A couple of weeks ago Lost Voices got the chance to work with a new population of kids. We took a team to the New Hope Center for Grief Support summer day camp, where we wrote a song with 130 kids who have lost a parent, sibling, or someone else close to them. They were divided by age into nine “teams.” The oldest child was fourteen, and the youngest was three. Each team wrote their own verse to the song with a common chorus. That means that the song is nine verses long, but it’s worth listening to every word these children came up with.
It was amazing for us to hear the sweetness and joy in their voices as they let their feelings out. I feel like that comes through well in the recording and the photos in this presentation that the New Hope folks put together.
To create this song, Kitty Donohoe and I wrote the chorus of a song about healing, based on an idea Kitty had already been working with. We also wrote a sample verse to define the structure. Then, over the course of two days Kitty, Mattijane Epperson, and I spent an hour with each of the nine teams, during which they wrote their own verse to the camp song. We also found time to sing some of their favorite songs with them.
Once the kids had come up with their lyrics, Tony Mitchell, one of the Lost Voices team’s professional sound technicians, recorded each group singing their verse and a chorus. Tony used his technical wizardry to edit all the individual recordings, on the fly, into this virtually seamless song.
At the end of the camp, we played the recording for parents of all the day campers while the kids sang along. It was a wonderful experience for everyone.
The trauma these children are working through has different origins than what we normally see, but it is trauma just the same. This process is exciting to us, because it’s applicable to so many kids in addition to the populations we’ve been working with over the years. We will be doing a lot more work with this model!
Here is a transcription of the lyrics the kids wrote:
Everybody Needs Hope
Chorus:
Everybody Needs Hope
You can give healing a chance
Everybody gets a voice in the choir
And a place in the dance
Verses:
We all need to grieve to get a little better
We all need encouragement from our family and friends
We all have ways to get us through the pain
Love and pets and games
We all need to have a dream
To see those that we love
We could talk and laugh with them
We’ll all soar above
Spending time together
Memories from when we were young
Friends will give us confidence
We are not alone
There are times when I feel sad
Sometimes I am scared
Hugs and kisses make it better
Horses and ice cream too
When the sun is shining
It makes me feel joy
Happy and excited
When I play outside
Talking about my feelings
Hanging with my pets
Lots of hugs and snuggles
Makes me feel my best
Everyone needs New Hope
Animals and nature too
Flowers bloom with calming rain
Like sunsets ease the pain
Going to the park with friends
To play and to sing
We have all lost someone special
But we all stick together
Going places, having fun
The I rest and read
Talking to loved ones in the sky
Makes the moon shine bright
