I am alive now!
(Laughing)
And, I am thriving.
While lying awake after my nightmares had passed,
I was startled to hear music playing.
I did not know that anybody in my home knew how to play the piano except me.
Lessons for me began when I was about 6 years old.
And by this time, I had less than a year’s lessons in my fingers.
But music was playing.
And I had to find out.
So careful not to make a sound, I left my bed and I crept
to the boundary of my bedroom door and I peeked around the corner
and down into the living room.
And I saw my mother.
She was playing a song.
Well I felt dumbstruck.
Why didn’t I know?
An answer to that question, the all too familiar belief
and its matching feeling, began to surface.
I am unworthy to her.
And what was worse was the feeling of being unloved.
I was almost seven years old and I had never witnessed
my mother playing until now.
As the song continued, her image at the piano began to fade.
And the spell of that music was drawing me in.
That melody rocked me back and forth.
And in that moment there was just me and the music.
With every note played, I melted.
And I melted into a very unfamiliar place.
And it felt warm and safe.
I was being transformed from despair
into feeling alive for the first time.
My feelings are real.
As the song continued,
I imagined angel-like voices
emerging from the music,
whispering and singing to me, “Karla, you are loved
“and you’re going to be okay.”
Suddenly, there was silence, the absence of music.
And the quiet of the house brought me back.
The song was over.
It was late; it was past my bedtime
and I carefully crawled back to bed.
The worst of my nightmares began on the night that I had to be brave.
There was no one to tell and there was no one to ask for help,
knowing and believing that if I did —
if I did, my family would fall apart.
And what would be worse would be finding out the truth
that my mother hated me.
So it was up to me to make him stop.
Standing at the bottom of my bed, my stepfather asked me
if I wanted to watch the 9:00 movie with him in his bed.
Well my heart sank.
And the fear in my stomach jumped.
Now was the moment for me to be brave.
And with all my strength I said, “No, it’s late;
“it’s past my bedtime; I am growing; I need my rest” —
all the things that I had been told as a child
why I had to go to bed and stay there.
“That’s okay,” he said.
“It’ll be alright.”
And he picked me up and he began to carry me away.
Well that was it for me.
I was desperate.
I was well into my seventh year of life and he had been
abusing me for over a year.
And I just couldn’t do what he wanted anymore.
So I yelled, “No!”
And I slapped him across the face as hard as I could, demanding,
“You put me down!
“You put me down now!
“What you are doing is wrong and you know it!
“Leave me alone.”
“Don’t touch me again.”
I was thrown across the room.
And he stormed out.
Shaking, I realized he’s going to come back.
I admonished myself saying, “Karla, what have you done?
“You know what a bad temper he has.
“He’s gonna come back here and he’s gonna kill you.”
And sure enough he returned, asking the same question.
And my useless resistance was met with his immense strength and will
to have his needs met.
Unable to speak, I heard this clear and strong voice
in my head resounding.
And I heard, “I will say no to you.”
“Even though you can’t hear me now,
“you may hurt my body but you cannot hurt me.
“I will say no to you, and the day I don’t
“is the day you have killed me.”
There was a glimmer of hope.
But the abuse continued.
I’m not sure when I went looking for that song that my mother played
or how old I was.
I might have been 8 years old.
But by then, my desperation had turned into hopeless despair.
All I had was the memory of that song,
how I felt.
I was alive once.
And I needed that song now more than ever.
And I found it.
It was lying askew inside the piano bench.
So sitting at the piano, staring up at all those notes
with only about two years of lessons in my fingers —
all 3 pages —
(exhales)
The first page held giant chords that were too big for my small hands.
But the second page held promise.
The notes were lower down on the staff and they were closer together
and I instantly recognized them.
Yes, I was so excited.
There I was staring at the four magical measures
that held my life, my worthiness.
Upon first playing, there was nothing.
No angel voices whispering and singing to me of love and worthiness.
But I wasn’t discouraged.
I knew that it took time to master a piece of music.
And I thought, I will learn this song.
I will play it perfectly.
And I’m going to be okay.
By the time I had turned ten years old, my thoughts of suicide
had turned into feeble attempts.
I had learned that song.
And I could play it perfectly, note per note, per measure, per measure.
It was perfectly executed.
And never was there a whisper from an angel.
There was nothing.
So late one night, I became aware of a voice speaking to me.
It was this very tender
but reassuring and confident voice.
And this is what I heard:
“This will soon be over.
“And the lesson of what you are learning, the gift of what you are learning now,
“will be given through your children.”
Yes! Okay, great.
How do I get there?
How do I learn to conjure up
those feelings of aliveness, of worthiness?
A question came to me
next time sitting at the piano.
What if I play how I’m feeling?
Forget trying to play the song right.
What if I played the song how I am feeling?
Well I chose anger.
And I pounded on those keys, soon to be reprimanded by my mother
for playing inappropriately.
Choosing sadness next had more success.
Sadness was successful because it was quieter.
And I soon realized that it was safer.
No one can hear what I’m feeling.
I could play what I felt now without consequences.
And when I realized that, I tried everything that I could think of.
And every time my playing would match closer to how I was feeling.
I discovered how to touch the keys of the piano in just the right way,
as if to transfer my sadness into the piano.
And out would come my feelings
in the form of beautiful music.
Desperation and despair began to fade.
Dreams of not wanting to be alive began to fall by the wayside.
My song had saved me.
I could now be alive
and safely express myself within the music.
So suicide was no longer the only option.
Playing the song how I felt
was the best option.
And this is what it sounded like to me.
I’ll play those four magical measures for you two times.
It’s kind of tattered.
(Laughter)
(Music)
(End of music)
By the time I was 19,
my “no’s” and resistance came to an end.
He stopped.
I told my story and I asked for help.
My family disintegrated.
And my mother, she disowned me saying,
“I wash my hands of you.”
But I still have this song.
Mine is a terrible and tragic story,
one that I share and have in common with many of today’s children
and adult survivors of yesterday’s abuses.
And for you, it has been difficult to hear.
For me, it’s been challenging to share.
Yet, here I am.
I am alive.
And I am brilliantly thriving.
Yes!
(Applause)
Thank you.
So I ask the question, “Why?”
Why am I alive?
Why am I thriving
when so many people with similar stories are not alive and barely surviving?
What is it that made the difference for me?
Today as a music therapist, I understand why —
why that meaningful engagement in this song,
in my music to feel alive, made the difference.
And this is how it works.
When we are the ones that are making the music,
we can at any given moment make strategic changes
to how we are playing to match what it is that we need,
to give us that what we need
and target the heart of our pain and our trauma.
Because trauma blocks our ability to think and understand what is happening to us,
it drastically diminishes our ability to be in our lives in a meaningful way.
So when music is applied with intentional strategy
it can restore our ability to be
back in our lives with meaning, to understand your pain
and to understand your trauma story.
And that is the difference.
This is what gives us the strength and the control that we need
to move forward in our lives
and leave our pain behind.
Making sense of my pain with my music
has given me the strength to be here with you today.
My pain is no longer a measure of my worthlessness.
It is now a measure of my humanness.
And I know that we don’t have to endure lifelong suffering.
I know because I am alive
and I am thriving.
And my song saved me.
May music be with you always.
Thank you.
(Applause)
”
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