Lessons Learned from Julia - Shelley on July 18

Julia is a lawyer here in Curitiba, practicing family law.  We spent our first afternoon in Curitiba with her.  She took us to Amigas da Mama, an NGO providing support to women with breast cancer.  Here I had some very powerful “aha” moments about the power of music as a therapeutic force that seems wildly underutilized.  Julia and her family have a love of music and that love showed in the radiance of her face as she introduced us to her fellowship project.  The essence of the project is to develop a music therapy program for breast cancer survivors. 

Julia introduced us to Mariangela, the music therapy intern who will deliver the program for Amigas da Mama.  Mariangela talked with us about the importance of music in our lives, in our bodies and in our hearts.  She explained the use of music as therapy in contexts such as illness, childhood development and dementia.  Her approach to music therapy is by working with individuals to passively absorb the music (listening/vibrational) and actively singing (both known songs and songs that result from improvisation).  She talked about the importance of these approaches at various stages of life and disease and the powerful impact music can make in a lifetime.  This seemed especially relevant to me since I am now dealing with a father with dementia.  Often it seems as though he is living in a world of song memories and a specialist at home had mentioned to me that music memories are some of the last to go.  I think I actually understood this more deeply after Mariangela took us  (Amy, Shelley and Judy) through a short series of some of the exercises she plans to use in the breast cancer setting.

I think Julia has created a program to be proud of.  Not only that, she has created a program that can be sustained.  Mariangela will develop the music therapy program over the next four months.  When she graduates, another intern will take over where she left off, and so on and so on…….  If Julia and Mariangela have anything to do with it, the program will flow gently from one person to another like the notes of a flute.

Shelley, Judy, Mariangela, Amy