(no title)

January 17, 2017

Music Therapy Questions Posed by Students

In December, I had the privilege to speak with some high school students from Franklin, Wisconsin about music therapy. I was contacted by a teacher who had seen my TEDx talk and was showcasing music therapy to his students as a career path. He asked if I would be willing to video conference call with them…

November 14, 2016

Being a Music Therapist with Shortcomings

Working in mental health, I don’t disclose a lot of personal information about myself to my patients. This population already deals with a mixed-up understanding of personal boundaries. It’s part of who I am as a therapist to define what I do or do not reveal about myself that keeps these boundaries therapeutic. The question I…

October 11, 2016

Be the Expert in Your Own Thinking

Recently, I went back and began to re-read older posts of mine, surprising myself with some of my own words of advice that I had forgotten over the last year of blogging. I found that many posts surprised me so much that I almost didn’t believe I wrote them, just because they still applied to many…

August 25, 2016

How to Become a Music Therapist

As a result of my TEDx talk, I’ve received emails from a lot of people asking me how they can become a music therapist or go about a career change. What an awesome response from people! Initially, I attempted to respond to each email, but realized this is probably a better platform to answer those questions. So, if…

July 11, 2016

Mental Health Session Ideas #2

It’s been a few months since I’ve shared some original intervention ideas for mental health. Within the music therapy world, we don’t often have the opportunity to share ideas and build off of one another. I think it’s important to create a resource for other music therapists to see each other’s work and ideas, which…

June 10, 2016

A Day in the Life of a Psychiatric Music Therapist

Recently, it came to my attention that unless you are a music therapist, or you’ve worked with one, you are likely to have no idea what a typical day looks like in our work. [Thanks for the inspiration, Bob]! Today, I had the pleasure of attempting to photo document what I look like as I go…

May 13, 2016

The Music Therapy Avant-garde

In the field of music therapy, we often feel separated from other music therapists due to geography, individually pioneering new programs, or because of the nature of contract and private practice work. It is rare when we are all able to come together and share ideas, challenges, and barriers to our work. It is even more…

March 25, 2016

Contrary to Music Therapy

As a music therapist: I strive to be: sensitive, empathetic, focused, aware, a listener, compassionate, willing, encouraging, seeking, building rapport, and pursuing. I challenge myself to be: knowledgeable, helpful, understanding, intelligent, flexible, a great musician, and therapeutic. I envision being: a leader, teacher, colleague, implementer, resource, expert, and team member. I work to display these…

February 24, 2016

Discovering What is Next

Since posting about my TEDx talk last month, I have been asking myself a lot lately, “what is next”? I haven’t been thinking about this in existential terms, or even in terms related to my life goals, but instead looking more deeply into my work as a music therapist. It has even been difficult to pinpoint…

January 12, 2016

My TEDx Talk

I’m happy to announce that in November of 2015, I had the opportunity to give a talk at a local TEDx event. If you had asked me previous to the experience if I ever thought I would give a TED talk, I would have said, “Ha, sure; maybe in 20 years”. I entirely have my…