Phil Heuzenroeder

Phil Heuzenroeder Wild at Heart Founder (Phil Heuzenroeder ())

Have you ever felt that life sometimes has a way of placing you exactly where you need to be? On December 17th, 2015, I was coming to the end of a yearlong round-the-world-trip. It was a hot summer's day in Melbourne, Australia, my last stop before heading back to the USA. I decided to make the most of the Southern Hemisphere heat and head to the beach at St. Kilda - a beloved seaside destination of the city-dwellers. I stopped for a quick cool beverage and a moment of refuge from the blazing setting sun at Prince of Wales. It looked like a hip rock and roll pub, and it was. Little did I know that the evening's events would unfold in such an impactful manner as to leave a lifelong impression upon me.

Eva Sifis, On Stage Again Performing Her Story ( (Dorine Blaise))

A friendly gal sitting next to me asked my name, "Annie," I said. She cocked her head and smiled a gorgeous friendly smile. She said she'd taken part in the play "Annie" before her accident. She introduced herself as Eva Sifis; her exuberant spirit immediately drew me in. She proceeded to share her story with me, of how she'd been a professional cabaret dancer in Japan in '97-'98. "Dancing was my life," she said. She'd come back to Australia and had the fortune of being cast in a new pop act. She and a few other talented youngsters were being primed to be a dancing, singing sensation and were preparing to take on stardom in Beijing, China. One rainy night in '99 after a rehearsal, Sifis was walking across the street when she was struck by a car. She was dragged over 40 meters and flung off of the hood of the car. In a flash, her life was forever changed.

Sifis suffered severe head trauma and fractured bones, she was in a coma for three weeks and when she awoke she had to learn to "walk again, talk again, everything all over again," she said.

As Sifis was telling me about her tragic incident, her positive outlook on the whole this was awe-inspiring. Next, she informed me of what I had stumbled into; the evenings' event was a gathering of people with varying degrees of disabilities or mental illness partnered with top-notch local songwriters that were performing original songs. The event was called Strumarama, put on by Wild at Heart - a community arts program in Melbourne, Australia, which is a non-profit organization designed to celebrate people with disabilities and to help them connect to their community through music and art programs.

Strumarama: A Night of Music and Togetherness ( (Paul Dunn))

Mental health, mental disabilities, and physical disabilities are rarely championed, or given a platform to share their unique perspectives. Wild at Heart founder Phil Heuzenroeder said it was his desire to combine his experience with social justice oriented youth work with his life-long passion of music that led him to putting together Wild at Heart.

Sifis had first met Heuzenroeder in Melbourne in 2003. "I had decided to hook up with the disability art scene here. I'd figured that was the only way that I was going to get anywhere really, after having had been an artist," she said. Heuzenroeder was involved with a dance night put on for people with disabilities named Club Wild and with a band called Bipolar Bears. Sifis showed up for a practice of Bipolar Bears and said that Heuzenroeder, "was inclusive, he was responsive, and that to me felt like a breath of fresh air. I sensed that I had met somebody who was going to make a difference in my life."

Heuzenroeder took on a number of different roles while he was working with the Club Wild events, "It was really this kind of event being created for people with a disability by people without a disability," he said. "I watched that over the years and I just sort of thought where is the voice of these people themselves? Like, this is an amazing gathering of people," Heuzenroeder said he wanted to offer this population of people a platform in which to express themselves through the arts, not just dance to DJ's and cover songs.

"I guess for me this work comes out of my core values as a person, how I was raised, the kind of values human dignity and social justice that were embedded in me from when I was a kid," Heuzenroeder said. "That's really the origin and vision I have for this work. Plus for me it took me many years, even decades, to understand myself as an artist. An artistic life is one that gave me a lot of richness."

2 Hot 2 Handle Hip Hop Crew (Wild at Heart ())

Heuzenroeder was studying music at an institution that also had a disability arts program. There, at the cafeteria Huezenroeder said that he was really drawn toward engaging with people whose life experience is differed from his. "You know when you see young kids that don't have that kind of total rationality of life," he said, "imagination rules over rationality, I am very attracted by that and I saw something of that in these guys that really appealed to me."

Wild at Heart currently has weekly songwriting workshops, visual and creative arts classes and a hip hop group called 2 Hot 2 Handle. Heuzenroeder that these workshops are open to anyone but are, "particularly meant for people that are struggling in their lives, or are outside of the regular mainstream of life." He said it's about connecting with members of the community and building long lasting relationships; and that it's been interesting to mix people's natures and conditions a bit, for people to learn about each other and to learn to be tolerant.

Back at Strumarama, Sifis and I became fast friends. Being a musician myself and having close family members that have been afflicted by mental health issues, the evening's events had a profound effect on me. My mother who is inflicted by bipolar disorder gave me her guitar for Christmas when I was 16, thus fueling my own personal path of pursuing a kind of truth through music.

I was witness to an incredible night of original music performed by an array of individuals suffering from various forms of mental depression and disabilities paired with immensely talented musicians. The songs were of love, loss, life, personal strife, and triumph. I had goose bumps and tears in my eyes throughout the evening. One stand out artist was a songwriter named Eddie Ink who is bipolar and a recovering alcoholic. His heartfelt and artfully crafted songs reminded me of Neil Young, though filled with a sadness they resonated with lingering hope.

Eddie Ink Performing Original Songs @ Strumarama ( (Paul Dunn))

Much like Sifis' story, she has chosen to be resilient in the face of adversity. After she had adjusted to her new life, post car accident, and had come to terms with the fact that she would be physically impaired for the rest of her life, she found out that she had cancer. After such devastating blows, one could imagine just giving up. However Sifis prevailed, went through treatment and is now 100% cancer free. She has begun performing again and her story is included in a new book Fierce and Fabulous; a collection of "extraordinary women who are changing the world." Sifis is even going on to start her own company named By Accident. It will be, "a series of trainings and workshops for people that have had a head injury," Sifis said. "It's going to be a training for people after they have come out of the acute rehabilitation stage after a head injury. So this for me was about two years after my injury and it's the time in life when the enormity of what has actually happened to you settles upon you. It's a time of great searching, a time of great re-calibration.you're charting your course anew." Sifis said she feels excited as her groundbreaking new project will be run by, with, and for people with head injuries.

Sifis said that Heuzenroeder, "had a defining effect in my life, [he reaffirmed] that there were people out there that had faith in me and that perhaps I wasn't so much of a gone case, a lost girl."

Strumarama was spellbinding to me. I sat in awe in a room filled with people who were sharing their most personal endeavors with such candor I couldn't help but to marvel at the strength, resilience and compassion that humans are capable of.

Heuzenroeder's charitable work with Wild at Heart and events like Strumarama bring his years of expertise leading gospel choirs and teaching music to a whole new level. "The arrogance of imagining what we call the normative main stream, is [the definition of] human existence is just nuts," he said. He wants to celebrate diversity and help give a voice to those that want to be heard, "That really is at the heart of it for me."