By The Way, I Forgive You is not an album about forgiveness in the easy sense—where someone has hurt you and then suddenly there’s a great reconciliation and a remorse-filled scene with two people running across the golden wheat field towards an embrace that somehow undoes a lifetime of pain and damage, as if the past has no meaning. It’s about radical acceptance (not to be confused with complacency) and unconditional love.

Whoever is reading this, your parents will die. You may have been hurt or loved by them, probably both. But can you forgive them for leaving in the end?

We are a powerful generation witnessing war and division like never before, yet somehow this

is the safest time to be alive in human history. Can we love one another as ourselves? More importantly, can we love ourselves at all?

The songs alone aren’t universal messages, they are personal stories of our parents and childhood, our divorces, oppressive religion, the fact that marriage is hard and having children is fucking terrifying, even the sting of death. It is the story of forgiveness, that despite all this keeps us innocently climbing out of bed every morning open to love—big terrible trembling love.

I don’t love you because you’ve done what I think you should do with your life. I love you whatever you do, but I’ve got a life to live too.

And, by the way, I forgive you.

Written by Brandi Carlile