music, therapy, and me

Forgive me as I engage in some vague discussions about various topics that I do not want to publish... I have a decision to make about something going on in my life that will shunt me off into a direction different than the one that I have been envisioning lately. I have various and sundry things to think about, and I have to figure stuff out a bit in order to make this decision. When I am faced with critical decisions about my life and what I will be doing with said life, I have several systems that I use to make the entire process easier on me and my loved ones. Let's talk about those systems today... (I promise that this next paragraph will make sense - eventually. Just bear with me, okay??) I am a paper planner. I use my books in several ways - as a journal, as a calendar, as a task organizer. In the back of my books, I keep pages blank to use as needed for whatever else I need to work through. The books that I have currently are being used up as much as possible before I start...

I can tell you, I love the quiet. I have not turned on a television for over a week now, and the lack of commercials and noise has been wonderful. I have streamed some content, but I have not touched the television remote at all. I am enjoying a bit of quiet. This is not sustainable, and I know that, but I am enjoying it all the same. When I am at my mother's house, we watch what she wants to watch. If I want to be near her, then I have to watch Hudson and Rex , and All Creatures Great and Small  (not my thing AT ALL), and Blue Skies , and all sorts of shows that I do not have access to in my streaming world. So, I tend to watch my Netflix dramas upstairs in the sauna room with western light access where it has not dipped below 75 and tends to remain around 80 degrees all the time. Not that I'm complaining (but I really am!). I find that silence is what I need to refresh my creativity and my need for music. When I am constantly surrounded by noise (even noise selected by me and...

Let's dive into the archives for this week's post. Here we go in our way back machine... There are so many ways that we, as music therapists, can adapt and apply music and different elements to support our clients' journeys towards their therapeutic goals. I find that writing things down helps me remember the options available to me when singing and playing a song in sessions, so this is how I think of music. This particular format is not something that everyone relates to, but it fits my brain very well. Each of the elements of music that I know about is on this chart, and I think through my options. When I am using songs in therapy sessions, I can think through the work I've already done, and that thinking helps me be a more effective music therapist (in my opinion!). So, this song, Old Friends , performed by Simon and Garfunkel, is one that is not familiar to many of my clients. If using it in a session, I would first need to introduce the song to them. I do this by ...

It was move-in week in my college town, so I know that classes are getting started and students are getting back into the routine of school and all the things that come with being a music therapy student. So, if you are a teacher or a music therapy student, check out this format for thinking through how you can develop ideas for use in pre-internship, internship, and professional clinical interactions with clients. Here is the format along with an explanation. Please note that this was directed towards interns working at my former workplace, so things might not work for every population served. I think it is a good way to think through the process of doing things in the clinic, and the credit for this goes partially to me and mostly to my supervisors over the years who made me do most of these processes and thought exercises over the years. Here goes... (By the way, comments, questions, and criticism are welcome here. Let me know what I am missing, what you have never had to do, and wh...

Creativity Camp is finished, so it is time for my next projects! I tend to do this to myself, but I enjoy having several projects going at the same time. In addition to meetings and conferences, I have some written projects to produce. All of this as I try to figure out if I have enough ideas to sustain my life as a music therapy consultant with a small business. It has been almost a month since I retired from my full-time job as a music therapist in a psychiatric residential treatment facility school. I have not received my first pension payment yet - it is due to arrive in nine days - so, I am currently running my life on my savings. I am paying lots of money for my health insurance, and I am nervous about how I will survive financially during the next couple of months, but I am trying to sustain a new quiet life. One where I can create, interact, support, and benefit fellow music therapists from my home with a bit more freedom than my recent job offered. In 17 days, we will be gathe...

In a week and a half, I will be the only inhabitant of my therapy suite. One of my suitemates is retiring, and the other accepted a great, new job and will also be leaving. This will mean that I will have that space all to myself again, and I am in a state of anticipatory grief. I have worked with these co-workers for my entire time at my current job, and I am also getting ready to retire, so there are lots of feelings swirling around and in me at the moment. I find that anticipatory grief is the worst state for me. Knowing that something is going to happen and having to get used to the idea is more difficult than being thrown into grief. (Now, please know that this is my opinion rather than a fact, so you are encouraged to form and express your own opinions about what I say - any time or any topic!) Knowing that my co-workers are leaving is hard to process, especially when I still have to see them for the next week and a half. I have not told my clients that I am retiring from this jo...

I forgot to take my medications last night until about 2 hours later than usual. These are my big, pain relief, nerve dulling medications that affect my sleep, awareness, and response time, so it is a pretty big deal when I forget them. I opened my eyes when the alarm light turned on at 4am, but I also did not get out of bed until almost 5am. My brain is still fuzzy, and my eyes don't focus right until the medication starts to wear off. So, that means that today will be an even later day. Today is a four-group day. Three of my four groups have already been with me this week, so I have to come up with something new for them to do when they are in the music therapy session. The other group is my once-per-week group, so they haven't explored any of the things that I have available right now - yet. So, the first thing that I have to do is to figure out what I am going to do with my clients. They went through a series of silly songs with me on Tuesday, so I am thinking I will bring ...

