How my cat helped me use music to heal (clickbait)

I didn't know how bad the depression was until I got a cat and he became my muse for a while.

Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson II is named after Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson (the first).

Dr. Woodson is the second Black man to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard (the first being W.E.B. DuBois). His dissertation was on the importance of Black people and our accomplishments historically. Many of them were left out of the history books and he aimed to change that. (Narrator: Nothing's changed).

His dissertation and subsequent life work is the basis for African American history month in the United States.

When I walked into the Michigan Humane Society three years ago, though, none of this was on my mind. I was finally recovering from a divorce from a man who tried to put his hands on me (Can you imagine? I'm a martial arts champion. How did he think that was going to end? Tuh.). This caused an estrangement from the incredibly talented, funny, beautiful children I helped raise (an estrangement which heartwrenchingly persists), all happening in the midst of a global pandemic, during which I had purchased a house that I couldn't yet live in so I had to live in the upstairs of my mom's house where the curfew of 10 p.m. was still instituted.

What a blessing.

The blessing isn't in the violence or the restrictions. One was quite traumatic and required some medical and legal intervention. The other just sucked.

And I miss the Boys (now Men) somethin' fierce.

The blessing was in the transformation necessary to see where the ground was. During this period, certain people showed up consistently. Certain people exited stage left after viewing the train wreck. I tried different career options. I learned who was steadfast, who was all talk, and what I actually wanted to spend the remainder of my precious time in this iteration doing.

When your self-esteem rises, people disappear because they depended on your "pick-me-ness" to help them feel better. Once that's gone, suddenly you're a problem and off they go to vampire someone else. Learning this hurt.

Therapy, my medical team, my family (blood and not) soothed the hurt. These are the folks who helped turn the tide.

Music, though...if music was oxygen for me before, during this time it was air and fire and water and earth.

Here's the thing:

People talk about writer's block, how they'll sit down and then nothing comes out.

I had something different: Composing wasn't blocked for me. That wasn't the feeling.

It felt it was no longer.

The ability was absent, as if I had never done it, like I had never put chords together in a sensible progression before. It was the most baffling, confusing feeling I have ever experienced.

I could play the piano just fine. But when I tried to write something, it was as if I didn't know what a note was. The mechanical ability to write a musical sentence--it was as if I had never had the ability ever, like a type of amnesia.

This began to feel crippling. My body buckled.

That's why I increased my participation in fencing. I was fighting that feeling. My doctors all said Here are some options to try, but for sure don't stop playing the piano.

Good advice. I played and played and soothed and soothed. I used the instrument much like an athlete would use a kettlebell in training. I didn't play it to make music, exactly; I used it to create soundscapes to make myself feel better. Sometimes the soundscape du jour was Bach's Prelude in C major--over and over I would play it. Or sometimes it'd be a series of nursery rhymes. I'd find the feeling, find the song, and then play the song, sometimes for hours.

And it worked.

And then came Carter.

Carter is one of three kittens that had been abandoned on the side of the road at just three months old. He flinched when others walked by, but ran right up to me as I approached.

Love.

The whole first week I brought him home, I thought I had made a mistake.

I had forgotten--kittens aren't trained.

I had to show him about the litter box.

And the food and the water.

And he had just gotten neutered, so I had to give the medicine.

And his teeth--*@#$! I had forgotten about their teeth.

I replaced three MacBook Pro chargers before I got it together to put everything with wires away.

Can I tell you how many times I had to stifle my howls of pain as he suddenly started to climb up my jeans pants with those little needles digging in my leg while he's screaming those teeny tiny meows? I didn't want to frighten him with my yells (hence the stifling) but also absolutely not. No. That took time to train away.

The next time the piano gets tuned, my turner needs to fix four hammers as well. Guess why?

But as I was dealing with each emergency (sometimes through clinched teeth), I was smiling, remembering the words of the comedian and pet lover Tom Papa:

Everybody needs another set of eyes looking back at them.
Even if it's just a fish!

These eyes looking back at me with total trust, total love, 100% All-In energy...it was happening. I was feeling myself again.

One day, I felt the glimmer of inspiration. I began humming Chopin's Opus 64, No. 1, which was written (it is said) after he watched his neighbor's dog try to catch its own tail. Not unusual--I love this piece.

But then...

Hmmm...now I wanted to write a song for my cat. I was feeling light and happy like I do when I am--wait:

Oh my gawd:

I wanted to write a song for my cat.

And then the first few notes came forward. Eeek!

I hit record on my voice recorder and hummed the basic tune into it before I could forget, and then I yelped, well, like a dog. Then I hit stop (I later realized I had recorded the yelp).

I can write again!

Such relief! Such deep relief!

That moment was the breakthrough needed.

I attribute the return of all this ability to the cat because it's pretty good clickbait, but, really, it was most likely all the meditation/therapy/journaling/collaborating with my doctors/righting wrongs/asking for forgiveness/forgiving/letting go that lead up to this moment, and Carter happened to tip the balance.

But still. It counts!

I'm sharing this because when I talk about understanding the science of using your piano to generate vibrations to positively affect those who come to experience your art, I am speaking from a place of core soul connection.

I am a person who has loved and lost and found herself again. I stand in a place of no regret in that regard.

And I use my piano to express all that I have felt, and challenged, and guffawed at, and sobbed through.

And I want to teach new educators and remind veteran educators that this can be more than just "Put your fingers on these keys". The point of getting the technique right is to be free to express these emotions truly. Let's not get stuck on minutae. That's the point of this company--let's get the technical right, and then learn how to use what you know in your professional and musical background to transmit that information to your students in data driven, effective ways that include your style and swagger.

The Piano Instructor, ladies and gentlemen, theydies and gentlethems.

That night, at 3 a.m. I took a Lyft all the way to my mom's house. I asked for nothing in the divorce. Instead, I sought to rebuild, but stronger and better while keeping my heart soft. I sought mentorship relationships in business at the University of Michigan as well as the Small Business Administration, taught myself how to do tech stuff that'll help automate my repetitive business structures, and got to work to build this *gestures to ThePianoInstructor.net*.

Is music the answer to everything?

We know it can help calm your heart rate, speed up recovery post surgery, can help with depression, and more.

I mean, of course if you catch pneumonia or something, don't just put on your headphones and mutter, "Mozart's got this". Go to the dang hospital.

So maybe not everything.

But does music help?

Yes, of course. And I think if you're in the teaching-of-music realm it's because you think so too.

Let's.

Share your story. Lessons@ThePianoInstructor.net 313.687.4433. Hire us to do all the things. We'd love it.

P.S. Sometimes you don't want to pay for the subscription, but you wanna toss some dough our way because you liked what you experienced. Well, now you can. Click here.