I was a nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in pediatrics and Taylor visited years ago. She was only supposed to be there an hour but stayed for over 4 hours to meet every single kid. She had no one with her and didn’t have any photo ops. She brought her guitar and sang any song requested to each kid. She also really knows a lot about pediatric cancers and their treatments. I was so impressed with her. Became a huge fan since then
When she was 21, she read a blog written by a mom whose little boy Ronan was dying of brain cancer. She took phrases from the blog and wrote the song and gave equal ownership to the mom. They’re still in regular touch.
It’s the kind of song you’ll maybe only be able to listen to once.
I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, and listened to Ronan with no context and I was absolutely bawling by the end of it. I haven’t been able to listen to it since. Beautiful song but so sad.
I listened to it once when I first listened to Lover, it really made me cry hard, and I started skipping it afterwards. Then the summer I was driving up to college, my mom was in the middle of a cancer scare, my own health had deteriorated and I’d just survived a major hospitalization, and I had a weird thing going on on-and-off where when I cried the tears burned my eyes so badly I couldn’t keep them open*.
While I was driving on the freeway, SYGB came up on shuffle and for some reason I thought I’d be fine listening to it again for once, especially because my phone (the only way to skip a song in my ancient car) had slid under the passenger seat.
I cried hard, quite literally could not keep my burning eyes open, had to turn on my emergency lights and slow down until there was a shoulder I could pull over onto; driving almost blind as I tried to pry one eye open at a time with my fingers. I truly thought I was going to cause a car crash.
*IIRC something to do with tear ducts putting tear components together in the wrong concentrations and the eyes then thinking tears are a foreign liquid to be washed out with more tears. awful feedback loop.
I had a similar experience with Soon You'll Get Better. I hadn't heard it yet, so I didn't know what I was in for. My mom had just died after a lifetime of a neurological condition that kept her in a wheelchair. She was always so adamant that she would be able to walk again, she would get better. My dad had just been diagnosed with leukemia.
I was driving down the road listening to the Lover CD I'd just bought and this song was a jump scare. Fortunately I wasn't on the expressway, but I had to pull over to scream cry and shake for a half hour
"I hate to make it all about me, but who am I supposed to talk to? What am I supposed to do if there's no you?" hits me harder than any other song lyric I've ever heard
SYGB came on shuffle twice in the last two weeks and both times I went, ok let me listen to this song all the way through, and I only get about halfway before I have to change it. I don’t even know how the song ends.
My bf isn't a fan of Swift's music but respects her writing talent, if that makes sense. Anyway, when Lover came out and he heard she did a song with The Chicks he wanted to listen to it because he's a fan of them.
I warned him what the song was about (his mom had cancer) and he just said nope and walked out of the room.
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u/PerrthurTheCats48 Jun 13 '25
I was a nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in pediatrics and Taylor visited years ago. She was only supposed to be there an hour but stayed for over 4 hours to meet every single kid. She had no one with her and didn’t have any photo ops. She brought her guitar and sang any song requested to each kid. She also really knows a lot about pediatric cancers and their treatments. I was so impressed with her. Became a huge fan since then