Teens sing inspiring stories for charity CD

A European School student is among a handful of young people in Luxembourg to have her song feature on a CD about experiences with cancer and rare illness.

Lena, 16, composed the piano score and lyrics to the song “It's gonna be long” to tell her story of leukaemia and bring hope to other young people.

“The chorus 'It's gonna be long', is what the doctor told me when he gave me the diagnosis. He said 'it's gonna be long and hard but you're going to make it',” Lena told wort.lu/en, adding: “For me, it's not a problem talking about it because I think it's important for people who live the same thing to hear stories that end well.”

Lena was one of eight young people whose work from a music therapy class offered by Luxembourg charity Fondatioun Kriibskrank Kanner can be heard on the CD 'Together, we can be heroes', which was launched on Thursday.

“Last year, we offered music therapy classes. We realised that we had so many beautiful things coming out of it that we wanted to release a CD to show that music can help young people,” Anne Goeres from the Fondatioun Kriibskrank Kanner said, adding: “It's the first time we've done anything like this because normally we work to support children with cancer or rare illnesses. We're not in the habit of releasing CDs.”

The other songs by Yannick, Thomas, Lola, Dany, Edgar, Andreia and Kevin show different aspects of the experiences the young people aged from 14 to 27 have lived, for example one song is about being placed in an artificial coma, and another is about their heart beat.

What all the songs have in common is their optimism and spirit of hope. The CD ends with a medley by all eight stars singing 'Together, we can be heroes', a song which was composed and donated to the charity by British musician Ged Ryan.

The CD can be purchased for 15 euros from Ernster book shops and Cactus supermarkets.

Fondatioun Kriibskrank Kanner was founded 25 years ago to support young people with cancer or rare diseases.

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