September 5, 2001
Songwriter sings from experience
Sara Anderson folk album benefits WRC
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Singer and songwriter Sara Anderson has a passion for music and a passion to help women survive domestic violence.
The recent release of her compact disc "Wellworn Timber" merges both passions into a dynamic duo: beautiful music and powerful advocacy.
Anderson, who is donating half of the proceeds from her disc's sales to the Women's Resource Center in Traverse City, channeled her creativity and years of professional songwriting experience into helping other women.
A survivor of domestic violence herself, she turned to her family for help when she left an abusive marriage after 12 years. Based on her personal experience plus volunteering and now working as a paid shelter advocate for the Women's Resource Center, she knows how challenging it can be to escape the cycle of domestic violence.
"My reasons for staying were that I didn't want to take my daughter's house apart," Anderson said, who came to Traverse City from Norway in 1994, using the excuse of an ill family member to escape her home. "I realized that the first time he struck me, he took the house apart."
When she first settled in Traverse City with family members, she attended empowerment sessions at the shelter every week. That experience helped her begin rebuilding her life.
"Suddenly there were 20 women from all walks of life and we all had a common bond of being afraid in our home," said Anderson, who said her experience of violence was new because she grew up in a peaceful home.
"We also had that common bond of remembering who we were because domestic violence begins very subtly with a constant making you wrong in every move. You begin little by little to buy into it."
Anderson soon turned to songwriting for solace and a form of therapy. The title song of her compact disc grew out of those efforts.
"Writing Wellworn Timber was a healthy experience for me," Anderson recalled. "I did the song as music therapy for me."
In keeping with the Women's Resource Center's policy, Anderson waited a few years before coming back to volunteer, later taking on a staff position. Her devotion to helping other women and determination to give back to those who helped her is common among domestic violence survivors, said Mary Lee Lord, executive director of the Women's Resource Center.
"It's not at all uncommon when women are survivors, they really want to give back," Lord noted. "I just think the disc is outstanding, very exciting, and it is nice to have someone of her talent doing something like this. It is a form of advocacy or counseling to listen to a CD or record with songs like that."
Anderson, an Iowa native, has deep ties to the Traverse City artistic community, starting when a singing tour brought her here for New Year's in 1972. She came back for three-month engagements during the summer for years, becoming a regular at the Top of the Park, winning fans with her original compositions and beautiful singing voice.
When she fled her marriage seven years ago, she came to stay with her parents and sister who had previously moved here. She had many fond memories of the area and was pleased to return.
"One of the first public service engagements I did was for Ted Okerstrom, the manager of the Park Place Hotel," said Anderson, who first began touring in 1969. "He sent me down to sing and raise awareness of the Open Space, which was just a vacant lot at the time and used to have a canning factory there."
Anderson used her ties to the community to tap local musicians Glenn Wolff and Third Coast for help with the disc, which also includes her daughter, Tove Johanne.
The 16 songs on the disc are all original compositions and many reflect Anderson's folk singing roots. A two-song series, Peacekeeper, tells the story of two of her Norwegian cousins' experience as part of a United Nations peacekeeping forces.
"One cousin served in Beirut and the other in Sarajevo," she said. "It was not a great experience."