Carly Elisabeth Simon was born on June 25, 1945. Carly is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children’s author.

Carly may have been speaking of a literal scar and if so that’s fine too but I think perhaps because she’s a songwriter that she is talking about the scars that no one really gets to see. So she writes these songs to allow people to see her scars and to not be afraid of them and I like that. That’s a reason I write is so that you can read about my scars. Some scars in life can be very painful but when they’re exposed it takes the sting out of them.

As I’ve aged I’ve found myself looking at death and life and love very differently than I used to as a small child. All of these things effect your personality by what happens in your life, who you love and the deaths you encounter. This year alone has brought many deaths all over the world from the corona-virus pandemic. I personally lost three members of my family this year, two to cancer, my aunt Louise and my dear cousin Nancy and one due to an infection which is the most recent, my cousin Kim.

We’re only halfway through 2020 and not finished with the pandemic. The way we view deaths or deal with death varies from person to person and depends on who it is to you that has passed. I learned from hard lessons in grief over the past couple of years and read plenty of books on how to deal with it and I found one in particular that helped me more than the others and that was Kate McGahan’s, “Only Gone From Your Sight”. This one in particular is about pet loss but she has both pet and human loss and they’re beautiful.

I also am an avid bird watcher which I got from my Grandpa Fish. He knew all about the birds in his backyard and had a lot of bird books. By him teaching me about different birds it gave me my love for birds and I have my own collection of bird books. Carly said that the sound of birds stops the noise in her head and I would agree at least at times in the early morning when the birds start singing it is one of the sweetest sounds.

With Carly’s statement about people honoring her and I think that she’s humble which is a great quality to have. When I write or do my art, like Carly I want the effects to help the things that I believe in. I want to make a difference for sexual abuse survivors, domestic abuse survivors, equality, I’m against animal abuse because my babies were lost to it from the man that abused me. That is what inspired me to start writing daily, what I have found is that it helps me work through my anxiety but also raises awareness to the topics I feel are important. The first step in change is awareness that there needs to be a change and I would like to be part of that process.

Carly is also an author and the song Touched by the Sun was written for her friend Jacquelin Kennedy Onasis when she was diagnosed with a terminal disease. She also wrote a book, Touched by the Sun: My Friendship with Jackie. It’s on my books that I want to read list.