New song, "Love is Worth Fighting For" - meaning of lyrics, etc.

[Tom22]

> John, thanks for listening and typing out the lyrics you heard ... I only hear snippets of lyrics at a time and have an active sort of brain that runs with a word or a phrase in for seconds after the word hits my mind and often miss the next word or have lost the context of one sentence to another having my mind filled with ideas the last sentence evoked.... I don't always know the lyrics to my favorite songs even as I hear words.

> After reading the lyrics, while there is a generic "love" in the song the lyrics are more specifically about her career situation than I might have mused > not proof that all of her songs aren't meant more exclusively about romantic love > I'm projecting my take making sweeping statements (even as I'll stick to my take the way I've heard her sing even Undone)

> I really felt her pain in her music for the year and a half after the interscope deal and it wasn't until the performances the last month or two that I feel like her songs have healed her.

>to my personal ear, a recent "better" (that people here so generously recorded and linked) wasn't tinged with "bitterness" ..... "I threw your ring into the ocean" can either be bitter, defensive, liberation or almost humorously "you go girl" "you're not the boss of me" sort of celebration and .. I'm reading more of the second in a recent performance... which moves the song from a definitive "I quit" to a "I'm facing an ocean of possibility, and so are you and your ring fella"

>pain and sorrow can lead to great art.. .but, I think we all appreciate different things particularly in that regard.

>Miguel posted a series of tweets showing hugely different reactions to "Undone" .. with some people feeling despair in the song and other's hearing a underlying optimism and uplift from someone in a temporary sense of despair they know they shouldn't be preoccupied with. (yes vastly different takes) The thing was, her earlier performances of it lifted me (album, Iheart) but the one recent one (private concert) maybe shifted me the other side and I didn't like thta.

> I didn't like Haley's period of discomfort . We're all generous people at heart here and none would wish harm of course... but I just felt an underlying "feeling sorry for oneself" and even (throw stones at me) a bit of tentativeness in the desire to express herself publicly even while she was actually performing(just a glimmer of a shadow of question). Others appreciated a tenderness in a vulnerability. I guess I fell in love with Haley for her unique combination of empathy and steel-willed-optimism (on idol and on LU, and other early unreleased songs) and felt more sorry to hear a free spirit crushed and couldn't really enjoy whatever it was she was tapping during that period

_______

> this song seems to be a culmination of her stages of grief >

! I love it for that achievement (song is still growing on me but I'm sure it will)
! I love that (chicken or egg?), that she is performing more regularly with diverse musicians in places that are clearly comfortable for her.
! I see a fresher glow to her on stage now. While some singers like Sinead O'connor pull on a "dark power" I think Haley pulls on a "power of light" ... that she can't be distracted from.

enough from me


there are many sites on grief.. many with 5 stages more attuned to loss via cancer or something,

but I think this 7th stage one with a full recovery of the patient themselves particularly fits her journey:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/me-w...ng-breakup

You may have known somewhere within you that this breakup was coming, even for months or years, and yet you are still blindsided. No matter how the lead-up has looked, now that the breakup is actually happening, you may be overwhelmed, immobilized and haunted by fear, loss and despair about life without this person. Following are some of the stages you can anticipate going through—they often occur all at once, or in varying orders at varying times during the process of letting go:

1. Desperate For Answers

The drive to know is consuming and can come at the expense of rational thoughts and behaviors. You must understand why this happened, maybe beyond anyone’s ability to explain it. You fixate on things your ex said at various times that you see as contradicting the breakup, and you hold onto them now as if they are gospel. Yet somewhere within, you have moments of clarity, too. You likely swing back and forth between foggy disbelief, the daily, moment by moment rediscovery of the magnitude of your loss, and flashes of painful clarity that of course it’s over. The pain, disorganization, and confusion can become all you think about, or talk about. But initially, you remain driven to understand what happened, at any cost. The desperation to make sense of something so jarring compels you to debate friends, family, coworkers, even strangers, about why the relationship ended, while you justify to them the reasons it shouldn’t have, as if convincing them it is equal to convincing your ex.

