‘Music puts anything in a different form’: How music therapy helped one veteran heal trauma

United States Air Force veteran Jac Lawler has spent the last 20 years working on recovering from trauma, but she found new healing in Carbondale last weekend at Music Therapy Retreats (MTR), founded by Mack Bailey.

After opening his music therapy practice in Aspen, Bailey launched MTR) — formerly named Music Therapy of the Rockies — five years ago to help veterans and others who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This year, it hosts 12 free retreats in seven states. The most recent, and local, one took place last weekend in Carbondale, at WindWalkers Equine Assisted Learning and Therapy Center.

“As soon as you step onto the property, it feels very still and very safe,” Lawler said.

She discovered MTR after initially searching for singing lessons because she found that singing, specifically, using her voice, felt very empowering. Bailey’s retreats, which cap at six participants each, include four group sessions and two individual sessions to help participants recognize triggers, increase coping skills, and reframe traumatic events to embrace their strengths.

Lawler, a disabled veteran, has been working on healing from an assault she experienced from another service member 20 years ago. According to Bailey, 23% of women in the military reported sexual assault while there, and 55% of women and 38% of men have experienced sexual harassment while serving.

“It was a contentious situation, and I was discouraged from filing a report,” Lawler said. “When I separated (from the military), I wasn’t able to work. Being around authority figures was very difficult and scary.”

She has been benefitting from the VA, which she credits for its “extensive and impressive” mental-health support. She describes her recovery as a full-time job; only in the last year has she been able to shift her focus from skill building to “figuring out who I am as a person,” she said.

She entered last weekend’s music therapy retreat cautiously, not knowing how she would feel about learning to play guitar or co-writing a song about her trauma and healing.

The retreat began with dinner Friday night. The next morning, Bailey told his story, which included how writing a song when he felt ready to end his life saved his life. He also talked about the science behind music therapy, a specialized modality of psychotherapy that involves playing and/or listening to music to bring out emotions and transform trauma.

“Music incorporates the entire brain simultaneously. Whether you’re listening to it or playing it, you’re using every aspect of your brain to experience it,” he said.

That day, Lawler and two other vets were gifted a guitar and music book.

“I felt resistant about this part, but they provided instruction and a tabs notation format for reading music that was instantly accessible. Within 20 minutes, I could pick out a recognizable tune — that is where the magic started. It was so empowering and hopeful,” she said. “Before that, all of the vets had been reserved — we were all waiting to be told what to do. Once we had the guitar in our hands, we started talking, and we started opening up, and there was a different kind of comradery.”

After lunch, Bailey introduced participants to professional songwriters, who are trained to listen deeply and write an individualized song to reframe traumatic memories into more empowering stories. Sunday morning, songwriters presented lyrics to the participants, and they worked together to dial in exact feelings.

“Music puts anything in a different form,” he said. “People have a tendency to create their own script that they live by, and music breaks those norms.”

Nashville-based songwriter Buddy Mondlock worked with Lawler on her song, titled “An Agreement.”

“It talks about how every veteran has the experience where we made an agreement with our government that we were going to have each other’s backs, and that shouldn’t be a one-side arrangement,” she said.

The chorus states: “We had an agreement / me and the U.S. government / I put my name and life on the line / I’d have my country’s back / and they’d have mine.”

A concert Sunday evening debuted the songs to an audience of about 18.

“The way that Mack and his team had curated this experience, this was one of the most safe feeling veteran activities that I have ever encountered,” Lawler said, adding that the team is very empathetic and curious and doesn’t make assumptions. “At no point during the retreat did I feel like a poor, injured vet. I felt whole.”

She said putting her story into a song broke her heart wide open — in a good way.

“The process of making art is where we take something that lives only inside ourselves, and we bring it out into the world and make it separate from us. (The trauma) had so much weight and took up so much of my inner landscape,” she said. “It takes the thing that you’ve been experiencing internally, and it recognizes the truth of your lived experience, and it manifests that into something you can directly and objectively share with another person. The real estate that it used to hold in my body and in my mind is so much calmer. Now it lives outside of me in this beautiful song, and it’s like taking ownership.

“The best analogy I can think of is: Imagine if you had a small tumor or something that was wrong, and then you had a surgery, and now you can see the history of it, and you can recognize your experience in it. All of the fear and suffering is still there, but it doesn’t live inside of you anymore. I went from this experience of seeing not just what my abilities with this instrument were but seeing the power of storytelling through song.”

To carry the healing home, Bailey asked participants to write an action statement.

For Lawler, she is involved in practicing four times a week and learning to play her songs on the guitar. Though she didn’t initially think music therapy would work for her — or that she’d like playing guitar — she found it pleasantly haunting: On Monday night, she felt restless, and all she could think about was grabbing her guitar and practicing, which she did.

“(It) brings an immediate connection, where I have the power to express myself without being overwhelmed,” she said.

Retreats are free to participants. To learn more or to donate, visit musictherapyretreats.org.