Album Notes

When we are struggling with our emotions, struggling to understand or express how we feel, or find ourselves at the bottom of a deep dark hole, occasionally an artist will come along who manages to express what we cannot, who shines a ray of light into our darkness, who fills us with hope.

Hannah Elisabeth is not a girl who has always dreamed of being a superstar. You will never find her sitting at the piano with the writing of a chart-topping hit as her goal. For Hannah, music is about exploring her emotions, spending time with God and hoping to find a way to shine that ray of light for others.

Hannah has always loved to sing and grew up in a church environment rich with music. Her love for singing was enhanced when she began to learn the piano, and then again at the age of twelve when she decided to create her own song rather than simply learning other people’s. It came naturally to Hannah to sing about God, and also to God. The music that had surrounded her for her whole life flowed out onto paper, and the feeling of creating a song from scratch saw her writing more and more.

Hannah’s focus, however, broadened in the following years, when a friend’s cancer diagnosis left her feeling helpless and insignificant; she felt an overwhelming urge to pour her emotions into song. She wanted to strengthen her friend, to bring her hope. So she began to write a song, combining her faith in God with her love for her friend and believing with all her heart for her friend to be healed. Something about writing this way felt different; like she had tapped into something deeper, something more than just a nice song.

Hannah started to think about how many people out there may have been in a similar situation to her own or to her friend’s – and she began writing songs for them, hoping to bring a new perspective and give them hope.

Looking back, Hannah thinks that she perhaps found it easy to write for others and to provide strength and hope because life had always been good for her. Surrounded by loving family and friends, things were going well and life was good. And then all of a sudden, life was not so good.

In October 2009, Hannah’s husband and best friend of 8 years decided to leave. He just walked away. She kept thinking she would wake up and find that it had all been a dream. But he was gone, and Hannah’s entire world was turned upside down. She stopped writing songs for nearly a year - how could she encourage people with her music, how could she give them strength, when she wasn’t strong anymore, when she was broken?

Hannah did try to write a song – and she wanted it to be amazing. She wanted to write about surviving and moving on and being strong. But no song would come, only tears. Eventually she gave up trying to write something and simply placed her fingers on the keys and began to play. And as she played, God spoke to her. She started to sing. It was as if, through her own voice, he was singing to her. Suddenly she felt an incredible sense of peace. She knew that she didn’t have to be strong on her own. She didn’t have to pretend to be okay. She was allowed to be broken for a little while. All she had to do was give her situation to God, and let him be strong for her. The song that Hannah found herself singing that day was I Am Here. And her dream is that other people who are feeling broken find the same peace and hope that she did, when she first heard this song.