Still Here

It has been two years since my last blog post. 

As much as I love writing (I’m finally outlining a book!), writing posts for my website feels like marketing- and I don’t love marketing. I understand the importance of it, but I’ve never liked sales. As soon as I feel I’m being sold something, I’m out. And that makes it hard to work on my website. Thankfully, the purpose of my website has historically been education- when I first moved back to Maine in 2010, no one seemed to know what music therapy was. So I had to explain it, and just start doing it, and that meant driving from York to Augusta to Skowhegan to Fort Kent to Lewiston to Portland, giving lectures and inservice presentations and setting up a folding table with fifth-grade-science-fair-esque information (design is not my strong suit, either). 

Thankfully, we now have a team of 20+ board certified music therapists in the state, and at a national level there has been a ton of research and interest from the public. Maine Calling just featured a whole episode on music and health! I have enjoyed being able to step back from the ‘selling the work’ into just ‘doing the work’.

For the last two years, I’ve been teaching 1-2 days a week at Berklee in Boston, which has certainly pulled me away from private practice and this website- any writing I do has been for lectures and assignments. It’s been a great experience. The students are so engaged and the program offers them rich experiences in the field throughout their coursework. It’s a reminder to myself that I love this work, and that it’s important work. It’s also been an eye-opening reminder that I’ve been in a cycle of burnout for a number of years now, and there is good reason for that. We don’t have a music therapy program at a university in Maine (though plenty of quasi-programs are popping up), nor has my 14 years of travel-lectures made a dent in the misunderstanding of the field. The relief I feel when I get to campus and know that we have a shared language and knowledge base, from 50+ years of research in music therapy, reminds me that I feel isolated at home. I think I knew that, but I hadn’t been able to pinpoint the issue until I was surrounded by other music therapists. 

Each time I wheel my instrument cart onto the elevator at Maine Med, there are well-meaning comments or questions. In my post-graduate-school naivete, I would answer them with one my practiced elevator speeches: “Nope, not performing, I’m a music therapist here, today I’m working with adults with Parkinson’s Disease improve their motor skills through rhythm!” At some point in the last ten years, my energy has waned, and I now have a much shorter reply: “Elevator music!” Thankfully, it makes people laugh, but 9/10 times when I say it, I feel a pit in my stomach because I know that I’m missing an opportunity to change people’s minds about music therapy. 

At the hospital, funding comes and goes in various departments depending on who the current manager is, so the position often feels tenuous. And unlike other nonprofits, we don’t get an opportunity to meet with donors and describe our program- who knows what their assumptions are! But I feel valued because so many of my colleagues have expressed understanding and appreciation of this work. I love working on a team to care for our communities and make them healthier. Anyone who has been present for a music therapy session gains a better understanding of it, so I just have to gain enough energy to explain it when I’m trying to work on a new floor. 

The other piece of the burnout/fatigue isn’t about the misunderstanding of my field, it comes from witnessing all the gaps in our society. In order to set up new programs and build partnerships, I’ve worked in many different settings - hospitals, nursing homes, group homes, corrections facilities, shelters, foster care agencies, schools. Many of these, only briefly, but it’s given me a big picture of the way we prioritize care that often leaves me feeling frustrated. How can I continue to advocate for the field of music therapy when there are people who can’t access any healthcare at all? Who can’t access food, or housing, or clean water? 

I’ve always said that music doesn’t belong at the top of Maslow’s triangle- we can flip the triangle on it’s side and take care of the whole person. I’ve also said that I’d like to work myself out of a job- if we hadn’t spent decades cutting funding to arts education (and education in general), and if our culture could remove the “be famous or never sing” mindset, maybe we wouldn’t need arts therapies. But those things haven’t happened, and we do need arts therapies. We need to give people space to explore their creative side, to reconnect with their authentic voice, to find expression for what they may not have words. Music therapy should be there for people whether they’re dealing with illness or are just navigating a healthy life. But, it isn’t. It’s still an ‘extra’, and it sometimes feels like no amount of NIH research will prove the value of incorporating arts into healthcare. 

I’ve circled around writing a post like this for over a year. I don’t want to sound jaded or too negative, that’s the opposite of sales. At the same time, I hope this blog might be relatable to other MT-BCs in rural states, or anyone trying to do something unusual in a big healthcare organization. As often as I feel alone, I know that I’m not. So if you’re reading this and relate: you’re not alone either! And may we all find the energy to continue providing services while acknowledging the greater gaps.