Thoughtful Thursday: Dare to be Ourselves

Oh, Shirley Briggs. What a quotation I have here on my desk. It's simultaneously something that should (goblin) evident and is still challenging.

Be ourselves.

Personally, this is a lesson that I've learned over and over again. It brings back thoughts about junior high school when I was truly a tagalong. It brings back thoughts about high school where some of the folks that I knew at church pitied me and my "lack of friends." They really didn't know me at all, and my mother leaped to my defense and then supported my decision not to participate in their delusions and activities. She also pointed out to the one person who was insistent that I was socially inept that when my name was announced during the Senior award banquet, the entire auditorium erupted. When that person's daughter was announced, there was polite clapping. (Gotta love a mom who waits for her moment to prove her point!!)

Professionally, I think this is a lesson that we are still learning. Over and over again. When the founders of the profession started up, they tried really hard to make us part of the established medical/psychological structure. We had to prove ourselves to psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors in order to be considered "peers." We didn't get there. In my opinion, this is because we are not peers of those professionals. What we do is significantly different from what they do.

That is okay. In fact, it is important to understand. One of the best things about music therapy is that it is something unto itself. Sure, we can try to compare ourselves to other professionals, but, in the end, music therapy offers clients something unique from everything else. It is our job to show others how unique we are to those who make decisions about treatment, money, and hiring. That's where we often fail.

How do we demonstrate how unique and wonderful we are? We talk about what happens within the brain when music is used in therapy. We pull in information from other professions, and we make transfers into our own situations. We spend time talking to those who use music for different purposes, and we support them as folks who can do some of the work we cannot do. Then, we show as many people as we can that what we do is amazing.

Never apologize for "just being the music therapist." We are unique in what we know about humans and about music. Like the people in high school who had a skewed view about me and how I interacted with the world, it will take time to demonstrate to the naysayers of the world of our benefit, our value, and our necessity, but I believe we will get there...someday.