Give the Gift of Hope: How Music Can Save Lives this Holiday Season
The holidays are here—the season of love, compassion, and giving. Sure, we’re all feeling the pinch, but what if this year, your gift could truly change someone’s life?
If you’re looking to make an impact, consider supporting Nordoff & Robbins, the unsung heroes fighting the silent pandemic of mental health through the transformative power of music therapy. They’re like modern-day warriors, taking on impossible odds to help people heal, even as the world looks the other way.
Take a moment to read the unfiltered story of our assistant Miloš, who found hope and strength thanks to Nordoff & Robbins. It’s raw, real, and a testament to the life-changing work they do.
This season, let’s make giving cooler than ever. Let’s make it count. Choose Nordoff & Robbins as your holiday charity and be part of something extraordinary.
https://www.nordoff-robbins.org.uk
Milos' Story
After a huge health crash in 2020 I was left totally disabled. I was losing myself in space and time, barely able to walk, I had seizures and I couldn’t recognise my family members. My life was in total shambles. When I recovered a bit I realised my life will never be the same. I lost my job, the ability to go out alone without supervision, and mostly the ability to do things on my own. I was housebound. A prisoner without a crime, locked away and also a victim, all in one body.
What is this bread for? I know I need to eat it, but I don’t know how. The noise of a baby crying in the bus and the alarm on the street feel like someone’s ripping my spine and my nervous system out of my body. The world is constantly spinning but I haven’t had a drink in ages. My legs are giving up on me in mid-stride. I’m speaking but I don’t know what I’m saying. I feel so tired all the time. Even having a meal or a shower gets me exhausted. My family is slowly going crazy because they don’t know what is going on with me and that is the heaviest weight that weighs on my heart and is dragging me down. Deep, deeper than Mariana trench… That was and to some point is, my life.
After a year of struggles, tests and doctors in multiple countries, in 2021, I got a diagnosis. Functional neurological disorder and chronic fatigue syndrome. Now what? Therapies are nowhere to be seen or are ineffective.Yet another wall, another dead end. Slowly sliding down those walls I went darker and deeper.
And then all of a sudden, a silly ad in Pizza Express sent me down a rabbit hole of exploration, which landed me on a page of Nordhoff and Robbins music therapy. I applied thinking to myself: music is a big part of my life (I was a singer in my 20s), and combined with therapy, theoretically, might help when nothing else did. After waiting for some time, I was assigned a therapist named Joe. A rock guitarist. We got along great from the moment our first conversation started over the phone. A very kind and bubbly chap, just what I needed at that dark moment. He asked me about the bands I liked and said he’d need a week to make the curriculum for my therapy. Every week we had a meeting over the internet and sang rock songs from Credence to Dio. Amazing fun. I was slowly getting my hope and voice back. Near the end, he asked me if I would like to write some lyrics for the chords he had, and I said,” I haven’t been doing that for 20 years, but I can try”. He played me the chords, and I thought about my mental state, and the lyrics for “It Is You” just poured out. Joe also asked me if I could organize for us to meet at Nordhoff and Robbins in person because our sessions are coming to an end. I didn’t think it was possible as, at that time, my wife was working and my son was going to school. But luck would have it, my son’s school had an inset day on that day. So we went together, and I thought he was going to sit in the corridor and wait while I had my therapy. When we went in, Joe said to my son Leo, “I heard you play the piano”. He affirmed. “Ok, there is the piano. Get yourself comfortable while we finish the therapy bit and then you can accompany us while we play our song. Improvise something.” And so he did, and so it was. The song “It is You” was born. We didn’t have a title then. Hell, we barely had a first verse, but when we finished, we just sat back in our chairs and went, “Man, this is good!”
For the next session, we finished writing that song and started with “Dreaming of a Dreamer”, which speaks of our dependency on technology and how it is slowly peeling us off the base of reality and getting us into this state of coma while we still think we are here in the present.
We continued playing and making songs. Leo continued composing, and Joe advised when we got stuck. Joe also suggested that two of his colleagues join the band, Jakob on bass and Matt on drums, and we all just organically bonded into a musical family.
And so Hypnobard came to being. Our band is an entity which flies through space, time, and the dimensions of the mind and expresses wondrous stories through music. These songs started multiplying and the ideas bubbled out through our instruments and voice. Now we have a small conceptual rock opera called “Planet Lumnia”, which we have already performed once, with many more songs in the works. We have plans to perform it in the future and are actively looking for venues
That was the light at the end of the tunnel for me.
Without the wish to sound Churchillian, I can’t say I am out of the tunnel yet. I can’t even say that I’m beginning to get out of the tunnel. But this music therapy gave me hope and a reason to continue fighting and living and hoping that I’ll be able to be happy and get on with as normal life as it can possibly be. At least for a little while. It dragged me from the edge of a precipice of no return and gave me another chance. I can’t fix my body. I can’t fix my brain, which is the hardest part for me, but through our music, I can inspire people to go on and fight and try to be happy in their lives even when the times are tough. That is what makes my heart and soul grow. Mental health struggles are even more vicious than physical ailments because they are invisible, stigmatized and often hidden but are as real and debilitating to the sufferers as broken limbs. No matter what happens, using the magic of music we can try to, at least for a short time, unite everyone and give them the wings to fly.
In a few weeks, we will go into BonaFideStudio to record our first two songs and give them to the world. Let them be the battle hymns of hope.
Love to all of you wonderful people,
Milos
