ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effects on music learning when music is implicated as a source of trauma. Drawing upon the author's personal experiences, this chapter describes how music may offer a means of ameliorating the impact of trauma despite being inextricable from the original traumatic event(s). While traumatic experiences may have profound, debilitating effects on their survivors, working through traumatic memory is not only possible but also may lead to life-altering transformations. Engaging in music may provide the impetus for post-traumatic growth that is not reliant upon directly addressing the traumatic experience. Surviving trauma in which music is implicated, both as the source and as a means of moving through it, suggests that music education as a discipline requires a deeper understanding of the ways in which musicking may offer opportunities for individuals to come to terms with their traumatic histories and thus move forward in their lives.
