Content note: This article includes discussion of murder/filicide and ableism.
We mark time by naming days, weeks, and months; then we mark those days with our cultures by bestowing special titles on one day or another. Sometimes different cultures claim the same day, bringing to light a nearly indescribable tension that otherwise might have lurked uncomfortably under the surface. March first is one of those days.
March 1: The Disability Day of Mourning
March first is the Disability Day of Mourning. The Disability Day of Mourning began in 2012 as a vigil for George Hodgins, a 22-year-old Autistic man who was shot and killed by his own mother, who then shot herself. As often happens in these cases, the press and public response often sympathized with the murderer, while George was described in derogatory ways – as if his disability made him a burden and a monster. In this climate, other parents were featured in the media advocating for the right to kill their disabled children. The Autism Society released a statement about the “tragic story of Elizabeth Hodgins,” blaming her choice to commit murder on a lack of services even though it is reported that Elizabeth Hodgins had refused services meant to help her family. Not two weeks later, Patricia Corby murdered her four-year-old autistic son Daniel.
In response Zoe Gross wrote “Killing Words,” published by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), in which she described these murders as copycat crimes, enabled by a media and a culture that portrays disabled people as justifiable homicides waiting to happen. Gross helped organize a vigil for George, bringing the focus back on the true victim of the violent act. Recognizing that this was not an isolated event but something that occurs dozens and dozens of times each year, the vigil evolved into an annual act of mourning for those lost to filicide. All over the world the disability community gathers each year to hold candlelight vigils where the victim’s names are read out loud to honor their memory and grieve their loss.
2021 is young, still, but the Disability Day of Mourning website already lists seven names: Joan Wheeler, Michael Montgomery, Chadaporn Khamkeaw, Sonam, Manu Savaliya, Guadalupe Martinez, Ekanthachari, and Teru Inaba. 2020 lists too many names to count: like Thomas Valva, the autistic 8-year-old who was starved and froze to death in an unheated garage in Long Island, or autistic 10-year-old Dylan Freeman, who loved swimming and going to art museums and was drugged and suffocated by his own mother. Or the Harless children, all four siblings age four and under, gassed by their own parents only to have the San Antonio press speculate that their disability caused their parents to commit filicide.
On March 1, 2021, we will once again come together to remember these names, and others. This is a day for reflection on the truth that ableism kills, and it does so nearly every week. It’s a day for deep, wracking sobs, a day to feel the sickness and regret and anger and trauma of grief, a day for discomfort, a day to make space for the pain of those who not only did not survive the violence of this world, but whose spirits were extinguished by the very people they should have been able to trust the most: their own parents and caregivers. I shudder to use the word caregiver in this context. There is nothing caring about murdering your child.
March 1: World Music Therapy Day
And then in 2016 – seemingly springing from another planet entirely – comes the March 1 of World Music Therapy Day. The March 1 of music therapists around the globe coming together to promote and celebrate… ourselves.
The British Association of Music Therapy (BAMT) says that World Music Therapy Day is a day to “celebrate and mark the fantastic work carried out by our members and our colleagues throughout the world.” The day where music therapists focus their energy on telling the whole world how awesome we are. Music therapists take to social media and blogs to post selfies smiling and holding a guitar and sharing memes about how music therapists help. We are helping! See how we help?
On March 1, the World Federation for Music Therapy will host a music therapy photo contest. Music therapy student clubs will hold mini conferences. The American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) will “remind you that an estimated 1 million [plus] people received music therapy services in 2018 … way to go music therapists; celebrate your impact!”
The disconnect between these two cultural events occurring in the same temporal space is jarring, to say the least. After the psychologically exhausting experience of mourning disabled people lost to acts of violence at the hands of their own caregivers, indulging in the self-congratulatory self-aggrandizement of professionals feels offensively out-of-touch.
It’s incomprehensible that a profession which claims a special relationship to autism and disability, who elevates itself in large part on the basis of service to autistic and disabled people, would nonetheless take this day, the Disability Day of Mourning, and not only fail to support the disability community in a time of grief but to instead claim that very same day as a day to praise the therapists!
The reality is that a lot of the social capital that accompanies being a therapist comes from ableism. We are praised for taking a career that others might not. We are praised for subjecting ourselves to the presence of disabled people. This is not often said explicitly, but the implicit meaning is clear. And music therapists eat it up. We don’t just eat it up, we write out recipes for it, bake it into a cake, and post it on social media for everyone to see how good we are, how helpful we are. And we smile, and strike a pose with a ukulele, and murmur “oh no, the pleasure is all mine!” And the audience all coos approvingly.
It’s only after the audience has left, after the concurrent session or CMTE has ended, when the smiling faces can be dropped and a music therapist confides in me that they have experienced their disabled clients being murdered by a parent. Clients. Plural.
Because this problem is not distant. It is not small. It is not insignificant. It cannot be written off as an anomaly, or something music therapists don’t need to think about. This is not my negative attitude. It’s something that happens in the town I live in. Her name was Leslie Hartman. It’s something that happens in the town you live in. We must say their names.
And I cannot disconnect from that truth. I cannot dissociate and smile and take a selfie with a guitar and post it online and ask everyone to tell me how great a person I am because I provide services for Autistic and disabled people. I cannot stand to make this day about me. I cannot stand to make this day about my profession, a profession so disconnected from disability culture that most music therapists probably didn’t even know a Disability Day of Mourning exists!
March 1 should not be a day to shine a light on music therapists. March 1 should not be a day to shout about being such a good helper, yelling so loud about ourselves as a profession that we don’t even hear the list of names being read. The names of people who did not survive ableism.
Names like George Hodgins.
Daniel Corby.
Joan Wheeler.
Michael Montgomery.
Chadaporn Khamkeaw.
Sonam.
Manu Savaliya.
Guadalupe Martinez.
Ekanthachari.
Teru Inaba.
Names like Thomas Valva,
And Dylan Freeman.