Ask any Certified Clinical Musician what they remember about a session and they will almost always say the same thing.
Not what they played. The feeling.
Vivian has been a Certified Clinical Musician since 2014. Before that — for more than 40 years — she was an oncology nurse. She knows illness from both sides of a bedside. She knows grief. She knows the particular weight of a room where someone is fighting, or resting, or letting go.
Vivian is one of the four founding musicians who will record with Acoustic Healing this May in Monterey. Last week, while we were coordinating our session, she wrote me a note from Hawaii — and in it, she described a moment I hadn't known she had witnessed.
She had played harp for my daughter-in-law Becca, when Becca was hospitalized.
"I remember knowing her from the clinic," she wrote. "What a sweet beautiful soul she was."
"I don't remember what I played. I just remember the feeling in the room — and it was profound."
She told me Becca fell asleep.
And of my son Nick, who was there at Becca's side, she wrote:
"He was the wonderful angel husband to Becca. It was the definition of Love watching his caring to Becca."
If you have ever played therapeutically at a bedside — or if you have been a patient or a family member in that room — you understand what that means. Sleep is not nothing. In a hospital, sleep is sanctuary. It is the body's way of saying: for a moment, I feel safe.
That is what Vivian gave her.
And now, more than a decade later, Vivian and I will sit together in a recording studio — and we will try to capture that. Not the specific session. Not the specific song. But the quality of presence that makes it possible for a suffering person to exhale and close their eyes.
"I feel honored to be part of your journey, my friend. No words really can describe my emotions even to this day. It hits deep in my core."
That's a Certified Clinical Musician. That's a healer. That's Vivian.
And that's exactly why this founding session matters. 💜
💜 David E Villareal, RPh, CCM
🎸 www.acoustichealing.music
🌐 www.thetherapeuticguitarist.com
💼 www.linkedin.com/in/david-villareal-rph-ccm-35963819
🏢 www.linkedin.com/company/acoustic-healing