music, therapy, and me

Hello. My social media name is MJ, and I am a middle-aged woman who is also a music therapist. I work with persons with a variety of complex diagnoses, and I have a huge interest in all things music therapy clinical training. I am an internship director as well as a staff music therapist, and I am currently recovering from Influenza A - something that is going through my facility and my communities right now. I am currently feeling very tired, and I have neglected my writing habit woefully for the entire past week - something that is very unusual for me. The title of this blog is music, therapy, and me , so if you are here, I assume that you are interested in one or more of these categories. I know my sister reads the blog occasionally - I assume that she is more interested in the me  part of the blog than the other two categories, but I haven't really asked her about that... Hey, sissa!! I have been writing this blog for the past 17 years, and my writing habits have varied over al...

It is Wednesday again, and I am finding that I need a bit of an attitude check as I head into the busiest day of my week...every week. At the end of today, I will have done more group sessions than are ahead of me. That never feels like a good thing when it is 4:15 am on a Wednesday morning, but it feels great when it is 4 am on Thursday. We have seven groups today - six of the required groups and one that I have added because I wanted to do something more for some of my clients. Seven groups. This is also the day that I do the most group sessions in my clinic. I lead three of the groups, my intern leads three of the groups, and the last group is musical support, so we work together. I have no prospective interns coming in this month or in January, so it looks like I will be returning to full-time therapy in the new year. In some ways, that role is easier than the role I have right now. I am both looking forward to and dreading that switch back into the full time therapist role - mainl...

Most of the posts that I have written over the past several years have been me-focused. Of course, this blog actually functions as my online journal, so the "me" parts are part of how I identify as a human and as a music therapist. I have a feeling that there are times when people are just not as interested in my personal feelings as they are in my ideas and opinions about music and therapy. I try to focus on music therapy things on four days of the week, but I forget sometimes (like yesterday) and end up nattering on and on about what is happening in my life or about bullet journaling or about my back aches. I figure three days of personal stuff is plenty for this blog. So, if you are interested in specific posts, here is the way I approach my writing (most of the time - I am striving to get back into a set pattern of topics): Sunday - Synthesis Sunday - I like to think about something and try to figure out my stances on that topic. There is some news from AMTA that was rele...