Last night I watched the movie IF with my family.
I had seen parts of it before — but never the beginning. The first few minutes took my breath away.
If you haven't seen it — the film opens with a little girl and her parents, a beautiful family full of life. And then, quietly, everything changes. Her mother gets sick. And the rest of the story follows what happens to the people who are left to find their way forward.
I couldn't look away. Because I have lived those opening minutes.
Becca — my daughter-in-law — was that mom. Not on screen. In our family. She was the inspiration, the catalyst for a journey I had no idea I would be on. Her courage in the face of cancer set something in motion that eventually became Acoustic Healing.
I cried during those first few minutes. That deep, familiar sorrow — the grief, the missing her — it all came flooding back.
But as the movie went on, something else happened. What I felt wasn't just loss. It was confirmation. Confirmation that I am exactly where I am meant to be at this point in my life.
I've written on this blog before about the corridors, the patients, the quiet moments that shaped me as a therapeutic musician. But I don't think I've ever said this plainly: all of it traces back to Becca.
I honor her. And I honor every person who is on their own journey with cancer right now — including the ones we don't always think about. The families sitting in waiting rooms. The friends who don't know what to say. The nurses and doctors and chaplains who carry more than anyone sees.
Cancer doesn't just happen to one person. It happens to everyone around them.
I know that now. I've sat with it. And it is the reason I walk into hospital rooms with a guitar — not to fix anything, but to be present for all of it.
💜
David Villareal, RPh, CCM Founder, Acoustic Healing www.acoustichealing.music