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Q:
What songs touch you in relation to your experience of ending a wanted pregnancy. Please share the artist, song title, a link to a YouTube video and if you like, a few words about how the song connects to your experience/grief/loss or healing.
A:
Happy Birthday by Piper and Flipsyde.
Flipsyde – Happy Birthday (We The People)
Pearl Jam’s Black was the first song that really got to me. I remember sitting in the Target parking lot crying when this came on the radio. “Now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything. All the pictures have been washed in black, tattooed everything.”
Pearl Jam – Black (MTV Unplugged)
“Things were different then, all is different now, I tried to explain, somehow.”
Pearl Jam – Hard to Imagine (Lost Dogs)
I discovered this one about seven years after my loss, but from the first time I heard it I related it to my very long, surreal L&D. Jim James’s voice and banjo on this one are desolation itself. “Whose going to care if it smashes down or lifts you up in the air?”
My Morning Jacket – If It Smashes Down (At Dawn)
For some reason, Kelly Clarkson’s All Ready Gone, P!NK Who Knew and Katy Perry Firework. Each one has a line that gets me every time.
Kelly Clarkson – Already Gone (All I Ever Wanted)
P!nk – Who Knew? (I’m Not Dead)
Katy Perry – Firework (Teenage Dream)
Our baby’s song was Now and Forever by Carole King and I pretty much get teary anytime I hear it. I didn’t hear My Name by George Canyon until later but he must have known or been someone who lost a child.
Carole King – Now and Forever (Colour of Your Dreams)
George Canyon – My Name (One Good Friend)
*Trigger warning* Fleet Foxes Oliver James. This one gets to me every single time. It’s about a mother preparing her baby for burial. Devastating and gorgeous, with possible undertones that she’s had some hand in his death.
Fleet Foxes – Oliver James (Fleet Foxes)
Florence & the Machine Blinding. I really don’t know why. It’s sort of like a girl waking from her false reality and she can’t go back.
Florence and the Machine – Blinding (Lungs)
Mandolin Orange – There Was A Time (Audiotree Live)
Fix You by Coldplay. I wish I could have done something to fix my baby. So many lines in that song are meaningful to me…”lights will guide you home” because I always believed I sent my son back home to heaven. Also “tears stream down your face when you lose something you cannot replace.” I still can’t hear this song without tearing up.
Coldplay – Fix You (X & Y)
Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce. I remember sitting in my living room the day before my D&E wishing I could stop time so I didn’t have to let my baby go. Particularly the line “If words could make wishes come true,” because I keep thinking if I had one wish I’d make him healthy.
“If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you.”
Jim Croce – Time in a Bottle (Greatest Love Songs)
“Tell my mother, tell my father, that I’ve done the best I can” “Sometimes goodbye is a second chance”…..This song has been haunting me since we have made our decision to terminate. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it so much.
Shinedown – Second Chance (The Sound of Madness)
How by Regina Spektor
“How can I forget your love
How can I never see you again?”
“How can I begin again?
How can I try to love someone new”
Regina Spektor – How (What We Saw from the Cheap Seats)
I’ve been a Bob Marley fan all my life. When my husband and I recently went to the beach I had commented how there weren’t any birds that day…. Later Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds came on and these three little sandpipers were playing in the water. That was our moment we needed and we knew that everything was “gonna be alright.” When the song was over the birds were gone…..
Bob Marley – Three Little Birds (Exodus)
I know it’s not about baby loss, but Make You Feel My Love gets me every time. I prefer Adele’s version.
“I’d go hungry; I’d go black and blue …”
Adele – Make You Feel My Love (19)
Kelly Jones/Stereophonics – Maybe Tomorrow (You Gotta Go There To Come Back)
Ed Sheeran – Small Bump (+)
Noah Gunderson & The Forest Rangers – The Day is Gone (Sons of Anarchy Vol. 3)
This was posted on the EWP website but thought I would share the link here. This song holds great meaning for me. My husband and I were part of a video presentation at a perinatal loss conference earlier this year (our support group leader was asked to present). This song video was at the beginning of the presentation.
Julie Geller – I Miss You (You’re With Me)
P!nk – Beam Me Up (The Truth About Love)
Diamond Rio – One More Day (One More Day)
Fly, by Celine Dion… I’ve always loved the song, and now it truly has meaning.
“Your heart is pure, your soul is free. Be on your way, don’t wait for me…”
Celine Dion – Fly (Falling Into You)
In The Sun – Donna DeLory (In The Glow)
My song is A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. This was the song I heard when my son moved for the first time and it was a song he always kicked me to. This was also the last song he ever heard. Oddly enough it played when I returned from the hospital without him. This song helps me find some peace with his passing. It brings a smile to my face and tears to my eyes. I always play it on his birthday. I believe this song connects me to my son still, so when I really miss him I play it.
Christina Perri – A Thousand Years (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn)
1000 Oceans by Tori Amos was another song I’d always loved that I found myself listening to more after losing my daughter.
Tori Amos – 1000 Oceans (To Venus and Back)
After my first termination for medical reasons I listened to The Long Black Veil, by Johnny Cash. After the second loss (a regular miscarriage) I listened to Hard Times Come Again No More by James Taylor. Then after the next loss (my third loss and second TFMR) I listened to a CD we got in Hawaii from the National Parks. I don’t know its title, but it was very good for grieving. I think if it had been created yet, I would have also listened to the Linkin Park song Roads Untraveled. Maybe Green Day Boulevard of Broken Dreams too. They’re both very good for wailing and acknowledging loss.
Johnny Cash – The Long Black Veil (Orange Blossom Special)
James Taylor – Hard Times Come Again No More (The Essential James Taylor)
Linkin Park – Roads Untraveled (Living Things)
Green Day – Boulevard of Broken Dreams
I am wondering if the “National Parks” CD mentioned above featured Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. He’s mostly widely known for his cover of Over the Rainbow but he had some devastatingly beautiful songs that would go well with grieving, such as Hawa’ii 78. (I first learned of this song through a gorgeous version Pearl Jam did in 2006.)
Israel Kamakawiwoʻole – Hawaiʻi ’78 (Facing Future)
Pearl Jam – Hawaii ’78 (Honolulu ’06)
Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton – 1992. He wrote it after his son died and it came out the year after we lost our son and the same year we lost our daughter.
Eric Clapton – Tears In Heaven (Rush Soundtrack)
The song Let Me Go by Gary Barlow came out just after we went through losing our little boy—he actually wrote it about his daughter Poppy who was stillborn—he said he wanted it to be like a celebration of her life, which is lovely.
Gary Barlow – Let Me Go (Since I Saw You Last)
This song from Tarzan by Phil Collins really gets to me a lot of the lyrics are lovely especially”You’ll be in my heart no matter what they say” always makes me cry but in a nice way as makes me think of him and feel close to him…..
Phil Collins – You’ll Be In My Heart (Tarzan soundtrack)
We had this at our son’s funeral when we he was cremated.
Eva Cassidy – Songbird (Songbird)
My song is If I Die Young by the Band Perry.
The Band Perry – If I Die Young
Calling All Angels still brings me to tears.
Jane Siberry & KD Lang – Calling All Angels
Maddie and Tae – Fly