I can give hope, even though I am hurting.
I vacillate between moments of calm – Keep Calm and Carry On – and moments of freaking out internally. I wonder what I and my business can do amidst the chaos going on in the world? I can give hope, even though I am hurting.
When my mother was dying of Ovarian Cancer I didn’t know what to say to her to comfort her. The parish priest didn’t know what to say, nor did my aunts or her friends. I had taken my mom up to Maine to visit some of her friends a month before she had passed. She had so much energy and vitality and she was smiling more than she had since her diagnosis. In her pain she wanted to reach out to her friends, stump the pianist at the piano bar with her knowledge of songs (especially anything Perry Como related), enjoy a nice glass of wine, walk on the beach (even if it was January in Maine), and spend time laughing as much as she could.
While we were staying at her friend’s motel I stayed up one night watching an interview with Tori Amos about her album, “The Beekeeper”. She spoke of the inspiration for one song dedicated to her mother who could no longer walk. She imagined her mother dancing on the beach with ribbons in her hair free from the pain and suffering she was going through. That story stayed with me, as did that album.
Almost as soon as we got home from our trip mom ended up in the hospital, which meant we were all with her from morning till night only taking breaks to head to work or to shower. I brought my harp into the hospital to play for her. I told her, “Well, Mom, since you can’t get to the party I’ll bring the party to you.” As I played, patients came into Mom’s room from down the hall. The nurses said that these were patients who wouldn’t even leave their beds and now there were walking down the hall to find out where the music was coming from and to just breathe.
We struggled to get the hospital to release Mom so we could take her home. She relied more and more on morphine for the pain so she would go in and out of lucidity, but she had some coherent moments where we could talk to her. She was a nurse and a devout Catholic, among many other things, and even studied to be a nun at one point, but the mass that was said in her room gave her little comfort and she started crying. She asked me what was going to happen to her and in the moment where I didn’t think I had anything to say, that Tori Amos documentary popped into my head. I told my Mom that she would be dancing and singing in the sun with her first husband and other loved ones. She smiled contentendidly. That was the last conversation I had with her before she died in my brother and my arms.
Fast forward to today. When I was telling myself that I didn’t know what to say to all of you and that I didn’t want to come off as a pollyanna with all bright sunshine the above story came to mind. I realized that I have lived that scenario of living with pain and not knowing what to do or say so many times in my life and that love, humor, music, community, patience, and kindness are what have gotten me through. That is why we create. This is why we need community. One of the biggest reasons why I wanted to start, “Moon Over the Trees” was to create a community through music and theater and to help us help each other.
Yes, wash your hands, stay home if you are sick, follow the CDC’s guidelines, but also take care of yourself, create, listen to music, create music, make art, reach out to others. Thanks to technology we can do so much remotely so we don’t have to feel so isolated. I created a couple of free offers:
Two are instrumental compositions I put together for a production of, “A Wrinkle in Time” that you are welcome to use for meditating or relaxing.
I will be putting up free lesson plans for educators on details of using a DAW for creating music. DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. GarageBand is a common one, but there are many others. I want to help music and theater educators who have to come up with lesson plans for remote learning.
For my harpist friends and my students stay tuned for our virtual harp session. Sign up for that and I’ll send you some tunes to learn so we can play them together.
Here are some other helpful resources:
Meditation:
-The Calm App is wonderful and if you are a teacher it is FREE. It is a wonderful resource for you and for your students www.calm.com
-Sharon Salzberg is one of my favorite meditation teachers. She teaches with humor, compassion, and caring and gives you permission to start again and to be kind to yourself. Check out Sharon’s books, her podcast, “The Metta Hour” https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/metta-hour-podcast/ and her free meditation challenges.
Journaling
-Kara Benz’s posts on Bullet Journaling helped me gather my thoughts and organize myself more. Here’s her introduction to Bullet Journaling. I will warn you that it will take you down a rabbit hole of all things journaling, but in a good way. Kara has a very down to earth approach to all that she does. https://www.bohoberry.com/bullet-journal-101-intro/
Yoga
-If you can’t make it to your yoga studio or just want a quick practice, you will love https://yogawithadriene.com/ Adriene has free yoga videos that deal with everything from, “Yoga for Anxiety” to “Yoga for Runners”. Her humor is infectious and silly and her caring and humanity shines through. She’s big on reminding people to embrace who you are and where you are at without judgement.