How music has become a coping mechanismGrief is unexpressed love with nowhere to go – Katie Thomas RA Most of us have thought about our funeral songs. We want to pick something that resonates with our experiences but also sums them up. We want a reflection of us, our legacy to make our loved ones feel something, whether that is a giggle or tear. This is grief. This is allowing the music to take control of your emotions and allow you to ‘feel’ yourself and begin the grieving ‘process’ (I hate that term). I love living in the immense, disorientating ‘Grey area’ that is ‘Life’. Like many others, I turn to the creative spaces externally and internally to try and make sense of the world and my place within it. At times where I feel like I am drowning in my own head, and I need to make sense of my thoughts, I turn to writing. When I feel like I have things figured out and am looking for confirmation, I paint. And when I need to let go, I listen to music and if my body is willing, I dance. Music is just incredible; it can change your state of mind and shake you fundamentally to the core. Music can make you cry, laugh, ‘rage’, shocked, but overall, it makes you really feel something and it doesn’t matter if you are listening at home alone or at a club packed to the rafters, all swaying to the same rhythm, you always feel like you are not alone – almost like you are a part of something bigger. Like many others before me, many of my strong childhood memories are of music. I can recall a collective of early summer mornings. The smell of sun cream in the air as my mum brushed my hair to ‘The Beautiful South’s’ Don’t Marry Her. There were also times when music would fill me with anger and frustration, crying on the stairs as my father would drunkenly belt out 'Robbie Williams' Angels after coming home in the early hours. I remember the countless times I would be staring at the dark ceiling being awoken to the first chord of the song, my gut would fill with dread knowing he was ‘on one’. My first core memory of sharing music was in 1996... |
A ' no holds' page about my life with incurable advanced Breast Cancer, in the hope it will give a realistic, detailed account to other young women going through the unfortunate illness.
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September 2023
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