We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Megan Natoli. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Megan below.
Alright, Megan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?
I am a flutist, educator, and arts administrator from Baltimore, Maryland, and I have lived with pain for a long time.
Through college, graduate school, and several years of my career as a musician, I pushed through significant amounts of pain in the practice room and concert hall regularly. I assumed everyone around me was in as much pain as I was. I taught my flute students to look for the signs of pain in the practice room while I devalued my own. Always pushing forward.
Over the years, I saw countless doctors searching for answers. I was told the symptoms I experienced on a regular basis were normal. I was told it was just anxiety. That it was all in my head.
I found little ways to mend my aching self at the end of the work day, accepting what I had been told as reality. Soaking my hands in warm water with epsom salt, taking baths, stretching, alternating heat and ice, and relying on ibuprofen.
Despite all of this, I saw tremendous growth in my playing during this time. As I worked towards becoming the best musician I could be, I refused to acknowledge that the correlation between my pain and my musical growth could be detrimental in any way. I was convinced my pain was a sacrifice necessary to be a great musician, and I refused to let it hold me back.
There was a time when all of my self care tricks and this fiery mindset was enough.
In 2017, things got significantly more challenging for me as I continued down this path, however. My life began to revolve around my seemingly deteriorating health and my self care strategies were no longer enough. I was spiraling out of control and had hit a wall in my playing. Everyday tasks caused blinding pain, sending me back to my bed, heating pad, and ibuprofen.
Cramping, sharp stabbing pains, aching joints, constant pain.
Every gig became a tremendous feat. The idea of traveling for auditions started to feel closer to a pipe dream than a reality for me. Food sensitivities triggered bloating, nausea, and pain with no traceable pattern. Snug fitting waistlines became intolerable. With the belly pain came the full body joint pain. I slept for 15 hours a night, but it was never restorative, and it was never enough.
The sudden onset of my pain flares caused anxiety, fear, and depression. I felt broken, yet had been told there was nothing wrong with me. That it was all in my head.
After several months of worsening symptoms, I ended up in the hospital with a ruptured ovarian cyst. Over the next 8 months, I went through a number of tests, all of which came back with concerning results. I ultimately made the decision to have surgery to remove the remaining cysts on my ovaries and get a biopsy on them.
My surgery turned out to be anything but predictable.
Upon the first look inside, my surgeon immediately determined that my case was too complex for her skillset and treated the surgery as exploratory instead. That day, I was diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses that would require extensive surgery, traveling out of state for care, and a convoluted path to healing.
And it was devastating.
At this point in my story, I had no idea how to prepare myself for such flexibility in expectations regarding my health. Receiving a diagnosis after so many years in the dark was validating, in a way, but it really hit me hard. I went from being told that everything I experienced was all in my head to having an entire department of a highly regarded medical institution visit me in my hospital room the morning after my surgery to talk with me about my experiences, saying that they had never seen a case like mine before, and that my pain must be debilitating.
It had been a number of years since I mentally normalized my pain. This was all very new and confusing to me.
Working in a field that relies heavily on physicality and being so early on in my career, I felt as though I had been stopped in my tracks. I felt as if the plug had been forcibly pulled on my dreams and aspirations. I was mourning the loss of my career before it even had the chance to truly begin. It was a struggle to keep the gravity of my diagnosis from consuming and defining me. And for a few years, I became little more than my diagnosis.
In 2020 prior to the release of the COVID-19 vaccines, I had severe complications from a surgery and found myself alone in a hospital eleven hours from home in the throes of sepsis fighting for my life, requiring two additional emergency surgeries. This experience completely changed the landscape of my path, challenged my sense of resiliency, and is something I am deeply proud to have overcome – though overcoming it is still very much a work in progress.
I wish I could say that my story is unique.
The truth is, countless others in the chronic illness community and beyond have stories that are all too similar to mine. There is unfortunately no shortage of dismissive doctors under the pressure of our medical system. The convoluted path to diagnosis often takes a number of years and is complicated by medical gaslighting and trauma, resulting in self doubt and the normalization of pain.
After all of my experiences, I still struggle with putting my trust in medical professionals, though there have been many who have helped me along the way. It has also taken me a number of years to start trusting myself again when something feels off. Slowly but surely, I am learning to value my own lived experiences and to trust my gut again.
