Music therapy: Skyscraper

Do you have a ‘fight’ song, a song you like to listen to when you feel like saying ‘f**k you!’ to cancer, a song that boosts you and reminds you that no matter what happens you CAN do this?

Me, I like to listen to this song – Skyscraper, by Demi Lovato.

I came across this song just after finishing active treatment when Google Play threw it up on a random playlist.

I wasn’t in a great place mentally at the time, and the lyrics caught my attention straight away. If cancer were an actual person, this song captured what I would want to say to it.

I remember standing in my kitchen and starting to cry as she finished singing the following words:

As the smoke clears, I awaken

And untangle you from me

Would it make you, feel better

To watch me while I bleed?

All my windows still are broken

But I’m standing on my feet

This was how I felt, like I was trying to untangle myself from the cancer that had wrapped itself around me and every corner of my life. Like I had been through something that had left me feeling like a shell.

Yet I was still here.

In those early days after active treatment ended, I listened to this song a lot.

I don’t listen to it quite so much now, but the last few weeks I’ve found myself playing it more often.

Recurring cellulitis, a mammogram, a Zometa infusion last week and the feelings that being back in the Oncology Day Ward always brings up, all combined with the actual Zometa side effects, make for an emotional week.

And so I played Skyscraper more often… and it made me feel better.

What’s your go to for a musical pick me up?

By Happy Magazine Contributor, Natasha Whelehan.