Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 25: This One Goes Out To You

 This One Goes Out To You

Thirteen years ago, on October 15th, my best friend, Samantha McCarthy (S.M.), passed away. In her honor, S.M.'s mom, Nikki, founded "Sam's Fans," which supports music and art therapy for sick kids in Ohio hospitals. A friend of Nikki's, Miranda, owns a fashion boutique called "Thread," and every year, Thread hosts a fashion show, "Thread of Hope" (TOH), benefiting Sam's fans. TOH is the biggest night of the year for both Thread and Sam's Fans, planning for the next year starting a week after the event. Last year's TOH was branded as “the rainbow after the storm” since it was the first normal event after Covid happened. While planning this year's, they were faced with the choice to stay the same or go bigger than before. They chose the latter and branded this year's as “Be Bold!”

Last Thursday, October 27th, 2022 at 7:00, I entered the Exchange at Bridge Park, where TOH is held and I began to mingle. Before the major events of the night begin I managed to talk to, Nikki, her husband Dan, two of their kids, her mom Patti, her sister Abby, a few more members of the family, as well as, Mandy, and Allie, some of Nikki's friends, and Sam's Fans social media director Avery. As I was walking around the venue, I saw someone from behind, who I thought I recognized. There's no way, I thought to myself, he doesn't even live in Ohio anymore, and I've never met him at any Sam’s Fans events before this!

The event started and Nikki and Miranda got on stage. They started to talk and explained they chose “Be Bold” as the branding because it's what the kids Sam's Fans helps need to do every day. When they had finished, they kicked off the live auction, which they'd never had before, by introducing a professional Auctioneer named Jay. Sidebar- I had no idea that auctioneers said the numbers that fast in real life, and I thought it was really funny!

When the auction ended, Nikki returned to the stage alone. With all eyes on her, she told S.M.’s story. She talked about S.M’s diagnosis and her time in the hospital. She talked about her shots and blood draws, how terrible she felt, how she lost her hair, and how she inevitably died. Then Nikki started talking about, S.M.’s personal music therapy story. Specifically, she talked about a song, called “On & On” by Mat Kearney, that S.M. and her music therapist, Brian, recorded a cover of as a gift for Mother's Day. Nikki then explained that Brian was there with another music therapist named Alexa, who is funded by Sam's Fans and they had a song for us. “I'm going to say to you,” Nikki said as she introduced the pair, “what Sam said to me In my special recording ‘This one goes out to you!’”

Brian and Alexa introduced themselves and I chuckled to myself because I was right about Brian being there. Brian told us that he had asked Nikki, what she would want the theme song of the night to be, and she chose “Kind & Generous” by Natalie Merchant. There was one more surprise. Something that music therapists do when they record songs, is they sometimes record the heartbeat of a patient and use it as the beat that the music is played to. Well for this performance, Alexa had gotten the recording of Nikki's heartbeat. After they turned on the recording, Brian and Alexa started playing the song.

I've believed in music therapy, since I joined Sam's Fans, shortly before my junior year of high school. But I've never seen it…not like this, at least. As a writer, I hate to admit this, but sometimes, the English language (and I'm assuming any language, for that matter), fails to completely capture the things we experience as human beings. I cannot describe to you, in perfect detail what it was like to experience this…but I think it might have been one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Have a Greattastic Day and be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

After Brian and Alexa finished playing, the fashion show started, and after that people started dispersing. I ran around and eventually found Dan. “Hey, Dan!” I said.

“Hey, Mitchell! What's up?” He replied.

“Has Nikki talked to you yet?” I asked.

“Yes, she has!” He exclaimed knowingly.

“Okay,” I continued, “So I want to run a few things over with you guys as a family… So I will be reaching out sometime next month to try to get some things worked out.”

“Sounds good to me.” He said.

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 24: Candlelight

 Candlelight

I realize that I have not talked about my brother Ryan’s band Cousin Simple since they played Jingle Jam with AJR and there is a reason for that. Other than a Valentine's Day show, which I couldn't find time to write about because it happened right when I moved into the apartment, they haven't played shows that are really their own in town. They played a couple of Music Festivals this summer, and while it was fun to see them, it didn't feel like a Cousin Simple show… It felt like Cousin Simple playing at a Music Festival. To be fair I have the same feeling about Jingle Jam, but that was bigger because they played with AJR!

As of Jingle Jam, Cousin Simple consisted of Will/Harsh (Frontman), Mitch (Bassist), obviously Ryan (Lead guitarist), Will’s cousin’s husband Fuad (Rhythm guitarist), and Dave (Drummer). At the beginning of the summer, the band knew that Fuad would be moving out of state for dental school. Around the same time, Luke and Josh’s Band Box seats played for Luke’s graduation party. As Ryan watched them play, he realized that Luke had what it takes and decided to ask him to take over for Fuad.

On October 8th, Cousin Simple played at the A&R bar as the headlining band. After spending the beginning of the show with friends and family, I moved to the front of the crowd to watch the band. The Kabuki drop (which is basically a fancy drop curtain) was set up on stage. A few minutes before Cousin Simple performed, Luke and Josh’s bandmates, Freddie and Max, found me. Shortly thereafter, Josh and his girlfriend Sophia ran in the front doors after going to Sophia's homecoming dance. When we were all together, a friend of the band, Timmy, got in front of the Kabuki drop and hyped everyone up. “Premiering at the A&R Music Bar,” Timmy, exclaimed, “the new music video for Cousin Simple‘s ‘Candlelight’!”