Though I didn’t know it at the time, taking a step back from the flute to prioritize my health was the best thing I could have done for myself. Over the past few years, I have worked towards building confidence and trust in the work that I put in over many years striving for a career as a professional musician, and the years I spent fully immersed in it as a freelancer. I spent countless hours in the practice room developing my foundational technique and countless more hours listening, studying scores, and attending concerts to develop my musicianship. Those skills were cultivated over a number of intense years full of love and dedication for my craft, and those skills do not simply disappear overnight.
My circumstances presented me with a golden opportunity to focus on living the other parts of my life and to learn to care for myself fully. My step back from the flute gave me a chance to miss music, to ache over its absence in my day to day life, and to replenish my love of music so that I could return to it as a more full version of myself.
With the encouragement of an amazingly supportive therapist, I have learned the art of reframing and that there is great strength in embracing and sharing the story that makes me uniquely me. I have learned to focus on what I can do, not what I cannot, and to take things as they come. I have learned that there is immense value in focusing on the aspects that I can control over the aspects that I cannot. I have learned how to reclaim the narrative of my story when I have lost my way and most importantly, I have learned that while my diagnosis is absolutely a part of who I am, that I am so much more than my diagnosis.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
As a flutist, I have performed professionally with numerous orchestras and ensembles throughout the United States, including The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Maryland Lyric Opera Orchestra, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Bel Cantanti Opera Orchestra, Syracuse Symphoria, Aternus Chamber Orchestra, The Scheherazade Initiative Orchestra, Hartford Opera Theater, LoftOpera, and as a featured soloist on David Amram’s Theme and Variations on Red River Valley with musicians of The Hartt Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kalena Bovell. Other notable appearances include performing as Principal Flute in the 2016 run of Paula Kimper’s Patience and Sarah at New York City Opera Fest, performing the East Coast premiere of Henry Mollicone’s Beatitude Mass for chorus, chamber orchestra, and soloists with members of the New Haven Symphony and The GMChorale, performing as a soloist with choir on Z. Randall Stroope’s Song to the Moon at the 2013 National Association for Music Education conference, and being invited back to The Hartt School to perform as a guest soloist with the Hartt Symphony Orchestra on Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra.
I maintain a vibrant private studio in the Baltimore-Washington metro area, where I teach students of all ages. As an educator, I strive to help my students achieve success on the flute while instilling a lifelong love of music and learning. I aim to create a flexible, nurturing, and collaborative learning environment in which all students feel safe, valued, and celebrated and will grow as individuals and musicians. Lessons are based on a strong foundation of fundamental technique and practice methods to enable complete flexibility of sound and expression.
I am also a Wolf Trap Trained Arts Integration Specialist and have taught flute, musicianship, and arts integration in a variety of educational settings, including private lessons, group lessons, and classroom teaching through The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program, Young Audiences/Arts for Learning Maryland, The Baltimore School for the Arts TWIGS program, Opus Music Academy, St. Paul School of Music, The Bel Air Arts Academy, and The Annapolis Symphony’s Music Van.
In 2021, I made the decision to prioritize my health by getting my first full-time administrative job supporting arts integration programming. For a number of years, I felt afraid to step into the full-time administrative side of the arts because I naively thought that it would be the end of my career as a musician. In reality, it’s been quite the opposite. I believe that wearing many different hats is an integral part of what it means to be an artist in the 21st century.
Transitioning into a job that takes care of me with consistent work and compensation, provides me with health benefits, paid time off, and more structure to my schedule has been the most freeing experience as a musician and the biggest act of self-love I have shown myself in my career thus far. The structure of a full-time salaried position is something I am deeply grateful to have access to, as this is not the norm in the performing arts world. To be able to have all of that in addition to doing such meaningful work on a team that truly values me feels like an immense privilege.
