VIDEO – MUSIC MATTERS –

Oct. 12, 2023 – KEYRIS MANZANARES: Linda MacDermott and her music therapist, Jim Borling have been meeting for 20 years. Each one of their sessions starts like this, setting an intention.

LINDA MacDERMOTT: My first session was, I have a hole in my soul and I feel like I just feel like I have a hole in my soul. And so, kind of that was the intention to see what’s going on. That’s the best I could do. So, I grew up, through my childhood every type of abuse that can happen, happened. And I learned at the age of probably 10 and a half, 11, to keep a liquor bottle in my room. Because when I drank, did a shot of liquor, I didn’t have to feel what had just happened or deal with that. So that continued on. The main drugs I used were marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol. But I wasn’t opposed to trying anything else as well. But that was my staple drugs.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: MacDermott says she never thought music could be a healing agent until she met Borling.

JIM BORLING: I’d always been interested in music as a child, and I can tell many stories of even being a child when I felt the expansiveness of music. I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe that but I realized there’s something really special here.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Borling has been a music therapist for close to 40 years. He specializes in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music which was developed by music therapist, Helen Bonnie.

WATCH@VPM