JULIA HOLLANDER
THE SINGING THERAPIST SHARES A DECADE OF REFLECTIONS
Julia Hollander’s daughter, Immie, who was born with severe cerebral palsy, wasn’t able to walk or talk. But she was able to sing and responded to others singing. “That led me to working with people with other kinds of neurological disorders, especially those with dementia,” shares Hollander, a therapist, writer and performer.
“I started to realise that what they were getting from singing was actually what we all got. It is a universal human gift.”
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, she committed to penning her book Why We Sing, a project that she says helped get her through those di cult days.“[The lockdowns] were really hard for singers because we had to stop doing the thing that makes us feel alive for pretty much two years.”The writer hopes that in reading her book, people will become convinced that by not singing, “they are not yet living their best life!” She also dreams of a “singing revolution” where people all over the world discover their “musical voice”, sharing it with others and conveying “their deepest emotions” as a result. “When people tell me they can’t sing or they are a ‘bad’ singer, my rst question is, ‘Who told you that?’ Usually it’s someone when they were young – a teacher, a fellow singer or a parent. Yesterday it was a woman’s teenage children. By the end of the session, she confessed that she knew she could sing, she just needed to do it in an environment where she didn’t feel judged.”
Aside from exercising her vocal chords and teaching others, Hollander coaches piano and enjoys cooking, spending time with loved ones, and walking her dog. Life drawing once a week has also inspired the author. “By responding to a human anatomy via my eyes, with a pencil or charcoal, I’m doing something very similar to my teaching, where I use my ears to listen to the voice coming from that body,” she explains. (Out Now)