NEWTON LOWER FALLS, Mass. (PRWEB)
August 24, 2021

The Falls at Cordingly Dam, a Benchmark Senior Living assisted living and Mind & Memory Care community in Newton, MA, has a new project underway intending to create resident legacies that will last for generations.

Soundtrack of Your Life is centered on the idea that nothing bonds more powerfully than music or can be recalled from across a lifetime: where you were when you first heard a song, who you were with and what you were feeling.

Kasey Larsen, The Falls’ resident art therapist, and Shayla McDermott, music therapist, direct The Falls’ popular expressive arts therapy program at the assisted living community. The program is designed to increase resident self-awareness, expression and quality of life using music, painting, drawing and movement.

McDermott said they created Soundtrack of Your Life “to craft personal collections of songs residents and their loved ones could enjoy and reflect on.”

Larsen says they also wanted to inspire residents further “intellectually, musically and spiritually.”

“It’s about building connection and community,” she says. “The residents get to share the songs with one another and get to know each other better. I’ll hear them say, ‘This is my wedding song,’ or ‘This song got me through a very tough time.’”

Residents have created personal playlists – and CDs – of songs that carry meaning for them, often connected with important moments or themes in their lives.

They’ve also written about why their musical selections are important to them and produced “album covers” for their soundtracks, using damaged, vinyl records recovered by Kasey. They have painted on the records to provide visual representations of their songs. It was a cooperative effort, with residents offering each other suggestions on how they might illustrate their “covers.”

The project began in June with weekly meetings during which McDermott provided the senior assisted living residents with lists of songs in personalized binders from various genres, musicians and decades. Residents would identify the songs that were important to them. “Each week, their soundtracks grew and grew,” she said. “Families also got into it, letting us know about songs that held meaning for their loved ones.”

The program has shown the two therapists a side of the residents they hadn’t seen before. They’ve been surprised and gratified at how vulnerable participants have allowed themselves to be. Larsen recalls one shy resident “who came out of her shell. To hear her laugh and be passionate about her soundtrack was wonderful.”

While she suspected the residents had a wide range of musical tastes, McDermott was surprised to see how wide it truly was. They chose old favorites – Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Stardust – as well as contemporary songs like Colby Caillat’s Bubbly. “We had everything from German classical music – Dichterliebe – to Italian and French favorites, and children’s songs like Kumbaya and Mairzy Doats, heartfelt songs like You’ll Never Walk Alone, and songs of comedy like Seven Old Ladies Stuck In a Lavatory.”

While Soundtrack of Your Life looks powerfully to the past, it also reveals a lot about who the residents are today. McDermott said the program “has brought me closer to the residents. I have a greater sense of who they’ve been throughout their lives and what they’ve gone through.”

McDermott and Larsen hope to establish a music library at The Falls soon where residents can come and play the CDs they’ve created.

In addition to offering independent assisted living, The Falls also offers memory care assisted living and is a respite care provider. For more information, visit https://www.benchmarkseniorliving.com/senior-living/ma/newton/the-falls-at-cordingly-dam.

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