Hi Cassy-
Thanks for sharing this with us. I hope you are feeling better and quick on
the mend. I have not personally had to use the Mitchell Method for any
medical healing, but when I am feeling down it's the best medicine. The
great thing for me about her music is, that it is wonderful if you are up OR
down. Take care.
Michael
NP-Linger (Live)-Jonatha Brooke
n 3/24/01 8:31 AM, cassy at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Anyone else have crucial "Joni got me through it songs?" Let us
> know!
>
> Many of you don't know (those who met me before the Pine Knob show do)
> that in the last couple of years I have suffered from two strokes.
> The first caused me to lose my ability to speak for a long time, the
> second, far more debilitating, had me hospitalized for a couple of
> weeks and living in a rehabilitation center for two months. The
> second stroke also left me wheelchair-bound for many months and until
> modern science realized all I needed was a little left-side support (a
> brace) I could not do many of the things we all take for granted.
>
> As I sat, in a deep state of depression, in my hospital bed ringing
> the bell, futiley, for the nurse to take me to the bathroom before I
> lost control and all sense of dignity, I had a lot of time for
> self-evaluation and deep thought. Joni's lyrics came to me in bits
> and pieces, in dreams and just out of the blue when I least expected
> them. I had time to think about the kind of person I'd dreamed of
> being and the reality of the person I'd become. I knew that some of
> the lyrics weren't written with my situation in mind nor did they
> really mean what I applied them to in terms of how they related to me
> at that time, for example "when you dig down deep, you lose good sleep
> and it makes you heavy company," but I had lived with Joni's words for
> all of my adult life and as many of you know it's hard to go through
> something traumatic and NOT think of a few of SIQUOMB's lyrics. I
> digress...
>
> The very excellent question at hand, "Joni got me through it" songs.
> At various times in my life different Joni songs have pulled me
> through but the ones that come to mind most vividly during this time
> are "Trouble Child" and "Down to You." I was physically a shell of my
> former self, I was depressed and didn't want to live let alone get out
> of bed each day to be tortured by physical, speech and occupational
> therapists who had the annoying habit of daring to be cheerful when I
> wanted to wallow in self-pity.
>
> Thom (my husband, my hero, my life), brought me a portable CD player
> and some headphones so I could perhaps let the music start to heal me
> from the inside out. He had a hard time deciding on which CDs to
> bring for me since I have quite a large selection to choose from and
> he hadn't been with me long enough, then, to know my favorites, he
> brought "Court & Spark" among others.
>
> I waited until late at night when my insomnia often had me alone,
> awake in the dark. I had savored the moment I would play C&S, like a
> child who has saved their favorite candy bar until all the other kids
> have gone home so they wouldn't have to share a single bite with the
> others, mouth almost watering in anticipation of the pleasure I knew I
> would find as the first strains of piano filtered across my ears. I
> listened more carefully than I ever remember listening before, knowing
> my own mortality now as I never had in the past. My mind eased into
> another world, my secret world of Joni. My heart-rate slowed, my
> breathing became easier and I felt myself relax for the first time in
> weeks as I let myself be carried away on the familiar flights and
> phrases of her fingers dancing across the keys.
>
> Until that night, Court and Spark had not been one of my favorite Joni
> recordings, I listened the familiar tunes silently until "Trouble
> Child" and as I melted into the lyrics and applied them to my current
> situation I cried my eyes out, sobbing until I was wrung dry of
> emotion, feeling sorry for myself and yet knowing it was time to live
> again, after all I had so much to live for: a child who needed a
> mother, a new love who seemed to be sticking by me regardless of the
> fact he wasn't getting all that he'd bargained for when we entered
> into our relationship.
>
> That night was a metamorphosis for me, I clicked back and listened to
> "Down to You," again, I realized that I couldn't sit around waiting
> for someone to wave a magic wand for me and make things the way they
> used to be, it just wasn't going to happen, it did come down to me, no
> one else could give me the drive and spirit it would take to get as
> back to normal as was possible for me and I could lie there and let my
> dreams go over the dam and watch my right to be human go over with
> them or I could motivate and stem the flood.
>
> I didn't go to sleep until the wee hours of the next morning and was
> exhausted when the nurses came around to take vitals and wake us for
> yet another day of torture. The difference that day was that I knew I
> was finally going to draw from within, no one was "giving" me anything
> except a little push to find my inner strength and man I needed that
> push many times over the next few months as I struggled to re-learn
> the simplest of tasks. It hadn't come as such a shock to know I
> really had no one, I knew it all along, I just needed a little
> reminder that I had to find the strength within me to recover. It all
> came down to the "river of changing faces" (the rehab staff) and above
> all to me.
>
> It feels wierd to give so much of myself out in a post to a public
> list, I am not one, usually, to share a whole lot of myself with
> strangers, but I see others doing it all the time here and it seems to
> be a pretty safe place to let people see our deeper selves. I hope I
> haven't bored anyone to tears but I couldn't let this opportunity to
> share how Joni got *me* through it.
>
> Cassy
>
> NP: "Car On a Hill" Joni Mitchell
