Adrienne Schroeder

I recently reconnected with a long-time friend and colleague of mine. Her and I did our undergraduate degrees together and were in the same studio at music school.

Like many quarantine reconnections, her and I huddled up at our screens and told tales. We drank tea, we laughed aloud and shared about our lives. Two Michigan girls in their respective big cities making it happen. It was medicine for the soul.

It had been years since we’d spoken. Early in our conversation, she said, “ I don’t know if you remember this, but I told this story about you to my partner before I logged on.”

My immediate thought was - “Sh*t! What did my silly twenty-year-old self do or say back in the day?!”

What she shared gave me chills.

Back in music school, our studio cohort, like many, had tons of drama. Drama that I had experienced myself, deemed harmful and that my friend had begun to experience upon her arrival as a freshman.

One day we were all in the music lounge a lot of unpleasa...

This week Chicago had the biggest snowstorm in 5 years. Snow spun and swirled and piled and blew so fast in the wind I could hardly see in front of me. It was fantastic.

Snow plows created gigantic mountains of snow on the edges of sidewalks, parking lots and alleys. Kids climbed the mountains, toppled down, sledded their hearts out, shrieked and laughed aloud. Adults did too.

This whole week I keep thinking, this is just like the 90s! You know, when we used to have big snowstorms all the time? I’m a 1991 baby and grew up in Michigan. The photo above is my sister and I in a heap of snow in 1998. The entirety of our winters were snow on the ground and at least a few times per season, there was a knee deep snowstorm.

At school I would get into trouble for digging tunnels through the snow mountains and climbing through them. I was also pretty good at the game “King of the Mountain”. 2021 me corrects it to *Queen*.

Yes, I delighted in digging tunnels, tackling others and re...

This past week I played a little Haydn ditty for a student via zoom. Enamored by the many notes in the piece, she was eager to hear who created it. After hearing “Haydn” she asked, “Do you think he knows Biden?!”

A connection and rhyme I certainly did not make.

A few years ago I arrived at a lesson after having an intense conversation with my therapist about setting boundaries. My six year old student sat down at the piano with me, clearly emotional about something. I asked him what was going on and if he wanted to talk about it. He said, “It’s private.”

My jaw about hit the floor. How did he know about boundaries already?! I was amazed.

During the pandemic, I briefly tried teaching some lessons in real life. We all wore masks. Upon our prompt switch back to virtual, my five year old student showed up on zoom with her mask on. Her Dad explained that with zoom, we didn’t need masks anymore.

I was touched. She knew and cared about doing the right thing when so many fl...

At any given point, in every moment of every day, we are collecting evidence. Our brains and our bodies are collecting data. The human brain loves binary - right or wrong, yes or no, good or bad, love or fear. It’s the nature of our humanness to want to put everything in neat and tidy boxes.

This means that whatever beliefs and thoughts we have, our minds will collect evidence that supports it. Our minds love congruence, even if it’s not serving us in a positive way.

Something I began thinking about and using as a tool for myself and those I serve a long time ago is the art of collecting evidence. Rather than make myself, my brain and my humanness wrong for the way it operates - what if I could wield it to create the results and life I want? And, not just me, what if I could present it as a skill and way of being that others can replicate?

This beloved tool of mine is expressed in what I call mindful empowerment. Mindfulness is a path to my power, self-love is a bridge to m...

Oh, inspiration. The perceived fleeting visitor, the meta magician, the golden ticket to every artist’s next big move. Inspiration can show up as an idea, a feeling, an urge or spark to do something. Many times inspiration stokes something creative or something that really matters to someone. I know it does for me.

Much of the time people wait around for inspiration to strike. As I’ve lived during the pandemic, I’ve noticed loads of people waiting around. People wait for inspiration to knock on their door, for opportunity to show up out of the blue, or for a magical moment to appear.

Much of the time, it doesn’t knock, doesn’t show up or doesn’t appear. People feel disappointed. I’ve witnessed people feel disappointed in themselves and look around our current world and fall into a pit of darkness without hope.

