How a Music Score unlocked how my body kept score

I believe love is deeper and wider than anything else. Including trauma and the scars that remain after the deepest part of the wound has healed.

I think I’ve always believed that despite what paths my life has traveled.

Back in May, Jon Batiste dropped the first tracks for his Black Mozart album. I was working late and it was playing on Spotify. Yes, Spotify is still taking my money….for now….and that’s a different discussion for another day.

Alla Turc Movement was playing and it wasn’t the first time I heard it, but it was the first time I was overcome by the music. I sat at my desk with my eyes closed and felt my fingers start to play the piece. And in my mind, I was playing as if I was 10 years old again. No easy feat since I’m quickly approaching 63 in a couple days.

As my fingers were playing this imaginary piano, tears were rolling out from under my closed eyelids. As if a part of me remembered how much I loved playing the piano and this piece in particular. How was it possible for my fingers to be moving so nimbly when it was well over 40 years since I sat at a piano.

And that’s when it hit me. Maybe the healing work I’ve been doing did more than just close a gaping wound. Maybe it made room for me to discover what was underneath. What was always there.

I have always said that my soul shattered during a most painful time in my life. But now it resembles a stained-glass mosaic that was put together so beautifully that it allows light to shine through in innumerable ways. Healing feels like that to me sometimes.

But when it comes to this particular moment in time, how did my fingers know?

When I was first learning to play the piano, we could not afford to own a piano. I had a paper keyboard that I taped to the kitchen table. I practiced on that “keyboard” every day. The musician in me wanted to play despite what it looked like.

Then, one day, I came home from school and my father was already home. Which was not normal, by the way. In our living room was a piano. My very own piano.

I didn’t merely learn to play it. I learned the weight of the keys. I learned how the keys responded to my fingers, how my fingers should move. Eventually I was playing without reading the music. My body didn’t magically remember something after 40 years. It had been trained to know it.

This experience at my desk had me thinking about the book, “The Body Keeps the Score” and wondering if my body was remembering the score that really mattered. And I think that is what has stayed with me. Not that my fingers remembered how to play. But that something I thought was long gone was still there.

Maybe healing doesn’t always create something new. Maybe sometimes it makes room for us to recognize what was already there. What was never lost.

The little girl at the kitchen table with her paper keyboard was still there. The girl who wanted to play. The girl who found a way before she had the resources. The girl who didn’t wait until everything was perfect before she began. And perhaps that is part of what happens when we do the healing work. We begin to discover the wound isn’t the whole story. It is part of our story. The scar is part of our story. But there are other things written into us as well. Joy. Curiosity. Creativity. Desire. Courage.

**LOVE. **

Maybe even dreams we thought we’d outgrown. But always LOVE.

I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve watched the growing conversations around financial trauma. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is tremendous value in understanding how our experiences with scarcity, instability,family, culture, loss and survival can shape the way we behave with and relate to money.

But I also wonder what happens when understanding the wound becomes the destination. What if we become very good at explaining why we do what we do, but never get to experience the freedom of doing something different? Freedom isn’t merely understanding the score of survival. Freedom includes discerning that survival isn’t the only music available to us.

I don’t want understanding to be the journey’s end. I want women to have the space to listen to what comes next. To make decisions based on who they are being and becoming. What matters now, from a place of honesty and grace, not fear, shame or judgment.

This is part of the reason I created The Alignment Intensive.

It isn’t another place to learn how to optimize your life. It isn’t about giving you someone else’s formula or recipe for what an aligned life should look like.

It is a day to step out of your routine and listen for the melody of your life. To look at your vision, values and priorities with fresh eyes. To notice where your life and resources are aligned and where they aren’t. To make decisions as a response to what is truly meaningful rather than simply reacting from what is urgent. Sometimes, just sometimes, you don’t need another strategy. Sometimes you need enough space to remember what really matters.

I keep thinking about that night at my desk. My eyes closed. My fingers moving. A piece of music I hadn’t played in more than 40 years moving through my body as if no time had passed at all.

What if part of healing is creating space to tune into the love underneath? Maybe that’s the score that really matters.