Throughout the pandemic health care workers have emerged into the spotlight as our everyday heroes.
A career health care aide, Kelly Delaney Pyke, wanted to shine a light on these people and acknowledge them, so one day she sat down and wrote a song from start to finish.
“They’re great people and they have great intentions and lots of love and they really want to do what’s best for everybody’s family,” said the 51-year-old Sylvan Laker.
Pyke’s “Hearts and Heros” is an almost seven minute tribute to those working in the health care industry for what they do not just during this time, but always.
“Everybody who’s out there like people are just busting their backs and they need to be acknowledged,” Pyke said. “We owe them a thank you.”
A writer of poetry and journals Pyke didn’t start putting her words to the piano until a string of tragic events changed her life leading her to turn to music as a type of therapy.
She says she is musical, but she would never refer to herself as a musician.
“I took to the piano to try and learn, but what started happening was really, really unique and I would play something and I would like the way I heard it so them I would just sing something and then it would start writing and then all of a sudden there you have it another song,” explained Pyke.
She has completed around 20 songs of various messaging with majority of them being posted on to YouTube for her family members to see.
Her “messages with musical content” started out as a way for her to personally deal with her grief and mental health, but she is now ready to take her messages public.
“This coming out of myself and exposing myself is new to me, it’s uncomfortable, but so is everything else new,” says Pyke.
Pyke says she wants to use her writing as a way to help people become more aware of the struggles people go through and redefine the misunderstood views society holds over mental health.
“I also want to make my son’s death count for something and if I’ve become a new me disadvantaged from all of that I’d just like to make something positive from it,” she added.
“If he was ever going to look down on me I wouldn’t want him feeling like I was destroyed.”
She says her son and late father were both musicians and believes the two of them are keeping the love of music inside her alive.
Her musical pieces range from life, to grieving, to mental health with more written pieces ready to be brought to life and more writing being done whenever the inspiration strikes.
“Hearts and Heros” along with her other pieces can be found on the Kelly Delaney Pyke YouTube channel.