My History with Music or Why I Became a Music Therapist

With the world still in the midst of a pandemic, I’m looking ahead in this new year to May 1, which will mark the 10-year anniversary of my practice. Though it feels like an odd time to celebrate, I have realized it is a great time to honor what I built in pre-COVID times, how the practice has adapted during an extraordinary time, and to hope for a brighter future for us all.

Over the next several months I’d like to take the time to share with you some of Maine Music & Health’s accomplishments, highlights of the last ten years, and vision for the next ten. But first I want to go back to the beginning and share how I became a music therapist.

Music has been a part of me and my family for as long as I can remember growing up in Gorham and Cornish, Maine. My grandmother, a piano teacher, taught me to play and started my love of percussion. My grandfather sang with the Portland Community Chorus.

With my mother on violin and trumpet, my father clarinet and piano and my brother playing all of the stringed instruments, percussion rounded out our ‘family band’. My brother and I played a lot together growing up, whether putting on musicals with cousins or just the two of us playing in front of an audience. I was first attracted to percussion during concerts as a kid- I loved the variety of sounds, and the fun the players seemed to have while moving back and forth behind the orchestra.

Playing music with my family was a positive experience that stuck with me. It made a difference that no one ever forced me to play an instrument. It was always just something we did for fun and to connect with other people.

I first discovered music therapy as a profession when I wrote a paper about it in eighth grade and I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I loved music and was so drawn to the idea of using it to help people.

When I got to college, I majored in classical percussion, earning an undergrad degree from the University of Southern Maine, and took extra classes in Psychology and Human Development in preparation for attending grad school for music therapy.

Since that wasn’t something I could do in Maine (there were no music therapy degree programs at the time), I left my home state to attend New York University and received my Master of Arts in Music Psychotherapy, which included intensive trainings in therapy methods, both psychoanalysis and the neuroscience of how music impacts the brain. I had fieldwork placements at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine and in the public school system. The third year of the program students work on a thesis and internships. I interned at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

But Maine was calling me back and after graduation, I moved to Portland. I worked at the law firm Pierce Atwood as I began my music therapy business on the side, squeezing in therapy sessions on lunch breaks and weekends. After eight or nine months I was ready to take the dive into private practice.

Starting my own practice was an easy decision since there was only one other music therapists working in the state, four hours away. In fact, my clinical supervisors were all virtual, pre-pandemic, from NYC and Australia. This was a challenge, but part of the reason I wanted to come back to Maine. I wanted to see music therapy grow here. And ten years later, I’m thrilled to say I have.

Here’s a short video about my work and why I returned to Maine. Or watch it on my Press page.