music, therapy, and me

It is time to revisit the idea of thematic music therapy programming in my blog. I don't always remember this particular theme for Tuesday posts, but I feel like I need the structure this morning, so here goes! For today's theme, I am focusing on emotions. The book packet that I am putting together is based on a book where emotions are displayed in inappropriate ways. I enjoy the book so much, especially the illustrations. I have all the TMEs planned out, but I haven't written them down yet. That's the next step. One of the things that happens over and over in my sessions - often by well-intentioned adults rather than my clients - is that emotions are labeled as good or bad rather than just there. I stress, over and over again, that emotions are not the important thing - it is how we handle our emotions that make them good or bad. If we are feeling angry, then that is fine. If we are feeling angry and hit someone, that is a bad action that came through our emotional sta...

So, you might notice that I am a prolific blogger, but that I do not blog every day. I have a couple of rules for blogging that I have developed over my years. They are completely random, personal, and vary based on my mood. These, however, tend to be the rules that I look for in the blogs of others - even though they are completely my own. If you cannot write something that sounds coherent to you, then it probably isn't understandable by others. - This explains the gaps that I have in my blog at times. Take yesterday, for example. I started several different posts, but I just kept babbling and burbling my way through random thoughts. So, I gave up on writing. It just wasn't what I wanted to put out into the world. There are some topics that I do not want to write about. Politics is at the top of that list. It is rare that you will hear much about what is going on outside my immediate world because that type of conversation tends to make me feel more stress than specific things...

Wow. It has been a while since I have written anything on this blog - mainly because I have been in the middle of surgery, recovery, and trying my best to get back into something resembling normalcy. I have had good news - the medical issue that has been plaguing me has now been resolved. I have a new specialist to see next week, but that will probably be a formality rather than a continuing relationship. I am now sitting at home, recovering from having my gut cut up, rearranged, and put back together again. My surgeon has dictated (with my mother's support) that I will not be returning to work until the start of the new school year. So, I am sitting at home instead of being at the extended school year session at work.  I went to shop yesterday to get my steps in, and halfway around the store, I felt the exhaustion set in. I leaned on the shopping cart for the rest of the walk and then returned to my home. I am tired today, and my body is not really doing all the things that it sho...

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 ...

Okay. This has not been a really hard week in most estimations, but my students are struggling in music therapy, my moods are mostly negative from the outset, and there isn't much that is happening in the world that I can find positive right now. When the outside world gets too much for me to navigate, I stop paying attention to anything other than my 52 mile radius. I will not be reading news stories. I will not be listening to npr. I will do what I can to insulate myself from the strong feelings that happen when I have difficulty with the feelings out in the world. I will avoid saying specific names for the next four years, and I hope that I will actually be better off in 2028 than I am at this moment. Unfortunately, my recent history indicates that I will not. I am better off right now than I was in 2020 at the same time, so I do not think that anything will get better for those of us who are not billionaires. Do I sound bitter? Probably, but this is why I have to keep myself wr...

If you have been reading anything from the past couple of weeks, then you know that my water heater sprung a leak and the water went all over my library closet and in part of the room itself. Today, I have a water mitigation company coming over to work with the now-dried but very mildewy carpet. I have been moving boxes and sorting through things for the last two weeks. I am hoping that everything will be finished up by the end of today, but who knows?  The good news is that I am finding all sorts of things to put into my music therapy room. The bad news is that I am finding all sorts of things to put into my music therapy room. Yesterday, I started brainstorming some uses for some visual aids that I found one of my many boxes. ( See the post here. ) I was able to find four ways to use the airplane and banner visuals, but I am still figuring out two more things to meet my self-imposed "six things" rule. If I can't find two more ideas, then I will try to give things away. ...

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 ...

I was able to wake up on time this morning and also haul my ponderous self out of my very comfortable bed only an hour later, so I am considering this a win. I have had significant difficulty getting up and out of bed since our last time change, and this is unusual for me. I can say that I feel 100% better than I did three days ago, so I am also considering that fact a win. As a result of recovering from my latest illness and my need to do things differently, I am trying to come up with new things to talk about here on my blog. This happens occasionally. I get an urge to shake my thinking up and one of the ways that manifests is in new topics for this space. So, I am not doing an internship supervision post today. If that is what you look for in my blog, please send me a message or leave a comment. I can continue that topic, if you want. Otherwise, I think I am going to leave that topic behind for a bit. In the past, I have used the following Monday labels: Make It Monday and Music Mon...

