You may want to purchase Bette’s CD. It has been a huge blessing to me in my work and personal life, as well as to many I know.

For the next few days, as I take a break, may I suggest that you take one of Bette's songs each day as you prepare for a new year.

I'll catch you again on January 3.  May you continue to have meaningful holidays.

It takes much creativity to make music that is rich and unique. As an optimist, I am convinced that each of my students can work out ways to do that, though. They do it literally whenever they compose a song of their own. That’s something that seems to be hard for many who want to have all the rules in place, to find all the directions written out. They resist improvising.

As I explained yesterday, people who are just reading somebody else’s music are playing music, but not really making music. Same is true for those who choose to live by others’ standards without fine-tuning the choices in order to create something unique.

Some of the most inspirational students I have are those that have faced tremendous personal heartaches and losses that I cannot even imagine. It is music that keeps them going.

One is a teenage girl who has lost both her mother and grandmother to cancer in the last two years. She is being raised by an elderly and sickly grandfather.

Another is an 88-year-old who was forced to quit lessons earlier this year when he could no longer even sit in his wheel chair at the piano that sits at the head of his bed, in a nursing home. Yet he still makes music in his head. It shines from his eyes as he speaks, with delight, of the past joys in spite of much suffering and loss. He even lived and fought through World War II, has outlived all of his siblings and survived cancer twice, as well as open-heart surgery.

Like these survivors, I believe that you readers, whether survivors, family members, advocates, or professionals who are struggling to come to grips with new realities--all of you can creatively find ways to cope and grow. To bloom where you are planted. Your souls may feel dead, but they are NOT dead. Hold on to that fact.

Each of us is a silent music-maker. Not long ago, I found a large, purple plaque, in a thrift store, with just those words.   

That was my philosophy, even as a little girl. Perhaps intuitively. It still is, though there have been many times when I would have scoffed at that idea. So I bought the most affordable masterpiece and hung it beside the front door of this apartment, where I write and teach piano.

It’s a door where visitors often enter. Mostly students and their families, but often survivors and advocates, as well as members of my own family. I want them, young and old, to notice these words. To be reminded that they are responsible for making music, no matter what life brings to them. Just as I am.

Today, as you go about your routine, listen to the music that is playing in your heart. Listen closely. Even if it doesn’t sound like music at first.  Embrace it as a work of art, a work still in progress.