2. Denial

It can’t be true. This isn’t happening! You just cannot be without your ex. It feels like you’ve put everything you are into this relationship. It’s been your world, your life. You cannot accept that it’s over. You funnel every last hope into saving it, even at the expense of your well-being. You postpone your need to grieve its end, because it’s just too painful to face. In so doing, you temporarily derail the grieving process by replacing it with unrealistically inflated hope that the relationship can still be salvaged.

3. Bargaining

You are willing to do anything to avoid accepting it’s over. You’ll be a better, more attentive partner. Everything that’s been wrong, you’ll make right. The thought of being without your ex is so intolerable that you will make your own pain go away by winning him or her back, at any cost. Of course, you’re not logical at this point (and probably shouldn't be operating heavy machinery). You are standing on the edge of what feels like an abyss, trying not to fall into the unknown. You cling to any hope you can, to prevent yourself from losing what you have come to depend on, for better or worse. However, during this phase, when you promise to fix all the problems between you, you are placing the entire burden of repairing, maintaining, and sustaining a relationship onto yourself. It's as if the responsibility is yours and yours alone to make it work this time. Try your hardest during this phase not to lose sight of the fact that both participants in the relationship contributed to its end. You can’t possibly take responsibility for everything. Somewhere inside, you know that.

Bargaining can only briefly distract from the experience of loss. Reality inevitably comes crashing down, over and over again. Further, when you bargain, you are trying to take responsibility for why the relationship doesn't work, which may give you the illusion that you have control over it, perpetuating the belief that it's salvageable as long as you can just keep performing superhuman acts.

4. Relapse

Because the pain is so intolerable, you may actually be able to convince your ex to try again (this may not be the first breakup with this partner). You will temporarily relieve the agony of withdrawal. However, despite your best efforts, you will not be able to carry the relationship solo. I'm sorry to say, it probably won’t end well this time, either. Unfortunately, you may need to go through this process of breaking up and reconciling more than once before you're absolutely convinced it's time to let go.

5. Anger

Initially, you may not be able to connect with feelings of anger. Breaking up plummets you into the unknown, which can evoke immobilizing fear and dread. Fear, at that point, trumps anger. Therefore, when anger sets in, it's because you have let go of some of your fear, at least temporarily. When you’re able to access anger, the experience can actually be empowering—because at the very least there are shades of remembering you matter too, of feeling justified in realizing that you deserve more from a relationship. Depending on your specific temperament, life, and family experiences, as well as your unique breakup, your anger may be directed at your partner, the situation, or yourself. The good news is that your anger, no matter where it’s directed, is meant to empower you, whether you choose to see it that way or not. When anger becomes accessible to you, it can provide direction and create a feeling of aliveness in a world that’s become deadened by loss. It can also remind you that you deserve more. Even anger at yourself, as paralyzing and self-defeating as it may be, is still part of the grieving process. The fact that you are on the trajectory of grieving the loss is a sign that you are working through. It indicates that somewhere within, you are creating enough internal discomfort to help shift your perspective about how the relationship has actually been, and it can compel you to make proactive changes, if you are ready to let it.

6. Initial Acceptance

This is the kind of acceptance that, when it happens early in the process, can feel more like surrender. You are holding up your end of the breakup because you have to, not because you want to. Either you or your ex has developed enough awareness and control at this point to recognize that you are not meant to be. Over time, this initial, often tenuous acceptance becomes more substantive, as both of you begin to recognize, independently, that there are boundaries that at least one of you must maintain in order for the breakup to stick, because it has to. You are finally grasping that's it’s just not good for you to keep trying anymore.

7. Redirected Hope

You were leveled by the breakup and have had difficulty letting go, in part because it shattered your relationship with hope. As acceptance deepens, moving forward requires redirecting your feelings of hope—from the belief that you can singlehandedly save a failing relationship to the possibility that you just might be okay without your ex. It’s jarring when forced to redirect your hope from the known entity of the relationship into the abyss of the unknown. But this is an opportunity to redirect the life force of hope. Regardless, hope is somewhere in your reserves and you will access it again as you continue to allow some meaningful distance between you and your ex.



The stages of grief that follow any trauma, breakups included, can happen over the course of minutes or even seconds, across days, months, or years, and then switch around without warning, leaving you feeling without foundation, especially in the beginning. You feel alien to yourself or cut off from the world.