For Children -- Blog

When our children were young, my husband and I took a communication skills course for parents called P.E.T. (Parent Effectiveness Training by Gordon), and I became a certified instructor a year later.  I was in awe of the technique.  It felt respectful and powerful, and I could see it working in my marriage and with our children […]

I had to laugh at myself last week as I was carefully choosing my first day of school outfit. Some things never change. Yet. I may be older than 5 years old now, and I may be a teacher/performer of music, but I am still that young girl that gets so excited when the school […]

 Success: A New Definition     Should success be defined in terms of salary and accumulated wealth only? If so, I have failed miserably. Yet if I ignore society’s definition, I am finding a new sense of peace around the word success.     Here are a few examples of newly defined success in my own professional and personal […]

Love is in the Details  I was in the middle of teaching music to preschoolers when Ben raised his hand and said: “Why aren’t you wearing the flower in your hair, Cheryl Melody?” There was something about his words that stopped my breath and held me from continuing the lesson. I felt my heart open, […]

 “What was your summer like?  I know what summer is supposed to be like…lazy, easy going, not much to do except for what you want to do–but for me, it was busier than ever with my joyful concert work, the stress of aging parents and its unique demands, a joy-filled wedding, birthdays, job searching and […]

The earth’s beauty is calling to us right now, this moment, this season.  Let’s stop our to-do list long enough to hear the birds, river, ocean, gentle breeze; let’s enter into more of a still state to observe the colors, sounds and sights surrounding us.  Every moment we are too much in our minds of […]

In the end, it will not be what we talked about, but what we did, how we acted, where we put our time and energy, because by everything we do, we model and mentor what we value.  Our lives speak loudly.                                                               –Written by Dr. Geraldine Schwartz, Living Legacy Project   Dr. Schwartz’s vision has […]

                                         A Kinesthetic “Peace Begins with You and MeTM” Technique  As perfectly imperfect human beings, we need to inspire ourselves and our children to make moment to moment choices in “being peace.”   Creating a personal brain-body cue is like giving ourselves a self-pat on the back for reinforcement, but it is more subtle.  This approach […]

I began performing the heart of the “Peace Begins with You and Me” concerts when I was asked to perform at the University of Oklahoma after the bombing.  Earlier that day, I visited the area that had been bombed and saw hundreds of teddy bears lined up on fences and words of “We’ll remember you […]

I can still remember what it felt like to be bullied, and I also remember coming home and teasing my sister so that I could regain the power that I had lost at school.  I don’t know the exact reasons why I was bullied.   I was from a poor family of a minority religion, with […]

Valentine’s Day and every day is our time for teaching children that it is important to be their own best friend, and to know on the deepest of levels that there is no standard “Barbie and Ken” way to look, to talk or to be.   The better we feel about ourselves in terms of self-acceptance, […]

Music can help get a child back on track before it is too late. It can revive self-esteem, self-belief, feelings of inclusion and worthiness.    I should know.  I was one of those children that was lost, and got back on track because of threshold moments in music.  I wasn’t the best student in some subjects, […]