2024 Patient Honoree
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Michelle Alvarez
Multi-Artist
Michelle Alvarez is 40 years young and a first-time mother. She and her husband just celebrated their son’s first birthday earlier in May. She has a deep connection with creativity and considers herself to be an eclectic artist. Michelle loves to paint, draw, sing, dance, and to play and listen to music. Her deepest connection is with music. Music helps Michelle describe her emotions/moods and she often finds being with music as cathartic and healing. Michelle enjoys being a multi-faceted artist who creates intricate art.
A resident of Staten Island NY Michelle has been a New York native her entire life. At age 13, she found out something about herself she had never known prior. She had been born with a life threatening disease. At this current point in time, Michelle takes 15 pills a day plus 5 other vitamins. Throughout all of her childhood, Michelle was in and out the hospital. It is there, where she discovered her true love for music through music therapy.
Music therapy helped Michelle face a lot of her traumas and recover from them. In her own words Michelle says: “Music therapy has helped me discover myself and my strengths while going thru so much loss and tragedy in my life.”
By age 15, she was introduced to the outpatient Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine and began emceeing their yearly Arts Festival. The event included patients and interns performing music/art that’s most meaningful to them. Since its first year, Michelle has participated in this festival for its entire 17 years!
One of my most painful events in her life involved the tragic loss of her grandmother coupled with the loss of her childhood home-which took place all in the same year. Michelle has moved several times, and was even a nomad at one point in her life for 2 long years. No matter what, through her love of travel, you would always find Michelle plugged into her music. Music is her savior, her passion, and her life.
As a 25 year veteran of music therapy, Michelle credits her work as having helped her feel safe, cared for and appreciated. She is grateful to the interns and staff whose encouragement thru music, helped her give definition to my emotions of past present and future. She strives to continue attending music therapy and performing for the arts festival every year she is able.