Can Music Be Self-Care?

First thing that I do when I am overcome with emotions (good/bad/or otherwise) is put on some music. I don’t know why. It has been that way ever since I was little.

When my dad passed away when I was 5, my mom started drifting away into her own world. I was left out and often left alone in our trailer for hours by myself. I would listen to cassettes (yes, I just showed my age) of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, and Billy Rae Cyrus. I would play school with my stuffed animals and a travel chalk board I had while the music played in the background.

As I got older I would buy a walkman and then a diskman and listen to music daily. I started a CD collection when I was 12 (my 1st CD ever was Spice Girls) and started slowly loving almost every genre out there. My collection included Spice Girls, N’Sync, Bone Thugs N Harmony, 2Pac, Shania Twain, and Johnny Cash.

There was a different group for everything I was feeling. I would listen to music while doing chores, while reading, while walking around my neighborhood (which I stopped around 14 when I learned headphone didn’t really let you hear people running up on you and barely escaped being grabbed and pulled into a house by some men).

I loved music and how it helped me deal with everything that was going on in my life (my mother was very absent and always going to the hospital to get more opiates to take thanks to a DR getting her hooked on them and I was not in a good neighborhood for a Caucasian teen girl. Thanks to being in that neighborhood I experience sexual assault and eventually ended up with a boyfriend who was 18 when I was 14 that ended up beating and raping me). Music helped me get through all of that.

Because of a total collection of all the events I fell into a big depression. Music was my savior. It helped heal my soul so that daily I was able to focus and fight through the feeling of wanting to leave this world.

I know many people who walk around with headphones in all the time. We often look at them and wonder why they can’t just enjoy life without headphones always in. They are just allowing music to take them to a world where they can survive better than this world.

Music is 100% self care. It can calm your soul, ease your mind, get your body moving, and put a smile on your face.

Whenever you are feeling some type of way (happy, sad, mad, it doesn’t matter) put on your favorite tunes. Listen through headphones, play it on your computer, turn up that radio, or sit in your car and sing along.

It doesn’t matter the genre, it doesn’t matter the volume, it doesn’t even matter if you listen to the SAME track 30 times before turning it off. Let your body feel the music. 

And to get into the Christmas mood this holiday season, check out the A Christmas Family 1 hour Fireplace soundtrack here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDjzcGtJJB8)