
This is my healing song
For the mothers who gave it all
But no one saw
For the hearts that broke in silence holding strong
You did your best, even when the world moved on
This is my healing song
And Mum, it starts with you
I saw the call, I heard your voice cry
You asked for me, you said you needed me by your side
But Dad held tight, said he thought I should stay
He was fighting for me too in his own way
And I stood there torn, too young to choose
Caught between two hearts afraid to lose
You were just trying to love through the storm
And I was trying to make it alone
But silence became our form of war
And I don't wanna fight no more
This is my healing song
For the mothers who gave it all
But no one saw
For the hearts that broke in silence holding strong
You did your best, even when the world moved on
This is my healing song
And Mum, it starts with you
I forgive you, Mum, I always did
Even when I was just a kid
The pain became my melody
And now it's part of what made me
This is my healing song
For the mothers who gave it all
But no one saw
For the hearts that broke in silence holding strong
You did your best, even when the world moved on
This is my healing song
And Mum, it starts with you