LOVELAND, Colorado — A group of veterans shared stories in a special way this weekend, working with professional songwriters.
They were part of Songwriting with Soldiers, a nonprofit camp for veterans, offering two- to three-hour sessions with songwriters to craft a ballad telling the story of service.
“You put those two people together…you come up with a song that often speaks to all of us,” said Mary Judd, co-founder of the group. “The truths come out for the veteran.”
The songs don’t necessarily have to be about service. Veteran Adrienne Sommers wrote a song about her relationship with her father.
“He died 21 years ago when I was 18,” she said. “And when he died we kind of just packed everything up – put it in boxes.”
Sommers said her father was a country music artist. So earlier this year, she went in search of some of the songs he wrote. She literally started unpacking boxes.
And she realized something else had been stuffed away.
“I’m unpacking emotional things that I carry with me and turning that into forgiveness,” she said.
So this weekend, with the help of a professional songwriter, she wrote “Unpacking Boxes.”
“It talks about family relationships particularly a father and a daughter relationship and how our relationship was strained even when he died and how long it took me to forgive him,” Sommers said. “I honestly never thought I would be able to forgive him for certain things.”
If you’d like to hear some of the songs veterans have written over the years, you can find them on Songwriting with Soldiers website. For a donation, you can download the song.
This Friday, Oct. 25, the group will host an hour-long special on PBS stations across the country. You can see it locally on Rocky Mountain PBS at 10 p.m.
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