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This song was born out of one of the most profound griefs in my life, when I lost a baby through miscarriage thirty-five years ago. Miscarriages are not uncommon, but they are still rarely spoken of openly or honored as the devastating loss many women feel them to be.

It isn’t that my husband and my family did not also grieve—of course they did. We all lost a dream, a hope, a future with a beloved child. But their pain was not the same as mine. For me, the trauma was not only emotional; just as my hormone-flooded pregnancy had been intensely physical, the miscarriage was a profoundly embodied event in my life.

It was also a profoundly female event.  One I have shared with countless other grieving women throughout the ages. 

I remember the excruciating pain slicing through my body.  I remember the ragged screams ripping through me as I was driven to the hospital, a detached part of my consciousness watching and wondering how such a primal and animal sound could be coming from my throat. And the blood. The blood that just kept coming. My body physically pulsed and ached with the silence in my womb.

In the days after coming home from the hospital, I needed to process the loss of the tiny presence I had carried for three months. The miscarriage was also a pivotal event in my life as an artist, particularly as a female artist dealing with a loss unique to women. I couldn’t find any societal structures to help me with the overwhelming feelings. Music, writing, and nature have always been my refuges for dealing with difficult emotions. I turned to them all during my time of grief and recovery.

I had to create my own ritual to say goodbye to the child I would never hold. One wet and gray day, I climbed a nearby mountain, wooded with arbutus, oak, and cedar. I didn’t really know what I was going to do. Near the top, I stopped at a favorite rocky plateau under a sinuous arbutus tree and knelt. I touched my forehead to the moss, feeling the rain on my neck. I had no words, only tears.

Most of “It’s Raining in the Forest” came to me on the way down that mountain path. This was long before I began performing my music, although I had been writing songs for many years. The songs had always seemed to just play themselves in my head, as if from nowhere.  But never before had I heard an entire song complete with melody and lyrics. When I got home, I worked out the chords, and the song was born—a gift to me from the Great Beyond.

There are still moments when I feel sadness about this loss, but I am also at peace with it. It really is sad. And it also really is okay. Over these many years, this song has again and again helped me understand the paradox revealed to me in the lyrics:

I know it’s alrightIn the greater scheme of thingsBut in the smaller place of my heartThere’s still the rain

I have long thought of this song as something like a consolation prize, a message that my path in life is to birth songs. That path has not included motherhood, but it has been full of so many blessings, including the hundreds of songs that have poured out of me over the decades and continue to come. Each of them is a miracle in its own way, but no other was birthed like this one.

“It’s Raining in the Forest” has helped me and many others grapple with grief, no matter the cause.  Loss is part of being human.  I hope it may bring you comfort too.

This production of “It’s Raining in the Forest” is one of many I have attempted over the years, trying to get the song right! Thanks to Brian Castillo, Jordan Hughes, and Jon Green for making music magic with me!

Thank you also to the wonderful people who told me again and again, year after year, what this song has meant to you: My parents Betty G. Hummel and Ralph Hummel, Kay Foster, Stan Foster, Lisa Groening, Deb Petersen, Mary Meyer, Carrie Walker, and so many others. Without your belief in it, this song may not have survived. This is especially for you.

In loving memory of my friend Mary Dolan, who sang this song so beautifully. Rest in peace, Mary.