By Abigail Seaberg
Watching a loved one battle cancer is a harrowing experience to say the least. Country singer Jillian Cardarelli and singer and Outer Banks actor Charles Esten both know the feeling and used this shared experience to write Strong a country song dedicated to Cardarelli's mother who overcame her battle with cancer.
Read More"Hearing people's stories is what helped me decide to release the song as a single," she says. "There are so many people impacted by this disease, and we desperately need more solutions to save more lives."
For Esten, this project was inspired by his daughter Addie who was diagnosed with leukemia as a child. She, too, won her fight with cancer and is now a Division I soccer player.
"When someone you love is fighting cancer, you have to find some sort of strength. It's the kind of strength that you don't necessarily want to have to have, but at one time or another, you find out that you kind of need it in order to make it through," Esten told American Songwriter. "And in this song, we were able to lift that sort of strength up and truly celebrate it."
Healing with Music
Music can be a powerful way for people with cancer and their loved ones to process their emotions.
"I have found music and rock 'n' roll to be transformational," survivor Joel Naftelberg tells us.
Similarly, breast cancer survivor Marquina Iliev-Piselli channeled her love for music while undergoing chemotherapy in a unique way air guitar. The most helpful aspect of air guitar for Marquina was that it allowed her to become a different persona and separate from her body for a moment. Then, while undergoing chemotherapy, she would dress in different outfits in order to make herself feel better.
"Without air guitar, my treatment would have been incredibly sad," Marquina tells SurvivorNet. "Air guitar was the thing that brought me through. I recommend it highly. I air guitared in my chemo, and that saved my spirit. It makes it so that I don't look back on that time of fear."
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