What’s a favorite memory from your childhood?
One of the most wonderful images in my mind is being seven years old, standing on stage with a ukulele in my hand and a full Hawaiian band behind me, staring out at what looked like an endless sea of faces in the audience. The bandleader, wearing a white dinner jacket and standing next to me, counted down the band and they started to play.
I played a couple of chords then stopped the band, explaining to the bandleader that I needed to tune my uke. He stood there patiently while I sang my tuning song – “My (G) Dog (C) Has (E) Fleas (A).” The crowd and the rest of the band roared with laughter. We made two more starts and stops, finally getting tuning perfect with the help of the piano player, then in my squeaky little voice I belted out, “You Are My Sunshine.” The audience went wild. I was a hit!
What brings all this to mind is an article from NPR I recently read, titled “Positive Childhood Experiences May Buffer Against Health Effects Of Adverse Ones.” The article is an interview with Dr. Christina Bethell, discussing her research looking at how specific positive experiences can mitigate the effects of traumatic ones. There is a huge body of evidence that a person who has endured Adverse Childhood Experiences, or “ACEs” can suffer significant and lasting damage to their health on many levels. The bottom line of Dr. Bethell’s research is that, no matter how many bad things have happened to a child, positive experiences – let’s call them “PCEs” – can help reduce the severity of these long-term effects. And the more of these PCEs, the greater the health benefit.
Reading the interview with Dr. Bethell, I was struck by the sort of positive experiences she cited, like the kindly lady in her public housing complex (the kids called her “Mrs. Racoon”) who always made her feel special by throwing a birthday party with tea and candy every Saturday for anyone who had a birthday that week. These things might have been, in the big picture, relatively small, but it turns out that they had some major healing impacts.
I found this article especially interesting because I’ve been treated for PTSD stemming from several sources, including a number of ACEs. This does not mean that my childhood was always horrible; it most certainly was not. But it does indicate that some things happened along the way that were intense enough to have created some long-term problems.
Reading Dr. Bethell’s research, it is pretty obvious that my moment standing on stage with that Hawaiian band, along with a number of other positive memories I can look back on, contributed to the fact that these days I’m doing just fine.
Here’s why all this is so significant: every one of the kids we work with through Lost Voices is dealing with trauma relating to ACEs, most of them far more intense and debilitating than anything I experienced. Imagine if your most prevalent childhood memories include being raped, or watching your older brother die from a gunshot wound.
Then imagine standing on a stage made safe by musicians you’ve learned that you can trust, taking the incredible risk of pouring out some of your deepest feelings in a song or a poem to a room full of peers and strangers. Imagine getting in return a pure wave of life-altering applause and validation – exactly like I did when I was that seven-year-old comic ukulele player.
Anyone who has seen the final kids’ concert in one of our programs knows the almost manic joy those children show after they perform. Over the years, the most common thing I’ve heard from the girls and boys has been some version of, “I’ll never forget this, as long as I live.” I’ve always been deeply moved when I hear that, but I don’t think I ever completely realized just what that statement might really mean.
We have plenty of evidence that the journey of exploration in the Lost Voices program gives participants deeper personal insights that can significantly improve their progress in therapy. According to Dr. Bethell’s research, the experience they have with us might also have a more direct effect. That bright shining moment, standing behind the microphone and feeling the love of the crowd washing over them, can literally fight back against all the dark times.
Like a little boy standing on a big stage, strumming his ukulele and singing, “You Are My Sunshine.”
