How I Found Music Therapy And How It Helped Me

Hey and welcome to my about me! To start off my name is Rae and I’m 17 years old (currently) and I live in Austin, Texas. I’m a senior at the Griffin School, and I play a variety of instruments including the guitar, ukulele, and a little bit of piano. I started writing music with my best friend, Dana, during my sophomore year. By now you might be curious about why am I interested enough to build a website about music therapy. Well, in October of 2016 Dana was diagnosed with a brain tumor, more specifically glioblastoma, and so I wrote her a song. It was comprised entirely of our inside jokes and I performed it at one of my school’s open mic nights. Dana told me it was one of the best presents she ever received and I was so proud. Unfortunately, Dana passed away on January 10th, 2017 and I lost my partner crime as well as my musical accompaniment, and the world lost one of the best singers it ever had. In April of 2017, I wrote my first song after what happened in January, and it was about how I felt about Dana and the fact that she was gone. I was dealing with grief and depression and I had been completely blocked off from music. I remembered describing to one of my friends that I just felt lost and that’s when I came up with the song Lost and Found (now you can see where the website gets its name from) and performed it again at an open mic. Music is my outlet for how I feel because quite honestly, I’m pretty bad with my feelings, I tend to ignore them until they explode. But, writing these songs I felt a sort of release. Therefore, I researched music therapy and decided that I wanted to dedicate my senior project to help people who need an outlet. I want to go into pediatric medicine myself, which is why I’m planning on majoring in Human Biology, but this site is for those who need a place to express how you feel and/or find someone who understands. So feel free to post your music or read more about music therapy or contact me or others through this site. Find your voice!