On Friday, the Shining Stars Foundation released a video of Sophia Forga, 12, singing a song she wrote earlier this year.

The song, “Do you have cancer?” was recorded at the Shining Stars Foundation’s 2020 Winter Games in Aspen earlier this month. But Forga said she created the song at home in Colorado Springs in January to help people understand that we can all get through our problems, no matter what they are, together.

Forga said she wrote the song after she’d been bullied at school for not being able to partake in the same activities as other kids, and on the same day she found out the months of chemotherapy treatment she’d gone through hadn’t shrunk the size of her brain tumor.

---

---

“I never planned on having cancer and none of the other kids did either,” Forga said. “I know people don’t understand what we go through, but we all have problems and they’re all different and that doesn’t mean we can’t work through them together.”

Forga said she’s been singing for about four years but that she’s mostly a writer, often putting her ideas and feelings down on paper as songs and stories.

---

---

She said she’s written another song about being frustrated with her chemo treatments and how they make her feel, but that you can’t let frustration bring you down.

Forga said she plans to create more videos with her songs to help spread positive messages and to inspire hope in others and in herself.

“I wanted to make a video for a long time but didn’t have the courage to do it,” Sophia said. “I hope people will see it and know everything’s going to be OK.”

mvincent@aspentimes.com