back again!

It's been quite awhile since I blogged. Honestly, I was thisclose to deleting this thing. After quitting my first job and staying home with my daughter, it was hard to keep things up here by sheer will. I wanted this place to document some of the struggles I have as a bilingual and bicultural music therapist trying to reach my patients but as an outsider of the workforce, I simply wasn't having any experiences to write about.

Fast forward to March of this year, when I started working part time at a local cancer outpatient clinic. Again, not a whole lot of the typical bilingual bicultural population I wanted to write about. So I again put some serious thought into just deleting this sucker.

And then.

I walk into the apheresis (stem cell collection) room and ask the patient if they would like some music therapy. At this point the nurse turns to the patient and asks in Spanish if they would like some music. Long story short, I was blindsided by a teenager who spoke no English but needed reduced anxiety and restlessness (per nurse and family). I fumbled with my iPad/songbook (viva OnSong!) and landed on some Beatles songs before my brain kicked in and remembered all the words to "De Colores." At the very least, I knew, I could play music that was in 3/4 and not 4/4 time in order to have familiar music playing, but I remembered "De Colores," and sang. And the family sang with me. And it was a beautiful thing. 

Reminded me of something a coworker said to me at my first job. "You don't have to do everything, but you can do something. And that's something."