music, therapy, and me

I figure that it might be time for a reintroduction to music, therapy, and me. If you have been here for a long time, then you know quite a bit about me. If you are a newer reader, then you may not know much about what I do, where I've been, or where I get my ideas. So, allow me to introduce myself. I am a long-term music therapist. I started my music therapy studies back in the last century, and I have been employed as a music therapist for 32 of my 34 years as a professional. For the other two years, I had job descriptions that were not specifically music therapist but in related fields. I have spent 29 years at my current job, working with children, adolescents, and young adults with developmental, intellectual, and psychiatric diagnoses. I work in a school associated with both local school districts and the psychiatric residential treatment facility where the school is housed. In that time, I have been through many policy changes, changes in the types of kids that we serve, and...

When I started this blog forever ago, I wanted to find a title that would help me focus on what I really wanted to write about - the complexities of being a music therapist in this world. There are three pieces of this blog, and I find that, for the past year at least, I have been focusing more and more on the last part of this blog title - the me part. I will still be writing about me - that's a part of this entire blog, after all, - but I want to also up my post count on the other two parts of this blog. I already have TME Tuesdays going, but I think I want to go back to what I used to do - offering ideas to you, fellow music therapist! I got away from that because I got sucked into some social media trolling that insisted that it was the responsibility of music therapists to give ideas and intellectual property to other music therapists without the expectation of payment. I find that I miss the opportunity to share ideas here, so I think I will go back to offering ideas - not th...