My invitation is not to ignore the darkness, it’s to view is at fertile ground. Even in our darkest days, as Viktor Frankl said, “The last of our human freedoms is to...

Am I the only one who misses baseball? Truth be told I’m a bit of a fanatic. I grew up playing barefoot in the grass and dirt with my cousins, went on to play competitive softball and have played in rec leagues as a “grown up”. The only subscription I pay for is MLBTV.

I love baseball and I love the Chicago Cubs.

The reason Friday became my favorite day of the week is because I used to cycle down to Wrigley Field each week on Fridays, put my bike under the red line, grab a beer and bask in the afternoon 1:05pm sun as I got to watch my favorite team play my favorite game. Just writing and thinking about it makes me smile!

Now I just love Fridays no matter what I’m doing because they’re special to me. AND. I’m just that much more excited to take a cycle or pop on the train down to Wrigley when the time is right. What a celebration that will be.

Not only do I have a love of the game and my rituals that go along with it, I have a love of the beauty of the game. I love witne...

Happy last day of 2020! Clink clink! 😊

Today is New Year’s Eve and I feel the buzzing energy. Everyone is bustling about with “New year, New me” excitement. People are setting goals, celebrating what went well in 2020, releasing what went awry (yes you can laugh), and tapping into the joy and promise of the flip of the page into 2021.

I for one really enjoy setting goals and intentions to achieve my dreams. I give them all specific colors and places to live in my calendar. I write them down in my journals, I say them in affirmations and they get delegated specific time and energy in my life that I set aside in advance. I plan them out step by step with strategies and systems, so then all I need to do is show up and follow through. I like setting myself up to win. I like helping others win. And not just win, to do it with sparkles.

Moral of the story is, throw me in a Paper Source with a vision I care about and you will lose me for a good two hours.

I am not writing a bl...

I consider myself someone who keeps herself close to her goals in general. So especially when the end of the calendar year approaches, I pull a fine tooth comb through what has happened, what worked, what didn’t work and most importantly what did I learn?

Today I’ll be sharing my biggest and most impactful lesson of 2020.

This past year seems more significant than most as we all moved through the pandemic. Most poignantly for me, I lived alone through the pandemic. Incredibly daunting at first, I utilized one of my favorite and most effective things I do with my mind: to choose my perception, in doing so I choose what I experience, and ultimately, I choose my reality.

I reframed it to myself as a “free meditation retreat” that had been a big surprise to receive. No airfare, no thousands of dollars in tuition, just a short walk from my bedroom to my meditation cushion! While still challenging, like a traditional retreat would also have been, this changed everything. The more...

I stand on the shoulders of giants.

My mom has been powerful her whole life. She’s music educator giving the gift of music and connection to all she encounters. She was raised on a farm with her three brothers doing all the same tasks they did and when she married my dad after her proposed on the marching band field, she hyphenated her name.

At the time this was radical, however as her daughter, these were things I never thought twice about. By witnessing my mom just be who she is, she showed me that womxn can and should be effective, independent and have an important impact on making the world a better place. She showed me that womxn have equal value.

My older sister Erika is not only my role model, I’m lucky to call her my best friend. Growing up I watched her battle life threatening bouts of asthma where she would be hospitalized for weeks at a time. I watched her take it all in stride, move through with courage and many times with a smile. I copied everything she did be...

Yes, I just said that. Yes, you read that right.

Musicians are actually ahead in the pandemic.

Before you run off with a plethora of reasons why I’m wrong, hear me out and let me tell you why.

If you are a successful musician, you have command of your mind and your emotional state at a level that most human beings will never attain.

I will say that again.

You have command of your mind and emotional state that most human beings will never attain.

There is a reason why being a classical musician is the second most stressful job behind being an air traffic controller.

Think about what you do for a second. If you’re a classical musician, you sit in an orchestra and play exposed solos. Solos that have an extremely specific way that they are supposed to be played and have been played that way for hundreds of years. So every single person will know if it’s correct of not, if it’s amazing or…. Less than amazing.

Not only do you do it in an orchestra, you do it i...