Timmy walked behind the curtain and as soon as he did, this video started playing on it, with Timmy introducing the band in the video which everyone kind of chuckled at. When the music video was over, the curtain dropped and Cousin Simple played live with that energy we all love. It was really nice to be at a Cousin Simple show in the middle of all the action again! The highlight of the night was when Harsh did a stage dive at me, Josh, Sophia, Freddie, and Max, but none of us were ready, so he ended up crushing all of us and I got it on video.

You can listen to Cousin Simple‘s new song “Candlelight” wherever you find your music, and be sure to check out the video on YouTube!

Have a Greattastic day and be safe

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 23: Wait For It

 Wait For It

It was Christmas break 2016, and my friend Greg had returned from Cornell University for the holiday. I spent so much time with my family and my “sisters” that the only time we could really hang out was in the middle of the night. Now Greg is almost solely responsible for unlocking my inner nerd! One night, we were playing video games over that break, when Greg put on the Hamilton soundtrack. I hated Hamilton at first because I'm a storyteller and I love hearing stories, but there's just so much amazing music that it was hard for me to focus on the actual story. But after like 5 listens I finally started to like it.

At the end of 2019, Marshall became my best friend. While we had known each other for a little bit over a year and a half at that point, this was when we started developing a relationship, outside of my “sisters.” At the beginning of 2020, Marshall and I created a document, called “The list of greattastic things.” Basically, we just wanted a list of adventures that we could go on. While we were creating the list, Marshall said, “Hey, my granny has season tickets at the Ohio theater. We can ask her what Broadway shows are coming up and see if we can get tickets.” A few days later Marshall sent me a picture of the list, and sure enough, Hamilton was coming in October 2020…

It was obviously pushed back, but it finally happened last Monday, October 3rd! Marshall got into town around 5:30, and he, Kid, and I picked up Granny and got to the theater around 7. The whole entire time Marshall and I were just freaking out ‘cuz yeah, seeing Wicked over the summer was cool and we were able to watch Hamilton on Disney plus, but we were finally able to see it in person 2 years after we originally planned to…and as a bonus it was opening night!

We dropped Granny and Kid off and went to find parking. As we were walking out of the parking garage Marshall and I decided to go grab one shot each at a nearby restaurant before we rejoined Granny and Kid. When we got our shots, Marshall raised his and said, “Here’s to not throwing away our ‘shot’!”

I laughed at the reference, and then replied, “No! Here's to waiting for it!”

Have a Greattastic day and be safe

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 22: Unhinged

 Unhinged

When they were in town for my birthday a little over a month ago, my “sisters” and I came up with a plan for me to improve my physical and mental health called The Mitchell Project. The goals are 1. Work out 4-5 times per week. 2. Listen to podcasts. 3. Set intentions/daily affirmations. 4. Experiment with style. 5. BE INTENTIONAL! 6. Time management/Limit screen time. Since this season is about me finding out who I am, my plan was to focus more on the mental health stuff until after New Year's, however, I would still work out to stay healthy. I, unfortunately, ran into some issues.

I have to get to work by 8 and with all the other things that I have to do after work, the only time that I can go to the gym is 5 a.m. I wish I could tell you that after the events of “War Of The Roommates” things got better at my apartment…but that would be a lie. I'm not going to go into too many details because we still haven't really fixed anything, but basically, it's just very stressful and so I've been staying at my parents' house again. That obviously sucks for a lot of reasons, but what is important for this installment is that when I’m not at my apartment I don’t have the motivation to get up that early and work out!

It's okay, I thought to myself, I will just go work out after school and schedule my writing time for after that. The problem is after wrangling children for eight hours straight and working out I was just too drained to do anything else. This led to me having some internalized guilt about not doing enough and on top of that the week of September 19th, was just a particularly hard one at the school. These two things came together and caused a very interesting thing to happen. I’ve known that I have autism for 12 years now, yet in all that time I have never felt as Autistic as I did that week! I don't know something in me just snapped and I was overstimulated all the time.

“Where have you been?” Kid asked when I went to her parent's house last Saturday, September 24th.

“Well, I've just been super stressed and I'm feeling super over-stimulated right now!” I replied.

“Why?” she asked. I explained exactly what was going on. “Mitchie,” Kid explained, “You're trying to work on yourself. I know you know that results won't happen right away…but assuming that changing your lifestyle quickly is also unrealistic. You need to ease into it.”

After we talked a little more, we came up with a workout plan and a new plan for implementing The Mitchell Project. Basically in October, I'm only going to be working out on Saturday and Sunday, to start getting myself in shape. I will be spending the weekdays implementing a schedule and working on the mental health stuff and then in November we will re-evaluate and see the best path forward.

Life can be super stressful. Work, personal relationship drama, and one's own insecurities can all get in the way of reaching a goal. But that's why you have accountability partners! They can help you when you feel like quitting when you feel stressed, or even when you're feeling a bit unhinged!

Have a Greattastic Day and Be Safe

J. Mitchie Ulibarri