It is Wednesday morning - very early. I have not been sleeping as much as I like lately. This will be helpful next Sunday when my part of the world changes to Daylight Savings Time (ugh!), but it is not really helpful right now. Last night, things were complicated by high winds and blizzardy conditions at my home. Things were wuthering all over the place, and my neighbors have a trash bin in their backyard that had a banging lid each time the wind caught it. (The wind caught it many times!) The one good thing about this particular blizzard is that my power has not gone out... yet. I am really hoping that I will not have to go out into the high winds, but schools are not closing around here. I will plan on going really slowly as I travel the 50 miles to work this morning. The winds are going at 30 miles per hour with gusts every couple of seconds that are around 60 miles per hour. I have a little car that catches every piece of wind that is out there. My job is located in a place where ...

I am thinking that it is time for a soul-searching type of post. I am struggling with things that are happening in our world, and I believe that every person has to come up with their own way of dealing with these things. However, I also have very strong opinions about what is right and what is wrong. I am trying to reconcile myself to the things that I am drawn to do and the ways that I can respond to things outside of my home. I have to get back to what I believe, so here I go. I believe that every person deserves the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that every person is valuable. I believe that every person has the ultimate right to decide what makes them happy in their time on this earth. I believe that there needs to be structure and boundaries in society to protect those who are unable to protect themselves from those who feel that they can control how others live their lives. I believe that we are the product of evolution, and I can recognize that ...

I am thankful that this week is almost over. Not because of any one thing happening, but just because I need some time away from holding the anger of clients who will not be celebrating holidays with people that they love. I need some time to shed the despair of children who do not understand why they can't go home when they want to go home. I also need to rest up for the sessions next week and the continuation of all of these feelings for the next month. There is something humbling when you realize that you are a safe space for big emotions. I had this realization yesterday when a client became very angry because I turned down the amplifier that was starting to crackle. This client requires very little to get angry, and the anger turns into disruption and aggression really quickly. This is the second week in a row that I was the reason for an emotional outburst while in music therapy. I finally had the thought that music therapy is a safe space to express emotion, and that helped ...

It is Monday again, and I am wiped out! There is just something about May that just makes me feel disjointed. At this moment, I have a Talent Show to coordinate, graduation music to provide, a school-wide carnival to work through, and then a day of school district schmoozing and training to survive before a week of medical testing before our extended school year starts up. So, this is a busy time of year, and I am feeling the pinch just like I always do. I am still in the process of deciding about my internship program. I have six incomplete applications in my files at this moment. No applicant has completed their application except for one who did not want to pursue the internship. I have one application for January 2025, but it is also not complete. I am hoping that I will get a completed application really soon so I can move forward with the process of evaluation, audition, and interview. We will see what will happen. This application situation makes me wonder what is going on, and ...

I fell down a rabbit hole yesterday  morning during my extra preparation hour (which I have right now because we do not have all of our classrooms open). I started doing some music therapy thesis and dissertation exploration. I'm not really sure why I started all of this - my brain isn't fully awake at the moment, and I have a big headache, so things are not the best for remembering or thinking, but I found a couple of articles and dissertations that pulled me into reading.  One of them, by Rebecca Warren, intrigued me enough to have me go through most of it in the hour that I had available to me. The title, Examining Ableism in Music Therapy Education and Clinical Training: Student and Educator Perspectives , was interesting (full citation at the end of this post). I am someone who has done some studying about universal design and universal design learning, and I want to be someone who demonstrates the acceptance of all humans, so I am often interested in titles that include ...

Today's Sentimental Sunday post is the most viewed post on my blog - ever, and I am glad that I happened upon this one in my morning perusal on this Spring Forward Sunday. Here it is - the 7 things I wish someone had told me about music therapy post.  The sad thing about this post is that I think we still do not talk about these things much in the music therapy world. It has been almost 10 years since I wrote this first post and not much changes in the world of music therapy...ever. I still think that we, as a profession, are on a precipice.  We have to do better, as a collective group of professionals, at preparing our future professionals for this life. I am reading through the report of the commission for the 21st century group very slowly. My initial reaction is that what I have read is very similar to what was recommended 10 years ago, but I haven't delved into things the way I should before I start to talk about it all.  I am frustrated with how long it takes to ge...

When I first started TME Tuesdays, I wanted to share ideas and get comments and interact with other music therapists who were interested in providing music therapy ideas and experiences with clients that were new and different. I wanted to create community, but then I got cranky. When I was a part of Music Therapists [Aren't] United  (the additional word is completely mine and mine alone), one of the people posting went on a rant about gatekeeping and how music therapists should just give things away to younger music therapists rather than expecting to be paid for TME ideas, visual aids, business advice, etc. I got angry at that because I feel that we should be paid for the work that we do. I don't believe that I should give away my hard work to everyone and anyone just because they feel that they want to take it. There is a difference between sharing with someone and someone just taking from you without reciprocation. That is when I stopped publishing my therapeutic music expe...