I'm deeply grateful for your donations to help me continue making music that makes a difference. You can contribute any amount to my paypal account: paypal.me/ElizabethHummelMusic. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

This song was written in 1988. It was on my first released tape from 1991, called The Other Side, produced with Jordan Hughes.

I wrote it while grieving the loss of a baby in a miscarriage. The song came to me in one piece as I was climbing down a mountainside in the rain amid arbutus, oak and pine on Vancouver Island. I found the chords to go with it when I got home.

I rarely perform "It's Raining in the Forest" (it's hard not to cry!) but have been trying for 37 years to create a recorded version that does the song justice. Major bucket list item. Jon Green's exquisite bass and Brian's stellar engineering helped serve the song to create some sublime beauty. I am also so grateful to Jordan for his many sensitive production suggestions.

Many people have connected deeply with this song over the years, but I wish to mention Jordan Hughes, my friends Kay Foster and Stanbery Foster, and my parents Betty and Ralph Hummel, who all shared in my grief and have loved this song since they first heard it. My dear friend Lisa Groening has also been a faithful champion of this song since my first tape was released. By bringing up their desire for the song again and again, these people and others have bolstered me in my determination to do it justice.

My friend Mary Dolan, who grappled with depression for so long, sang this song frequently in performances in the 1990s in San Diego. What a voice. I recorded this version just after Mary died in late 2022, and she was in my heart as I sang. "It's Raining in the Forest" will always be connected with Mary for me.

I am still sad about losing that baby, and now I know I always will be--but I am also at peace with it. It really is sad, and it also really is ok. Over these many years, the song has helped me understand that paradox. I have always thought of this song as a consolation prize in a way, a message that my path in my life was to birth songs. That path has not included motherhood, but it has been one full of many, many blessings. This beautiful song was a gift to me from the Great Beyond.

"It's Raining in the Forest" is not really mine. I have the task of bringing it to others, but the song is all of ours, a balm for all of us. I am so happy to share this gift of song with you. I hope it may bring comfort when you are missing someone who has left or died, as it so often has for me.

"I know it's all right in the greater scheme of things, but in the smaller place of my heart, there's still the rain."

with love,
Elizabeth