Facebook/The Secret Sisters
Our condolences go out to sibling duo The Secret Sisters, who have lost both of their grandmothers in the last two weeks. They each passed away after fighting a battle with cancer. The loss has been staggering for the duo’s Lydia and Laura Rogers.
In a post on their Facebook page, they write, “Bear with us. We are mourning.”
RELATED: Music legend’s passing prompts outpouring of grief from country community
The post goes on to detail the pivotal role their grandmothers played in their lives.
It reads, “Two women, born to large, poor families. Women who married young, and raised their children in a tiny town in rural Alabama. Women whose son and daughter would meet, marry and make us. Two women who played a monumental role in raising us while our parents worked … Indeed, we feel like we’ve lost two of our mother figures.”
RELATED: This song captures the living hell of hiding a heartache
The tribute continues with an admission of how much these losses hurt for them.
They write, “Pain is usually a sign that something truly mattered. They instructed us in strength, wisdom, common sense, humility, contentment, determination, resilience, simplicity, faith, family, loyalty, beauty, confidence, humility … anything good or honest in our own character is because of their sway in our lives. We have worked to make sure that what we do in the world would first please them. We have lived to make them proud.”
The Secret Sisters’ latest album, “You Don’t Own Me Anymore,” actually features old photographs of their grandmothers as the artwork. The project was born out of a tough time for the duo. A falling out with a business associate left them in a tough spot financially, and they thought they might not ever make music again. They fought back to make the new album, and they took inspiration from their grandmothers’ fighting spirits while recording the music.
They say, “What we see this morning—upon finding ourselves without our matriarchs—is that although we believed our third record to be about a hard situation that happened to us … it was so much more about us happening to a hard situation. More than any other thing, the lyrics were about us … two women who can confidently and kindly navigate the challenges that threatened to break us. And we can say for certain that we learned that skill from them.”
The Secret Sisters will carry their grandmothers’ memory with them as they head to New York City for the Grammy Awards later this month. The album they helped inspire, “You Don’t Own Me Anymore,” has been nominated for the Best Folk Album Grammy.
The Rogers sisters hope their fans will join them in paying tribute to their grandmothers as well.
“In their loving memory, we ask that if any part of our third album has touched you, take a moment today to think of them,” they write. “Utter a prayer, or smile to yourself, or call your own grandmother, or play our songs at a high volume and shout at the top of your lungs to whatever hard thing you’re afraid of … ‘You Don’t Own Me Anymore!'”
What a touching tribute to two amazing women!
Also, check out this video The Secret Sisters posted about a month ago. It shows you just how deep music runs in the Rogers family as the girls’ father and his bluegrass band sing to their now late grandmother, Marcie, on her 87th birthday just last month.
