music, therapy, and me

I am a vintage music therapist. This is something that I take some pride in because it takes grit and guts and a love for this profession to be able to claim 31 years in this role. It really does. In my career, I have not been able to find a music therapy job in the place I wanted to work, I have had to move for schooling and for work, I have taken pay cuts to move into a music therapy role, I have lived paycheck to paycheck, and I have finally become financially stable and successful. I have lived through significant changes in education and clinical training with our professional organization, and I have volunteered many ideas and hours for that same organization. I am a vintage music therapist. Being an older music therapist has perks and benefits, but it also has drawbacks. I am a member of Gen X - those latchkey kids who had moms who worked and who had lots of independent hours to fill. We are not easily defined as a group, and that's okay with me. I am also an oldest child of...

I am starting to think that my random number generator is a bit biased towards the posts I wrote in 2016 since this is the second number spat out in two weeks that came from that particular year. Today's sentimental post comes from October 21, 2016 .  On October 20th, I had a long day at work where I just had to sit in my room by myself. As a result, I was looking for some things to keep myself occupied, and I looked for the movie Alive Inside  - you know the one - the one with Henry who changes when he gets to listen to an iPod filled with music that he knows. It was the first and only time I have watched that movie. Once was enough to get the general idea of the movie and to come up with my personal opinion about it. Read a little bit about my opinion on the post at this link . I think the issues that so many of us have with this particular movie is that it seems to promise that an iPod will wake up our loved ones and restore them to communicate with us. We music therapists ...

Today's sentimental post is another short one. The random number generator spat out #611 which happened on August 13, 2014. (You can find that post here.)  I am enjoying the opportunity to glance back at various thoughts and days and ideas that I experienced way back. This was an interesting memory as it brought up all sorts of things about being told different things every single time I went anywhere near anyone. Here was what was happening. We had been through about a year of renovations and having to provide music therapy sessions in five different buildings. We were told that the music and art therapy programs were going to be in their permanent homes on this day, but it did not happen. Most of what we were told by administrators in this period of time did not happen. All of those administrators are no longer with the company, but they caused significant damage while they were in charge. We have been without the principals that we had at that point for almost two years now, and...

I am waffling these days about blogging. Not about whether I blog or not, but more about what is important to write about. I am always interested in my readers. Who are you? What sort of things are challenging to you, as humans, as music therapists, (as my sister,) and as professionals? I just reupped my membership in the American Music Therapy Association. This is an essential part of my job and my professional life. It always has been and always will be. I cannot imagine being a music therapist without being a member of my national organization. I know that there are problems with this group, but there are problems with every single institution that is out there in the world of humanity. There are always things that we can do to become better for each other. I find that it is easier to get things changed from within than from without, so I am member. I am also a member of AMTA because I am an internship director and supervising music therapist. I cannot train interns without being a ...