I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, with an alcoholic mother who would alternately tell me that I was the most special creature on the planet, and then completely ignore me. To say the least, I was very confused and insecure about my worth well into adulthood. Her drinking progressed significantly upon our moving to Wichita, Kansas when I was 16 years old, following, unwanted, my father who had left us At that point in the story my feelings, both physical and emotional, shut down completely. I escaped at the end of a year, and at last began my life as a "real" person through luckily gaining an early college acceptance.
In my 20's, after my parents had reunited (unfortunately) and after a dinner on vacation with just me and my parents, I finally got up the nerve to insist my father and I do an intervention with my mother. For a year I was blamed by the rest of my sisters for "causing trouble," but eventually my mother went to rehab and stopped drinking, while her behavior remained, to put it mildly, problematic. A few months after my father died of early Alzheimer's, there was a particularly disturbing incident with my mother, by then a diabetic. After a visit to the emergency room the day after Christmas, in HEAVY denial she claimed that if I told her doctor the truth about her risky behavior and she died, that it would be my fault. This song was written in response to that. It is my hope that this song will resonate, and perhaps help, anyone who has struggled with any kind of addiction, dysfunction and/or denial in their own lives or families.
lyrics
Every Day You Break My Heart
You don’t see anything I do
and absence doesn’t make you fonder
and one more moment is too long for me to stay
mama you break my heart every day
slow down, back up
no one believes a single word you say
shoot up that poison
it couldn’t hurt if you believe that it won’t
Don’t listen to a word we say
a shame your children don’t know better
can’t change a thing about the time you threw away
mama you break our hearts every day
What do you see when you look in the mirror
a pretty young girl with a beautiful mind
do you really believe all the things that you tell us
do you think just to wish hard enough makes it so?
let go, wake up
you’ll never get back what you let get away
suck down that suicide
you’ll never see past all that smoke in the way
let go, don’t look back
so sad you don’t know you deserve what you need
give up that death wish
just one day left means that it’s not too late
You said we could be anything
but your eyes taught me something different
I look at you and see the future
mama you break my heart every day
mama you break my heart every day
mama you break my heart
credits
from Thatched Roof Glass House,
released August 21, 2019
Written by: Elizabeth McCullough
Vocals and Acoustic Guitar: Elizabeth McCullough
Lead Guitar: Doug Pettibone
Bass: Reggie McBride
Drums: Jason Harrison Smith
Engineer: Jon Mattox
Mixed & Mastered: Brett Thorngren
How do you take the image of a black hole and make it positive? According to Alpha Cat, "When I wrote the song I'd read how
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