Tia Siller wrote the words for I Hope You Dance about resilience in a hard time.

In an interview with Songwriter Universe magazine, Sillers explained that she was going through a painful divorce when she wrote this song. Said Sillers: “For ‘I Hope You Dance,’ I had written the opening line, ‘I hope you never lose your sense of wonder. I had just broken up with someone, going through a brutal divorce. I needed to get away, so I went to a beach on the Florida Gulf Coast. Sitting on the beach and reflecting about the breakup, I felt so small and inconsequential. But out of this difficult time came the inspiration to write ‘I Hope You Dance.’ As I was leaving the beach, I remember thinking that things weren’t really so bad, that I would get through it. That’s when I came up with the line, ‘I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.'”

Songfacts