Signed 12" vinyl copy of Dance Again. Pressed on pure white vinyl!
Includes unlimited streaming of Dance Again
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$20USDor more
*** Includes free download of Dance Again album ***
I wrote this book during the months following Olivia’s passing—it starts from the day she died and ends the day our 5th child, Benjamin, was born (about 14 months later).
This book is not about what happened on the outside (although I did include some journal entries to help fill in the story). This book is about what was happening inside me during these moments, and a condensing of the lessons I learned about grief and healing.
The theme of this book is *rest in the midst of pain*.
On one hand, we had known since before she was born that Olivia would not live long—she was deemed “incompatible with life” due to a chromosomal defect called Trisomy 18. On the other hand, she had lived for 14 months. Around month five, we stopped expecting her to die at any moment. We learned to be with her while she was live. With that decision came the risk—the certainty—of much greater pain whenever it was her time to go.
On March 11, 2016—a beautiful, warm, spring day—Olivia died, unexpectedly. I’m still processing that day. I remember the weather. I remember the way Olivia felt heavy in my arms. I remember the tears of our friends. I remember the blood-red sunset.
I remember the basket—I had been dreading that basket for a year and a half.
I remember praying as a family over Olivia. I remember knowing there was no good prayer to pray, but trying anyway. I remember the feeling after the basket left our front door and the door was closed: like the biggest wave had come and gone… the emptiness of its wake. It was peace… and it was sadness. It was heartbreak… and it was victory.
It was grief… and it was healing.
The following months were possibly even more difficult than the previous ones. My wife and I were slowly deconstructed until all that remained was a pile of parts on the floor.
All I wanted was to get up—to put myself back together. But I could feel a quiet presence (I still feel it now) of a physician, working. Just as my wife was stitched together 14 months earlier after delivering Olivia, just as my daughter was stitched together in her mother’s womb before that, someone was stitching me back together. Quietly. Patiently. Working. Healing.
My battle during these months—and the main focus of this book—was to allow myself to be healed. Even as I type this, I’m overwhelmed by the pain of staying on that operating table—of not jumping up and becoming occupied for the sake of my sanity and sense of whole-person-ness.
My wife and I had a very difficult decision to make on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute, basis: will I settle for an external image of wholeness, or will I wait for real healing to happen inside? The first path was faster. Saner. But the second was intimately tied to the same posture/mindset we had learned from Olivia during her life. “In repentance and rest is your salvation; In quiet and trust is your strength.”
The statistic is something like: 95% of marriages of parents who have lost a child end in divorce. We were right there. We had the conversation more than once.
I become a person I was embarrassed to be. I did and said things which brought debilitating shame, which snowballed into more things I did and said, which brought more shame…
We had four other kids—kids who had been through hell… kids who lost their sister, and in many ways their parents. My heart still breaks to think about them during all of this. We failed them so many times in so many ways.
The urge to jump off that operating table… It was a minute-by-minute battle to stay—to trust that the physician was still working… to trust that there even *was* a physician.
Even during this period of—when death had had its way, when I had become someone I hated, when even smiling started to feel foreign—we knew that, even here, there was life.
Olivia taught us to live life, life the way it is, in the midst of uncertainty. Now, in her absence, she was teaching us to live life, life the way it is, in the midst of our pain. And in the midst of that pain, in the midst of that fumbling to try to let go and to live these moments, we found healing. Not just healing from our loss of Olivia—we were being healed deeper and much farther back than that.
The pain of loss is inseparable from healing.
Grief is not a series of necessary steps to “get over” a loss.
Grief is being open. Grief is being *receptive*.
Grief is the absence of certain comforts which give us only the impression of healing.
Grief is the door which leads to healing. Grief and healing are inseparable.
Grief *is* healing.
This book is my best attempt at sharing my grief, and in doing so my healing, with you.
What I couldn’t fit into words, I poured into music.
As you read this book and listen to the music, please let yourself breathe. Notice your breath. A common translation for the word “breath” is “spirit”—let the spirit travel in and out. Let it go where it wants. And as you breathe—as you let the common parts of my journey resonate with you—see if you notice a physician working on you as well.