This week is where my two roles in the professional world collide into a very long schedule of work, more work, worship, more worship, interrupted schedules, and exhaustion. It is Holy Week, the week in the Christian faith where believers commemorate the last days of Jesus before his death and resurrection. For church employees, like me, it means at least two extra worship services and more church than is on our typical weekly schedule. It means different music, more time involved in spiritual focus, and different things happening at different times in the week. I work in a publicly funded, special purpose school. The roots of the facility itself are deeply centered in the Catholic faith, but we no longer have a Catholic focus. When I first arrived at the facility so many years ago, we did have that particular religious focus. Fridays were fish days. The annual Christmas program included acting out the Nativity story. (I stopped that practice because I didn't feel that it was right...

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...

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...

I am not an internship supervisor at the moment. I am on hiatus, and I have been enjoying the solitary existence. I have been rearranging my storage areas without having to worry about the work spaces of others, and I am reveling in the opportunity to think through things without having to explain them. At the moment, I am also thinking about my next round of interns while I am waiting for current applicants to finish their applications. I have several of them, but none of the applications are complete at this point. All of them are waiting on a letter of reference... well, except for the two who have letters of reference but no application. It is interesting what things are revealed to me in the application process, but I digress. I decided to re-up my AMTA membership at a tier that I felt was comfortable for me just so I could accept interns in this calendar year. I still feel the pull towards training and mentoring, but I am not as enthusiastic about our professional organization th...

I woke up a bit later than I usually do (for the second day in a row), and I started my blogging routine after checking email and fiddling around with social media and all that. Going to my blog archive and starting up the random number generator is just something that I enjoy, so it was fun to get started with all of this today. The random number generator spat out the number #2281. This led me to a post from September 16, 2019, titled "What Do I Really Want?"  I always find it interesting to see what I was thinking back when. This one is a good reminder of things that I am working on right now. My word for 2019 was "courage." I selected a second word as well; "renewal." This post is a bit of a revealing discourse about me and some of my attitudes towards things that happen in the music therapy world and things that happen in my own life. I tend to go into periods of reflection and self-recrimination, and this seems to be me on the verge of this thing. As...

Today is the day that I have reserved for packing, shipping, and thinking. My mother is currently really focused on giving things away, so I am going to be sending my first cornet, three handmade animal puppets, and my gifts from my sister and my mother back to my house today. I have lots of room in my bag to fill up, so I will start there, but I also have an almost full set of dishes to send back, so my shipping costs will be substantial this time around. I guess it is a good thing that we haven't been shopping this break. I need the money to send things back! This is my usual way of doing things a couple of days before traveling. I pack things up, take them to UPS, and then send them on their merry way. I am always surprised when I open up the boxes because I forget what items are in the boxes in the week that it takes to send them across half of our country. It is almost like another Christmas when my boxes arrive, and I open them up again! So, today's chore is to pack thing...

It is day seven of winter break, and I have four more days before it is time to report back to work for the rest of the 2023-2024 school year. I am sitting here, at 3:56 am, writing the second iteration of this post to try to analyze what is going on in my brain and body after an insomnia night. I get these every so often, and so I am not all that surprised that it happened after Mexican food and arranging a visit with a friend from junior high all the way up to now. Add in the full moon, and of course I am waking up over and over again! I am starting to get into the holiday funk that happens to me sometimes. I start to feel squirmy because there are things that I want to get done but can't because those things are there instead of being here. In addition, I want to play with all my Mom's crafting toys, but I am scared to because they are her toys and not my own. I know that she would be fine with me using the stamps and the punches and the dies and all that, but I feel like I ...

Today is my first day of winter break for 2023, and I allowed myself to go back to sleep (fortunately, without the nightmares that often happen when I go back to sleep) and lay about in bed for a bit longer than usual. I am now up and ready to start the next two days of at home break time. The first day of winter break is always a time where I make lots of plans for future me to accomplish. I rarely complete any of those plans. I have things that I need to get done, including cleaning the kitchen. I also need to do laundry, pack a bag, and prepare for the rest of my winter break. I am starting my task list and am getting ready to start things off after I post this essay. Lately, my thoughts have been taken over by thoughts about how people learn. I have really been focused on current music therapy students and interns because that is who I work with in my music therapy job. This is probably going to sound a bit preachy or critical, and I am not going to apologize for that tone - mainly...