The Soul Companion Songfacts says: Between the release of her 2010 album The Age Of Miracles and 2012’s Ashes and Roses, Mary Chapin Carpenter was forced to endure more than her share of heartache. “They say that the worst, the most traumatic things that people can go through in their lives are a divorce, the loss of a parent and serious illness,” she said. “All of those things have happened to me in the last few years. So these are the songs that came about when I started to write,” continued Carpenter. “To try and push them away, or write about something else, did not seem possible. Songwriting is what I do. This is how I make sense of things, it’s how I seek connection and make my way through the world. Ashes and Roses is a record about grief and loss,” she concluded, “but it has an arc. It does go from night into day. I feel like it travels through some of the hardest, most difficult territory to a place of renewal. It speaks to that journey as it tries to describe what is seen and felt and experienced along the way. And one does get to the other side”. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.