How the Drum Saved my Life

September 24, 2018

How the Drum Saved my Life

How the Drum Saved My Life

There was a time I was all in—church every Sunday, scripture study, teaching classes, doing all the things a “faithful woman” should do. I wasn’t always that way. As a teen, I wandered—away from church, but not from spirituality.

Becoming a mother changed everything. Holding my newborn daughter, I felt a deep urge to give her something to believe in. I returned to my faith, seeking stability, redemption, and purpose. I taught her about God—the loving side. The nurturing side. The safe side. I gave her the version of God I wished I had known.

Years passed. I became a mother of three. We were sealed in the temple, our whole family gathered for what was one of the most spiritual days of my life. I truly believed that our love, our family, was eternal. Sacred.

And then, Jonah died.

He was gone in 10 hours. No explanation. No warning. I was five months pregnant.

There are no words for what child loss does to a person. It is a chasm so wide, so all-consuming, that language fails. Even now, fifteen years later, it still makes my throat close to write these words.

But I clung to my faith. I kept showing up. Kept praying. Kept teaching. I thought, surely, if I just stayed faithful enough, peace would come. Healing would come.

It didn’t.

Not for a long time.

I smiled because I was expected to. I gave inspirational talks when all I wanted was to scream. I was the poster child for “overcoming”—but inside, I was drowning.

Painting became my quiet rebellion. A place where time slowed and the grief had space to breathe. One day, someone asked me to paint a hoop drum. I had no idea how—but I said yes. I researched, asked questions, prayed over the leather.

That drum became another, and another. People told me their drums felt alive—sacred, like they carried messages. I didn’t know how to explain it, but I felt it too. Every time I painted one, I prayed:
“Let the spirit of this drum speak. Let the message come through me.”

Eventually, I got my own drum. I painted it and hung it on the wall, not yet knowing what it would mean to me.

It wasn’t until a breast cancer retreat, standing among five women with stage four diagnoses, that I offered the drum’s beat as healing. I drummed slowly from one woman’s feet to her crown, silently repeating, “I love you. I love you.”

When I stopped, she looked at me and asked, “Were you speaking?”
“No,” I said.
She replied, “I heard the words ‘I love you.’”

From that day forward, I brought the drum to every retreat. Women saw visions, felt their pain subside, sometimes just for a moment—but that moment was magic.

But through all this—I never drummed for me.

Until one quiet Sunday morning, I went to a mountain pond, my sacred place, and brought my drum. I sat cross-legged on the dewy grass and waited for sunrise. As light crested the mountains, I drummed. Softly. Slowly. Tenderly.

And something opened.

I felt the beat echo in my bones. I saw the auras of the trees. I felt my own heart sync with the Earth’s rhythm. I closed my eyes and breathed.

And for the first time in eight years—I felt peace.

Not numbness. Not distraction. Not “spiritual bypassing.”
Peace.

I felt the presence of Creator. The knowing that I wasn’t being punished. That Jonah wasn’t taken from me as a consequence. That none of it was cruel. It just was. And I was held in it.

Tears ran down my cheeks. Gratitude poured through me.

That drum, that moment, was the beginning of my healing.

Since then, I’ve never stopped drumming. I teach it. I live it. I still go to that pond. The beat still brings peace.

And now, when I pray over drums, I understand—I was never just painting for others. I was preparing for myself.

The drum saved my life.
And now, I get to help it save others, too.