MAY 8, 2008 – THE HEALING POWER OF MUSIC: CINDY BULLENS.

Cindy Bullens is a critically acclaimed two-time Grammy nominee. Her inspiring, widely acclaimed 1999 CD “Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth,” was written and recorded after the tragic death of her 11 year-old daughter Jessie. Since its release Cindy has touched thousands of people around the world with her inspired songs of love and loss, despair and hope.

Cindy Bullens:  “Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth” was written in the first two years after Jessica’s death.  That album truly was written for me.  I didn’t wake up one day and say well, my daughter’s dead.  I’m going to write some songs about it.  I was really compelled to write those songs at different points during the first two years after her death.  The first year after her death, the first song I wrote was “Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth” which is the title track, and that song emerged from me about four months after her death.  I had not picked up my guitar since she died up until that point.  I, of course, had no desire to live, let alone write a song or record a song.  I had no inspiration whatsoever.  Of course, I was devastated.

Cindy Bullens:  When I wrote the song “Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth,” I had this spark of – I didn’t call it hope at the time, although there’s hope in every single song of those ten songs.  But I didn’t have hope at four months after Jesssie’s death, but there was a spark of something that stirred inside me when I wrote that song.  Now mind you, I am a professional singer and songwriter, and I was horrified that I had just written a song about the death of my own daughter.

Cindy Bullens:  There was a little shame, and then I thought right away, wait a minute, if I was a painter, I’d be painting about my grief.  If I was a poet, I’d be writing about my grief.  So I reconciled it almost immediately, but it was a very strange feeling to have done that.  But the song was the most perfect song I had written at that time and it did emerge from the depths of my being and totally and truly inspired by my grief and my love and my soul which every single song on there is.

Cindy Bullens:  It’s very interesting with these songs because of how and why they came.  It’s not like they’re my songs.  It’s like they live on their own.  They are their own entity and they came through me at some point so when I hear them and even when I sing them, I listen to the words in a different way than I would another song that wasn’t about Jessie.  They affect me still very deeply.  It’s been twelve years since Jessie’s death now and when I think back to the fact that I wrote those songs in the first two years after her death, I can’t believe it.

Cindy Bullens:  No, the word that I use was I was struck with them.  That song was written four months after Jessie’s death and I thought, okay.  I’ve written a song about her and it was very powerful for me and that was it.  I didn’t have a thought about doing anything else and three months later, I wrote another song called “In Better Hands,” and I thought, “Oh, I’ve written two songs.  Okay.”  And three months after that, I wrote a song called “A Thousand Shades of Gray,” and I thought, Oh, I’ve written three songs now that I’ve been struck with about my grief, about my love and that horrible loss but my struggle with all the stuff that we go through as bereaved parents and with that loss.

Cindy Bullens:  Reid is my older daughter who was almost 14 when Jessie died.  This was the hardest song for me to write, and it took the longest time because it’s so powerful.  I was trying to record it myself, and it just didn’t work.  I couldn’t sing the chorus without crying, and so I thought oh, well, maybe Reid will sing it, my daughter.  So Reid was 16 at the time and we went into the studio and she sang the choruses to this song which is Jessie’s voice speaking back to me in the song and it’s just incredibly powerful.

Cindy Bullens:  Every song shook me.  That’s a whole ‘nother hour or two of talking about how I got through doing that and how I sing them live, but it was very difficult to keep the true emotion of these songs and yet have them be professional in their sound because obviously, as any bereaved parent knows and anyone who’s suffered a great loss, your emotions are there.  They’re just there, especially in the first few years.  They’re so raw.  And so it was very difficult for me to sing these songs.

Cindy Bullens:  On the day that Jessie died, I turned to my husband, Dan, her father, and I said, I am not going to be silent about her death.  And I didn’t know what that meant at the time.  I had no idea.  I certainly didn’t say, hey, I’m going to write an album and get it out there.  I didn’t know.  I only knew that there was no way that I was not going to talk about my child who existed on this earth and who deserved to be known for who she was.

Cindy Bullens:  Jessie’s death has changed every cell of my being.  Inside, outside, everything.  So everything I do today has been affected by Jessie’s death.  Whether it’s acutely meaning how I think about something or whether it’s just spiritually or more generally.  Because the songs from “Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth” were written so purely – it’s just pure love that went into those songs.  Pure love.  Now when I write.  Actually, now it’s a little bit easier to write a regular rock-and-roll song or a regular song just about a love story or something else, but it took awhile to transition into that because those songs were so powerful.  But, yes, it has changed the way I look at everything.

Cindy Bullens:  It is a difficult process and that song, “Better Than I’ve Ever Been,” was one of the last songs written in the two years that it took me to write all ten songs so it was toward the two-year mark, but it was my wish for myself.  It’s not about being happier than I’ve ever been.  It’s about being a better person than I’ve ever been.  More compassionate.  More giving.  More aware.  More awake in my life, and that’s what that song is about, and I will say that it’s been my marker in the last twelve years or ten years since I’ve written it and I do believe that one day at a time, I am becoming a better person than I’ve ever been.