We’ve been receiving dozens of stories from people coast to coast about the transformative power of music. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we are publishing a story every day in May.
Submitted by: Roberta Nouari
Music has played a huge part of my life from the early days when my older siblings would dance around the house loudly singing to the Bay City Rollers as soon as my parents left, to military ceremonies with my Dad on Parade and the bands playing whatever was appropriate for the occasion. However, it is the Dixie Chicks that binds my children in vivid memory and unites as a family.
Every summer, I would take a road trip from Vancouver to Calgary. I would pile whatever friend of the kids we had brought along that year, my two kids, all our belongings into the car and off we would go for the 11-12 hour drive. As a single parent with limited funds, this was the only way we could enjoy a family vacation. We had favorite stops along the way (forests where the kids could run off steam, fruit stands where they could buy honey sticks) but it was the music that truly made the trip. Somehow I had fallen in love with the Dixie Chicks and it was their albums Fly and Home that were on repeat for most of the journey. The kids would help me stay awake any time they thought I was wavering by putting on one of our sing-along songs, open all the windows and sing at the top of their lungs. Whether it was Cowboy Take Me Away, Goodbye Earl or even Landslide, it was me, with my untrained voice, singing to them, or them singing along with me. Mostly it was a family sing along as they quickly learned the words and felt the music reach to them as well. We would talk about the song lyrics and what we thought they were about and how it made us feel.
To this day those songs bond us like nothing else. It reminds us of those summer trips, of how far we have come, how the simplest things in life bring you joy, how important family is and how strong we are as a unit. There are days that are long and filled with a lot of battles, but all we have to do is put on one of our favorites and sing as loud as we can, and somehow that fear, anguish, heartache, or whatever is troubling us seems less insurmountable.
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