In my current role as the Program Director for Challenge America, a national Veteran nonprofit, I proudly lead the strategic planning and oversee program execution of our Music Therapy Retreat program, manage our community partnerships, and help cultivate a safe haven of art and camaraderie in our two online communities for Veterans and active duty service members. I have always been passionate about utilizing the arts to create change. It has been a great honor to serve our military community in such a meaningful and impactful way and to bring virtual creative arts resources, workshops, and content to Veterans across the U.S. and beyond.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When reflecting upon my strengths as a person, I have always considered resilience to be one of them, though the truth is that resilience is often built from the ashes of adversity encountered along the way. My chronic pursuit of healthier days has been anything but linear. Over the years, I have struggled to find and accept my new normal, though I am making progress.
When I was recovering from my 2020 surgeries and sepsis, it took about a year for me to be able to think beyond the next fifteen minutes. The pain and swelling in my belly was unbearable and I could not tolerate being upright for more than a few minutes at a time. This consumed my attention to the degree that I could think of little else.
I do not recall the exact moment when my awareness shifted and I became cognizant of the other changes that were happening in my body. Eventually, however, I became aware that my new normal was not so normal. It consisted of a whole new set of aches and pains, a level of fatigue I never knew possible, and I did not have an ounce of motivation left in me. I suddenly no longer recognized the person staring back at me in the mirror.
After a few doctors told me that I should be fine and that I just needed more time to recuperate, I was slow to realize that I was absolutely not fine. Accepting what I had been told, it then took me a few years to pursue it further.
I eventually ended up in the care of a hormone specialist and it was one of the most corrective and validating experiences I have ever had from a healthcare professional. My provider was equal parts empathetic, compassionate, and supportive and reassured me that everything I was experiencing was valid and could be traced back to severe hormonal imbalances from having a total hysterectomy at the age of 31.
We moved forward with testing. My bloodwork showed that my body was no longer capable of producing testosterone and explained most of my symptoms. We agreed that the path forward was to start me on bio-identical hormone replacement therapy to address the side effects I was feeling. Within the first few weeks of starting treatment, the storm clouds started to lift and I began to feel hope that healthier days could actually be on the horizon.
I am about a year into my hormone replacement therapy journey, and with each increase in dosage, I feel like more of my old self than I have in a number of years. My motivation has rapidly increased and it has allowed me to have the capacity to continue moving forward in my healing journey.
As a part of this journey, I began again seeking out ways to get more exercise and movement. After a number of years searching for the right type of exercise for me, I felt defeated because every type seemed to come with significant challenges and consequences.
When I received my complex diagnosis consisting of multiple chronic illnesses, I truly thought my days on a bike were over. Last fall while on a walk, a person on a recumbent trike whizzed past me and I immediately thought that kind of bike could be a possibility for me because of the laid back riding position. I began researching and stumbled upon some amazing resources that convinced me that there truly was a cycle out there for me. I found a specialty shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania called Lancaster Recumbent. There, I was able to rent a recumbent trike for a few hours to explore whether or not it could work for me. That day was transformative for me and I was ecstatic to have finally found the type of movement that felt right for me.
I decided to move forward with purchasing a trike of my own and I am excited to share that as of August 3, 2024, I am a proud new owner of my very own recumbent trike. Her name is Ruby the Red Watermelon Trike, and she is incredible.
Since August 3, I have ridden my trike daily and have seen immense improvements in my level of fitness. In under a month’s time, I clocked my longest ride yet of 20 miles, an achievement I never thought possible for me. Though I am very new to the world of adaptive cycling, I have already found the range of options to be much more accommodating than an upright bike for me, and the community to be fiercely supportive. I never thought that exercise could be so joyful and I am finding strength in my trike that I didn’t realize I still had.
It has been incredibly empowering to reclaim a piece of my health that previously felt as if it were out of my control. I am deeply grateful to have access to bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. Without it, I may never have replenished my sense of strength and resiliency and been able to get back on a bike.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
For me, the most rewarding aspect of being a musician is having the capability to draw from my own life experiences to shape the music I create and to share it with others, whether I am performing, teaching, or using that inspiration to guide my administrative work. It is an honor to be able to encourage my students to find their own unique voices through music and to unlock the magic and joy that comes from sharing it with others.
I also love that the life of an artist is not one dimensional. There are many different ways to live a creative life, achieve financial stability, and find fulfillment. To everyone reading this article across all professions, I encourage you to seek balance between your work and personal life, to listen to your body, and to treat yourself with grace and self-love in the process.
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