New Team Members
by the Creatives Care team
Creatives Care is growing. We’re reaching out to more artists, making connections with more providers—and adding new team members! Below, meet the two newest additions to the Creatives Care team.
Kamala Schelling, Editorial Director and Head Grant Writer
“I have a bachelor’s degree in piano performance, a PhD in musicology, and all the traumas associated with a life spent in academia and the performing arts.”
This is often how I introduce myself. It’s a sardonic, self-effacing description, and one that does a minor injustice to my educational background. I am truly privileged to have lived as both musician and musicologist. For two and a half decades, I immersed myself in exquisite art, explored a wide landscape of fascinating ideas, and worked side-by-side with a series of extraordinary mentors, many of whom I am now honored to call friends. Music provided my social sphere, and—most powerfully of all—it helped me know who I was as a person.
Yet the joy of creating art was fragile. As so many artists do, I held myself to the highest possible standards, which meant that the satisfaction I gained from playing well was always vulnerable to my perception that I wasn’t good enough. Even in my teens, I could see that my creative pursuits impacted my mental state—and, conversely, my mental health impacted my ability to make music. But at the time, I interpreted my mental (and physical) needs as a barrier to making music, something to be overcome. Now, in my mid-30s, I’ve adopted a new kind of logic: When it comes to my mental health and my creative output, both must be cared for, nurtured, and allowed to thrive. Both are delicate, and both are equally worthy of my respect.
When I learned about Creatives Care, I was immediately drawn to their dual mission of access and awareness. Over the years, I have learned to look beyond the myth of the tortured artist and to embrace the fact that I am most creative when I feel happy, confident, and secure. By prioritizing my mental health, I was able to become the artist I had always wanted to be. I am honored to join Creatives Care, helping other artists find the care they need to feel their best—both in the artistic sphere and far beyond.
Ariana Sidman, Clinical and Communications Intern
Fall of 2021 marked the transition back into “reality,” a moment I had anticipated for months on end. Yet I soon came to realize that I lacked the tools necessary to confront this new world. Prior to COVID, my life depended upon a sense of continuity. However, when faced with reality, I soon began to acknowledge that our world was a perpetual sphere. What had previously constituted a simple daily task now felt completely foreign: waking up to an alarm at 6:30 a.m., putting on presentable attire, tying my shoes before heading out the door, etc. And when I walked out that door, everything seemed designed to highlight this distorted place I call home—even my favorite store, now an empty box, mirrored a bankrupt society. I was forced to accept the new “normal,” a stark contrast to the world I had been promised.
As a teenager, deprived of social gatherings and critical moments of development, I turned to my piano, who—through thick and thin—had been there for every tear shed. In order to express my gratitude, I wrote a letter, in the form of a song, to my piano. "Dear piano … you gave me the words I didn't know how to express, you helped me feel the beat, placing my hand right over your chest." In moments where I needed comfort most, my peers were confined to their own walls. This inanimate instrument had become a treasured friend, a source of unrelenting support, and most of all, it was something tangible in a world that felt so apocalyptic. Never expressing anger or disappointment, the presence of a piano holds a unique place in my heart.
Music has also functioned as a coping mechanism to the mental health challenges I have faced through my early childhood years and into adolescence. Creatives Care offers the perfect opportunity to merge my two greatest passions: music and mental health awareness. I feel so honored to take part in an organization whose mission is to remove the financial burden associated with treatment. Thanks to Creatives Care, artists in NYC are being set up for success by taking the first steps in acknowledging the need to take care of oneself.
