first person

Grieving the loss of my mom and my role as her caregiver, I cut out everyone—except for my massage therapist. A year of weekly treatments revealed the complicated and essential nature of human touch.

“Music is that magical medicine that soothes and opens us all. But music was not really what turned my life around.”

The self-reliance built from growing up amid such a hardscrabble landscape stayed with my mother. By high school she was sewing her own outfits, a skill that would last a lifetime.