It’s the End of the Year From the Desk of… Bekah Moilanen
What a crazy year it’s been! Covid sure threw a wrench into all of our plans at Harmony Garden, and for each of us personally. Like many of you, my situation with lockdown, and then figuring out how to work from home, ended up being extra precarious due to the number of children that I have and the fact that our William has special medical needs and considerations.
The HGMTS staff has picked on me a few times over the past months (in love!) because at the onset of hearing about Covid, I kept telling them that they were all worried about nothing and that they just needed to relax. Ha! Imagine my surprise when I ended up shut in the house for three months with five kids, a husband, birds, fish, and an elderly dog. Our quarantine time was busy… and crowded!
For me, getting back to work hasn’t exactly looked like what I had originally hoped for. I wasn’t able to start online sessions or work much at all other than to help with video production due to the lack of private space or quiet time at home. I missed, and still miss, getting to see the individuals that I was making music with pre-Covid.
But I’ve also been blessed to go in a new/old direction with Music Therapy. Years ago, I had the opportunity to do Music Therapy in the hospice setting. Recently, some nursing homes have deemed Music Therapists an essential service due to the levels of depression in their residents who are essentially stuck in their rooms without visitors 24 hours a day.
For the past 8 weeks, I’ve been able to work in the nursing home setting on weekends and during my husband’s odd times off. How cool that I get to bring hope and happiness to lonely people! And I’m loving every minute of working with such an amazing group of individuals. It’s even worth it to sing through an N95 mask and face shield that fogs up every time I sing a note! The individuals that I have the privilege to work with are wonderful, resilient, and I’m pretty sure bless me more than I do them.
Every time I work with someone new I tell my co-workers that my new people are my favorite. They roll their eyes and say, “You always say that!” So I guess to wrap up 2020 for me, I just have to say “Music Therapy in any form is my favorite!” What an amazing job to have no matter how it is accomplished. And that’s great, because Music Therapy looks a lot different for me than it used to! Here’s to a cruddy year that has yielded hidden surprises and blessings. And here’s to an even better 2021!
Bekah
