Music Therapy Clinician: Supporting reflective clinical practice Volume 1 | Page 29

sing, wanted to use their voice, and
that was the main focus of their
musical expression in the music
therapy sessions with me. And I
recognized that singing together in
harmony, and sometimes just
singing together, was such a
powerful experience for them. And
that was something that parents or
other caregivers or siblings really
wanted to…remarked about if they
were in the observation room
watching a session, or if we were
listening to their family member
excitedly talking about what they
had just been singing - that seemed
to really be something that they
connected about. And I really sort
of reached into my own history of
growing up singing alongside my
mom and some other members of
my family in church choirs and
then, eventually, other community
choirs and thought, you know,
there’s got to be some way that I
can kind of pull this together. And
so, I really started off with, I think,
about six singers. And out of those
six singers, there were two parentchild, mother-child dyads. And
that’s really sort of where it started.
And even at its biggest, we had
about thirty singing members and
there were still a lot of parent-child
or sibling relationships represented
among the singers. And that’s really
where it started. But then we began
to recognize that, well, I think one
of the things that I learned,
watching that, sort of, unfold was
that
the
relationships
with
caregivers in a group home
situation can sometimes be just as
powerful as their own families. And
having those folks come in and be
part of it was really interesting and
nice. And you could kind of see how
people enjoyed being able to sing
together as equal members of the
same group, rather than in a
caregiver-care-receiver kind of
relationship. So I think that was
something that we kind of paid
attention to and tried to nurture in
the group. And that’s really, you
know, kind of how it evolved.

27 | P a g e

Roia: That is really cool, and I

love that there were