“My favorite song is “Island” because I risked so much with that song. When I was 19 and 20 I was in a relationship with a man much older than me. He abused me emotionally and physically to the point where I had no self-esteem and it was hard to find the strength to get out. But in the end, finding this strength was what gave me the determination to become a singer and to express real truth in my songs.”Heather Nova (164)

“Having a child in general teaches you that you have to let go a lot and realize that you can’t control fate. You want to protect him all the way through his live and never let anything happen, but you can’t. It’s this huge lesson in acceptance but at the same time you feel you would die for him. I don’t think of ”Save a Little Piece of Tomorrow” as a political song. It’s from an emotional place of saying, “I don’t want you to grow up and have to swim over your childhood home.” So I will do what I can even though it’s a very small part.  I’ll do my best to stop that from happening.”Heather Nova (165)

“This is about gang violence in Bermuda. I wrote the song from a feeling that I had. It’s difficult. It’s a sensitive subject. You don’t want to sound like you’re preaching to someone. The angle of the song is: Maybe we don’t understand each other, maybe we need to break down the barriers and have compassion for people who had a rough childhood. The violence is caused because they haven’t had the nurturing and the love that they need. That’s where it starts. So we need to help everybody in the community to be more cared for. I’m involved in some organizations in Bermuda who help to inspire the youth there, because if they don’t have something positive to put their energy into, it turns negative. We help to find them their creative voices and stuff like that.”Heather Nova (165)

“It’s something you wish to hang on to, something you want to keep because you love it so much, but sometimes it’s better to let it go, especially because you realize that it can’t last. I think that is something that describes a lot of situations. It can be love. It can be a friend. It can be just a moment, a feeling… basically anything.”Heather Nova (166)

“The song was inspired by this guy Matt George who was a surfer in California. When he heard about the tsunami in Indonesia, he wanted to go out to help, to give something back. He took a bunch of friends, hired a boat and went out to the outer islands that weren’t being served by the major aid agencies. That started his organization called “Last Mile” which now serves natural disaster areas by serving the areas the main aid organizations can’t reach. The title came from something Matt said when he looked into the eyes of people he served, that it lifted him to higher ground.”Heather Nova (167)

“It was really great to realize, after being part of a couple for so long, you know, there’s a lot of fear around separation when you’re with somebody. And when I realized that it was actually fine. And I actually started to realize there was a certain peace that I felt within myself. And I was reconnecting with myself and realizing I was okay. And it felt good. And that I could be in the world on my own, and there were benefits to that. That was when I wrote “Rewild Me” because it was really through my connection with nature, the natural world that I found this extra kind of peace. I’m fascinated by our, our relationship with nature in the sense that we, we have this animal part of ourselves, we are animals, and yet we’re so far from that in our urban, technological lifestyles. So that now there’s even been these terms coined like Rewilding and Earthing and Grounding, and people are running workshops in nature therapy and it kind of blows my mind because it’s like, well, this is just what we’re naturally born to do. But it’s a sign of the times that we’ve become so removed from that, that we now need terminology and designated retreats to bring us back to that very essential, very simple fact that our souls cry out for that connection with nature and it is healing and it is rejuvenating. And it does help us to remember who we are.”Heather Nova (1312)

“I wrote it for my sister. It’s really saying exactly that we look around at other people and think that they have their shit together. And you know, social media even makes that worse because everybody posts their shiny, happy pictures of themselves when they’re looking at their best and life looks perfect for them. But everybody’s got something, everybody’s struggling. Everybody’s dealing with some kind of pain or self doubt. And I think the thing to recognize is that that’s just part of being human. When you’re broken. It’s like, you’re able to, to let the light in and be real and be vulnerable. Because really, when you’re vulnerable, that’s when you’re able to accept love and connection with other people.”Heather Nova (1312)

“The album [Pearl – Ed] covers a wide range of emotion and experience that was going on in my life so yeah I went through a separation divorce and that was a pretty big deal because I’d been married for more than 20 years and the song that really is about that is the first song on the record which is one of my favorite ones on the album. It’s called “The Wounds We Bled” and it’s really a look at change, life change, even difficult change as something positive because everything is a state of mind, right? It’s however you look at it and I think that when you realize that you’ve made choices in your life, even the painful ones, you’ve chosen that somehow, whether it’s consciously or unconsciously, then you’re able to accept, “okay I needed to do that, I needed to go through that pain in order to learn something, or in order to grow, or in order to just come out the other side and be filled with new life” and so that song is a kind of philosophical take on it I guess.”Heather Nova (1312)