I wrote “You Are Loved” years ago, when my soulmate Kerrin came into my life. She’d faced some hard times and I so admired her courage and perseverance that I wanted her to know how important she was and how inspiring her story was and continues to be. It’s one thing to say “I love you” to someone, but, to me, saying “You are loved” is somehow a stronger statement. I wanted Kerrin to know — and I’m sure you could say the same about people essential to your own life stories — that she. Was. Loved. That’s where the song began. I couldn’t have imagined on the day I sang it to her when we took a break from rollerblading on the Charles River bike path that that simple message would one day resonate for so many others.

When I gave the lyric to another soulmate, the singularly gifted Justin Jaymes, and he turned the words into something sweeter than Tupelo honey, I knew that we had something. When my movie Heavenly Angle screened at the Maine International Film Festival both in Waterville and Bar Harbor, I casually mentioned in an interview that I’d be shooting a video for “You Are Loved” and folks turned out in droves and Bar Harbor was where the party started. Followed by filming in Golden View Health Care Center in Meredith, New Hampshire, and then in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, and then in Santa Monica, California. I wanted to have “real people” doing the dance and that’s what we got, a whole conga line of them. I love the exuberance every woman, man, boy and girl, brought to the mix and I think that that’s part of what makes the video so inviting.

So here’s your invitation to sing along and do your own air-heart dance to whoever you think needs to know that she or he is loved. And you, too; it’s true for you as well:

You are loved
You are loved
You are la la la la la la la la la la loved

And don’t you forget it.