Ferebe Gasque Pearce is a music therapist in Florence, South Carolina. She has taken her personal experience with her mother in hospice care, and has turned that into a focus for her own practice. End-of-life can be a very scary time for people. Often people in hospice care can feel marginalized. Doctors keep busy schedules and cannot spend large amounts of time with their patients. Gasque Pearce allots enough time for each of her patients so that they can continue a session as long as the patient wants.
She is careful about choosing the right songs for her patients. The tempo can have an important impact in their well-being. She wants to underline the fact that she is not just a person playing a guitar. Her training has given her the tools to recognize and achieve goals through music therapy.
She found music therapy as a career later in life, much like I did. That is why I relate to the story. This profile gives me motivation to follow a similar path. Providing music therapy for hospice patients seems like it would be a very rewarding vocation. I enjoy music from a large number of genres, and I would greatly enjoy learning music from earlier in the 20th century, as I expect that is what hospice patients might prefer.
Here is a link to the article. http://www.scnow.com/living/article_f9f1bc18-8089-11e3-863c-0019bb30f31a.html