Towards the end of my junior year, it finally clicked in my head that I wanted to have a career in music. I absolutely did NOT want to be a teacher and at the time I thought my only other real option was music performance, so that was the route I decided to take. When I finally made this decision, my band director, who I was very close with, mentioned that I should check out music therapy. I had never heard of it and more or less brushed it off. I did a quick google search and it didn’t catch my interest. My band director continued to push music therapy, even looping my mom in so she could try to encourage me as well. I finally caved when my band director offered to connect me with his sister in law who was a music therapist so that I could learn more. After that conversation, I was absolutely hooked.

After graduating High School, I moved up to Milwaukee, WI to attend Alverno College for my music therapy degree. It was an incredibly challenging 4 years with plenty of hardships, learning, and growth. It was also a time of incredible fun and bonding with some of the closest friends that I still have today. My graduating music therapy class was small, just 6 of us in total, but working through the challenges together bonded and connected us in a way that I don’t think much else could have. We cried, laughed, and stress ate Wendy’s chicken nuggets together. Without the interpersonal connections that I made during this time, I don’t know that I would have been able to get through it all.

Towards the end of my 4th year, it was time to start looking for a music therapy internship. I had somehow always known that I wanted to work in the mental health field, so I was incredibly excited when an opportunity came up for me to do my internship on the inpatient psychiatric unit at Ascension St. Francis Hospital. I learned a lot during my time there and it prepared me well for what was to come in my career. Within just a couple months of completing my internship, I began my time at Rogers Behavioral Health in West Allis as a music therapist in the Experiential Therapy department.

During my first couple years, I worked in a variety of settings which included inpatient child/adolescent, inpatient adult, PHP/IOP adolescent, and PHP/IOP adult. Within these settings, I worked with individuals with a wide range of diagnoses including depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, OCD, BPD, and bipolar disorder. I learned a lot while working in this variety of settings. My biggest takeaway was that I was truly passionate about working with adults further along in their treatment in the PHP/IOP setting. As luck would have it, about 2 years into my time at Rogers I was able to move into a full time position working at the adult PHP/IOP building. I grew so much as a professional during my time in this setting. I was able to get to know my interdisciplinary team and truly design and implement interventions which enhanced and amplified what patients were learning in their programs. I made incredible connections with patients and other professionals which I will remember for the rest of my life.

At this point you may be asking, “If you loved it so much, why did you leave?” Well, there were a lot of things that played into this. There were many systemic changes taking place which would have been difficult for me to be a part of for the sake of my own mental health. However, the biggest factor in my leaving was discovering what my true calling is, and that is helping individuals to foster connection. While there were occasional moments where I was able to hold these spaces for my patients, this was not the goal of their PHP/IOP treatment and consistently working to foster connection was not necessarily appropriate in this setting. So with that, I made the incredibly difficult decision to leave and move my practice out into the community.