Music has been a part of who I am for as long as I can remember. I had my first solo in kindergarten, and knew instinctively that this was what I wanted to do for a living, though it took me almost twenty-five years to finally make music my sole focus. Then, in 2013, my new career was threatened when I was hit by lightning. I didn’t stop touring, but I did take a long time to acknowledge how much my body and brain had been affected by the trauma of that strike. In the process I learned a powerful lesson—music heals.

People ask me what it’s like to be struck by lightning. I always say “shocking,” not just to be funny, but because it’s true. The accident itself was freakish. I was standing by the kitchen window in my Ottawa home washing the dishes during a lightning storm—something, it turns out, you are never supposed to do—when I saw a flash of light. I felt a surge go through me and everything seemed to stop.

At first, the effects were hard to place. When I finally got checked out by doctors, my bodily movements and functions were deteriorating fast. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept moving forward. I had a big tour planned the following week and didn’t want to cancel, so I just kept on travelling.

It turns out I had suffered a brain injury from the jostling caused by the electrical charge. I found myself in a wheelchair, the left side of my body so weakened that I couldn’t coordinate my arms to roll the wheels. I couldn’t cut my own food, sign autographs, or write, and couldn’t even hold my microphone for long. And at the end of every day, after many hours pushing myself to talk to people, remember my lyrics, and perform, I would start slurring and forget the names of everyday objects or the people around me. The symptoms were like those of a stroke or a concussion. Without the help of my bandmates and my family and friends, I wouldn’t have made it through a very challenging time, when I had no idea if my body would ever function normally again.

That experience changed my life in so many ways. I went from being super active and full of energy to having to learn how to slow down and listen to my body’s needs. At first, I took a lot of pride in saying that I kept working through my injury. But the truth was that I didn’t know how to stop, take a break, and take care of myself. I’ve spent the past five years learning how to listen to my body.

I was on vacation in the French countryside, at my guitarist’s summer home, when I began to notice the power that playing an instrument can have for I was on vacation in the French countryside, at my guitarist’s summer home, when I began to notice the power that playing an instrument can have for healing the brain. I picked up a ukulele lying near the couch and asked my guitarist to teach me the lick in one of our songs (“Désolé,” off my 2013 album I Remember When). At first, it was so hard to even move the fingers on my left side, much less work out how to coordinate them to learn the chords. But he was a patient teacher and I was excited to be learning something new.

I spent days just mastering the simple pattern, and a funny thing happened along the way: my brain seemed to be working better. I was slurring less, and my memory was sharper. My mental and motor skills improved steadily over months of this therapy. I got into a rhythm of playing every day, soon moving onto a new love: the electric bass.

Today, my health has greatly improved and my bass sits mostly untouched in the corner beside my bed. But that doesn’t change my firm belief that music heals. I don’t know what I would do without it in my life.

Kellylee Evans is a jazz and soul singer from Scarbor- ough, Ontario. She has been nominated for three Juno awards, winning one, and won a Gemini award in 2007.