This is a hard path to want to walk down, but I believe that deep down many of us are ready and excited to walk it. We are no longer satisfied with an external image of wholeness—we are ready for real healing inside.
THANK YOU for traveling 14 more months with me.
Includes unlimited streaming of Dance Again
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$15USDor more
about
This is the first song I wrote after our daughter Olivia passed away.
It had been a few months; I thought I’d better write something. All I could think was, “I don’t want to write another song.” I didn’t want to do much of anything again. I didn’t want to take more steps forward while Olivia’s life was in our past.
I could feel time continuing. I could feel the world continuing to spin. It was early spring and grass was beginning to grow again. I hated it. Something about things continuing to live while my daughter was dead felt so wrong to me.
So I wrote this song.
*I don’t want to dance again. Tell the music not to play.*
The world kept spinning.
I originally wrote this song as a metaphor. “Dancing” meant writing songs. Working. Going on living. Then, about 6 months after Olivia passed away, in the midst of some of the darkest moments of my entire life, Heather gathered the family to tell us she was pregnant again.
I immediately had a picture of fresh, clean, cold water rushing through deep open wounds… quickly followed by overwhelming fear and anger.
*I don’t want to dance again. Tell the music not to play.*
We were both angry. We felt guilty for that, but neither of us could imagine having another baby. We could barely brush our teeth. How were we going to take care of an infant? And beyond that fear was a much bigger one: We were going to go to that hospital again. We were going to be in that delivery room again. We were going to walk back through every step we took with Olivia. The sonograms. The birth. The coming home. Holding a crying baby in the living room in the middle of the night, dancing.
I can’t express how badly I wanted to do that again, but with Olivia. If I couldn’t do it with her, I didn’t want to ever do it again.
*I don’t want to dance again. Tell the music not to play.*
Even scarier than the pain of re-tracing our steps with Olivia was the thought of forgetting her. I was so afraid that this new child would take Olivia’s place, and I would forget her.
Benjamin (means “son of my pain”) Irving (means “fresh water”) Peterson was born about 14 months after Olivia passed away.
Walking into the operating room felt just like it felt with Olivia. I felt 100% sure, deep in my bones, that this baby was about to die. My mind knew he didn’t have Olivia’s condition, but my body was braced for tragedy. The moment Benjamin was born—the second I saw his face—I had the overwhelming sense that Ben was not Olivia. He was an entirely separate person. A beautiful person who I loved. Not in place of Olivia but in addition.
There was no less pain… in fact, there was more pain. But there was also joy. Not in place of pain but in addition.
Thank you Ben for being who you are: cold, clean water—rushing through the deep open wounds of our family. Not to diminish the pain or the memories of Olivia, but to clarify and heal our memories of her.
It just so happens that Ben’s favorite thing is music, and his favorite thing to do is dance.
lyrics
I may write another song, maybe even the perfect one, but it won't ever be the same. And I may take another try, pick my feet up for another mile, but it won't ever be the same. It won't ever be the same.
I don't want to dance again. Tell the music not to play. Tell the music not to play. I can see her, I can feel her face. I don't want to dance again.
Seasons change and memories fade. Tears dry but scars remain. Things are never gonna be the same.
credits
from Dance Again,
track released July 7, 2017
Mixed by Matt Rausch, Nashville
Mastered by Tom Baker, LA
Written, recorded, performed, produced by Nathan Peterson
Anna Arobas makes intricate, otherworldly folk-pop with delicate, glacial arrangements but a howl of heartbreak at the center. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 11, 2022
Singer-songwriter Christopher Paul Stelling's latest, produced by Ben Harper, shows off his fingerpicking chops and soulful voice. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 11, 2020
Belaver’s “Trash” builds from hushed verses to a big, booming crescendo of a chorus, with lyrics that praise finding beauty in darkness. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 14, 2018
Irish singer-songwriter Oisin Leech's acoustic folk music is characterized by its muted beauty and intimate, solitary quality. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 16, 2024
The haunting new record from Canadian folk artist Avi C. Engel bridges old and new traditions with a minimalist approach. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 24, 2024
