Bloom

Back in the Tractor Pull Divas days I had the pleasure of being introduced to Donna Bartos.   Donna had a vision to prevent teen dating abuse before it even started.  Through years of her tireless work, advocacy and a team she built around her, those efforts have grown into the organization now known as Bloom365. 

TPD was honored to support those early advocacy and fundraising efforts through a series of really fun shows she put on with the great folks at Hard Rock Café.  At each one of those shows, Donna kept planting a seed and encouraging me to write a song focused on these ideas.

After several years of encouragement, I finally wrote the song “Bloom” and gave Donna a really rough demo recording.   In a way that demo was an implied promise of an intent to record and release the song.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after that TPD came to a close before we ever had a chance to do any type of proper recording of the song. 

All these years later, I’m excited to finally have the song recorded.  As it turned out, I was even lucky enough to have 3/5ths of TPD play on the recording!  (Thank you, Mark & Randy.  It has always been a privilege and pleasure making music with you guys.) 

Donna, I apologize for how long it’s taken to follow through.  Blessings on your continued, passionate work to end teen dating violence and the root lies and destructive beliefs that allow it to continue. 

And for all of us that might feel like we are stuck or withering on the vine, I pray for the courage to uproot the lies and the audacity to believe that we were truly made to bloom.