This Too Shall Pass

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Eva Ren ’27

She still remembers those Sunday mornings vividly. The small rush of her family getting ready, always being a little late, and the sunlight shining directly onto her forehead through the car windows. The music playing through the radio would be muffled by the sounds of her and her sibling’s laughter from the back seat. By the time they finally arrived at church, the service was already halfway through and the announcements long over, but Nicole didn’t mind. They got there just in time for the music, her favorite part. To her, the church felt alive as she stepped inside. The tambourines shook, the piano overfilled with joy as the choir of voices spread like roots through the soil of memory. “I’ve always been raised in music,” said Nicole Williams—a dance teacher at Northfield Mount Hermon—recalling the sounds that shaped her childhood, such as the music from her dad’s band. Almost like it was woven into her DNA, her dad’s entire side of the family could sing—not just in a casual humming way, but in the way that could braid grief and hope together. For Nicole, those mornings became the rhythm of her life throughout childhood, where music was memory and faith was sound. Years later, when she first heard “This Too Shall Pass” by India Arie, it felt like coming home. During one of the most difficult times of her life, it appeared in a playlist filled with inspiring, uplifting songs that she listened to every day. These songs reflected how she wanted to feel, even if it wasn’t how she felt at the time. “These words are kind of like an affirmation,” says Nicole. “Even if you don’t already believe it, you can eventually get yourself out of a place that is not the best.” It reminded her that even the heaviest moments are temporary, and that time has a quiet way of softening what once felt impossible to endure. Playing this song on repeat—belting it in the car or shower—became a ritual of healing for Nicole, a simple act of resilience. Throughout the song, India Arie repeatedly sings the title line, this too shall pass, not only reciting a mantra of strength to herself but also delivering a testimony to others in the Black church. Her voice carries a quiet authority, soft with vulnerability yet grounded in power. Even though the sound emerges from a recorded track, it fills the room with the warmth of something alive, hopeful, and deeply human. She opens the song with a ballad. The harmony of her voice rises and falls in pitch with every piano key. Even without saying any words at first, she draws you in, as if inviting you to follow her on a journey through life and reminding you that after countless battles, the moment of clarity will eventually be placed in front of you. “This Too Shall Pass” first appeared in Arie’s 2006 album Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationships. For Nicole, hearing that album for the first time felt like stepping into something deeply familiar. The sense of spirituality without strict doctrine resonated with her almost instantly. “Growing up in a Black church is a religion,” she says, “but it’s also a culture.” She didn’t have to understand every word or subscribe to every spiritual belief to experience the waves of emotion the songs brought over her. Arie’s music, shaped by her spirituality and heritage, echoed the same environment that once surrounded Nicole. Arie was raised in a family of singers, preachers, and storytellers. In an interview with The Success, she describes music as “something ancestral”, a spiritual inheritance passed down through generations. Though she isn’t religious in the traditional sense, her songs are rooted in self-care, connection, and truth. When Arie’s voice swells in the chorus, it rises like a tree reaching toward the sunlight, each note branching outward as the harmony of other voices joins her. Nicole can almost feel herself transported back to the warmth, rhythm, and sense of belonging she once felt on Sunday mornings in the Black church. Listening to “This Too Shall Pass” stirs not only Nicole’s own personal memories, but also the echoes of something much older: a message of hope and resilience that runs through African American history. The song’s clear narrative arc mirrors the teachings of the Black church, where music is never just music. It’s a form of survival, a prayer that turns suffering into strength and faith. Arie’s writing starts from a place of confessions filled with self-doubt, sometimes the fear is so loud in my head, to spiritual surrender, it’s when I pray for healing in my heart, before reaching a moment of clarity. All of a sudden, I realized that it only hurts worse to fight it. Spiritual elements and lyrics, like “angels” and “ancestors,” serve as reminders from her people centuries before. This too shall pass. Their struggles of slavery and segregation passed, so now she, too, can make her own personal struggles pass. The deep nostalgia that runs through every note of “This Too Shall Pass” comes from all the different places and periods in Nicole’s life. It carries the echoes of her childhood Sundays and the laughter of her family, always running late but never missing the music. It hums with the memory of her father’s band and the ancestral voices that continue to sing through her. For Nicole, the song is a vessel that holds both the ache of her hardest moments and the warmth of the home she carries within her. The nostalgia it evokes is not just for the past, but for the version of herself who once clung to the song for hope, and who has now arrived at the peace she once prayed for. “Back when I was on the other side of it, I was hopeful that I would feel that way at some point,” she said. “And now that I do, I know this too shall pass, because it did pass.” There’s a quiet peace in her voice, a tone that carries gratitude and movement, each word follows the next with purpose, as life itself keeps singing forward.