The string of sleigh bells announced my entrance into the music store. There was no sneaking into or out of this situation. I was here now, and this—once a silly, fleeting thought–was really happening. The long-haired, Nirvana-inspired store clerk greeted me as if I were any middle-aged mother buying something for her band student. But this time, I wasn’t there for my band student—I was the student.
Twenty years earlier, I could match the store clerk’s energy and bust out licks from Smells Like Teen Spirit on the demo drums in the middle of the music store. Today, I hid in the restroom. I looked in the mirror and saw how time cracked my eyes. The once hopeful spark, faded, like a bass pedal battering a drum, making the instrument lose its tone and resonance over time.
Survival mode is so tough to break out of, and sometimes difficult to recognize we’re even in it. When I stepped into the music store that day, divorce, parenting, loss of loved ones and health issues had worn me down. Somewhere along the way, I lost myself.
I knew I needed to rediscover who I am. I needed to dream of who I wanted to be and put vision to who I am becoming. While I didn’t know exactly how to get to that point, I made a phone call and arranged to take my first drum lesson in 20 years. This was easy to set up. But now in the reality of my decision, my hands trembled as I passed through the narrow hallway filled with stacked drums and autographed posters of Neil Peart and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. What am I doing here? This is not where I belong. This has not been a part of my life for 20 years. It was uncomfortable and awkward, and there was no guarantee that anything would come from it.
In my head when I made that initial phone call, I envisioned I’d be rocking out and immediately impress the entire store with grooves and drum fills never conceived of before. A secret camera would catch the footage of this, I’d become a viral sensation, and Metallica would naturally invite me on stage during a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.
The reality of that first drum lesson was that my forearm muscles felt like a mushed-up bowl of Jell-O slogging along to keep up with basic warm-up exercises. No one in the store noticed or cared (thankfully). And my nerves put a megaphone to my lack of coordination as I struggled to keep on rhythm with the incessant squawking of the metronome which thinks it’s always right.
When life circumstances happen, our picture of what we thought life would be isn’t always the reality of what it is. The song we were in, the song we were comfortable with, is shaken up. Trying to live life using the same rhythm at the same Beats Per Minute when the song around us has changed can feel overwhelming and jarring, much like the glaring metronome taunting me when I was off rhythm. In that moment, we become aware new rhythms are needed—new ways of living in the reality of the seasons of life we are presently in.
At the music store, I couldn’t play at the same pace I had 2 decades prior. I needed to slow down and go back to the basics. I needed understanding and acknowledgement of where I was in my life at that present moment. I needed to allow time for muscles to reawaken as I consistently began to exercise them again. I needed to learn new rhythms for life within the reality of the song of that moment in time.
I knew things wouldn’t come together immediately. I think sometimes in our hearts, we hope with fingers crossed behind our backs that we’ll become rockstars overnight with one ounce of effort and one day of showing up. But in reality, it takes consistent effort, slowing down, and simplifying.
My goal was not to become a rockstar (though how amazing would that be?!). I knew I needed a catalyst. The rhythm of my life now was different from a few years before. I was in survival mode and needed something to disrupt that mode so that I could live life again and live it on a trajectory to become the person I want to become.
Welcome to Finding My Rhythm. This is a space with the intention to spark curiosity and provide encouragement as we break out of survival mode and discover new rhythms for our own lives. Finding My Rhythm is inspired by my own journey out of survival mode, my perspective as a daughter with a mother facing the ups and downs of chronic illness, and in my past work as a mental health therapist walking alongside clients taking steps to find their own rhythms.