Adrienne Pringle (Musician, Music Therapist) on Grief and Music

09/15/21 • 25 min

Maureen Pollard interviews musician and music therapist Adrienne Pringle about music, grief, and the ways people can use music to explore and express emotion, particularly during their grieving process. "There's always that 'aha' moment, that realization, and for some people it's thinking 'well I need to be a musician, I need to be able to play something and if I don't have those skills then this isn't for me' and that just isn't true. Music can actually be a really helpful resource to anyone: using it for mindfulness, for finding inner calm ... using your voice even."

Previous Episode

Losing a Brother to Suicide - Adrianna

Maureen Pollard interviews Adrianna about her experience of losing her brother to suicide. They discuss how, after her father delivered the news about her brother's death, she ended up losing everything she owned - everything but the cat. "All of a sudden I found myself at my father's home that night, at my family home, and didn't really know how I got there. And that night, I've nicknamed that night 'the day that I lost everything, everything but my cat' because there was this blow up where I lost my brother, the family dynamic, and the timeline that I thought I was in, and catapulted into grief and bereavement. But then I also had complicated grief, and compounded grief, where my partner left that night, and in doing so I lost my apartment, I lost my way of life, so I lost a lot, and for me it was really important that I keep my cat." Adrianna is a storyteller: telling her story of grief and bereavement to educate and support those around her in grief literacy and suicide prevention for over 10 years. Her one-woman bereavement piece “Everything but the Cat...” tours schools and theatres throughout the Ontario and Quebec region to bring mental health awareness to communities about suicide loss and mental health. Adrianna is a safeTALK Trainer as well, and has her Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST). She offers a suicide alert 3.5 hour workshop as a way to empower audiences to be a member of a suicide safer community. A recent graduate of the End of Life Doula program at Douglas College, Adrianna is also is a volunteer Hospice Care Companion and Bereavement Facilitator at Hospice Toronto. To know more about her grief journey please visit: www.adrianna-prosser.com/

Next Episode

Losing a Wife - Andreas

Maureen Pollard interviews Andreas about his experience of losing his wife of 35 years. They discuss the anticipatory grief he felt in being ~20 years younger than his partner and having to act as her caregiver through the end of her life: "As I think about it, the aspect of caregiving, the sense of anticipatory grief, to me this is making more and more sense - that in my desire to keep [my wife] well and alive for as long as possible, I was in a way placing more pressure on myself to be the perfect caregiver, to just make sure that nothing happened to further impact her health". They also discuss how Andreas found solace in walking his dog, and in sharing short essays he wrote about his wife on Facebook as he processed his grief during one of the pandemic lockdowns. He talks about the comfort, the 'virtual hugs', he received from sharing his thoughts and emotions with his friends online during a time when he was mourning alone.