Marja Healy
harpist
NW IL 2008
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Harp for Healing
by Clover Smith
About ten years ago, Marja Healy’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. As a music major, impersonator and writer, Healy became determined to play harp as a means of communication, alternating between frustration, tears and prayer. Insisting she hasn't mastered the harp, her musical talent has been recognized on many levels.
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Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Healy followed an entertainment career, working at the corporate level. She plays harp in Northwest Illinois for resorts, churches and weddings.
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Longing for nature and wildlife, Healy moved to a rural town, raising pet chickens and rescuing two dozen cats, many dogs, a llama and baby mice. She adopted a pair of doves returned to the store as "defective" by a wedding couple who said the birds would not fly out of the box on cue. The country atmosphere seems a contributing factor to her writing, once nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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But Marja found her calling appearing with Kathy Mattea for the Aids Foundation of Chicago.
Like Mother Teresa, she's dedicated to the sick and dying, giving them comfort, serenity and peace through the delicate sounds of her harp and amazing voice. She volunteers her music to nursing homes, hospitals or the homes of the ill. Has helped patients cope with chemotherapy treatments or reached into the depths of the comatose to ease the transition of the dying.
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She grieves with families and plays wakes and funerals, her angelic harp and voice healing the soul. With the face of an angel, a voice as pure as new fallen snow, Marja's talent and passion create heaven on earth. It can wake the soul, release the spirit, relax, replenish or revitalize-providing comfort and joy to those in need.
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(article edited)
(article reprinted in HARPA Magazine, Switzerland)
Marja accompanying herself singing
photo by James Smestad
Marja performing comedy at the IMPROV as Marilyn Monroe.
Thank God for our Armed Forces and Police.
photo by Jeff Turner
Mark Strand, Poet Laureate of the United States, had nicknamed me, Marja Healy, "The Blizzard of One" at The Art Institute of Chicago the night I crashed his lecture as Marilyn Monroe. Decked out in white sequins, the people who heard him say the moniker laughed, never dreaming Strand's next book would be titled THE BLIZZARD OF ONE. Or that two poems therein would be about the icy blonde who stuffed a poem in his jacket pocket, tossed a boa over his shoulders, and made him fear she'd be back.
Well, Strand finally won a Pulitzer Prize for one of his books. THE BLIZZARD OF ONE. But only those within earshot that night would remember who that blizzard was because Strand dedicated nothing to me.
Strand's fear that I'd be back indeed happening when, years later, I walked into this avowed atheist's office at the University of Chicago and slid a piece of paper into his jacket pocket all over again.
"Another poem about a dark crumble of images?" he asked me. "You might want to leave the poetry to the poets. I'll say this. I'd personally read a book you'd write about what it's like to be a faux Marilyn Monroe."
I stood silently surveying the walls lined in books that were suffocating me. Hundred's of them. "You read all these?"
Strand, the bigshot with a bunch of awards, a poet who taught at the most prestigious colleges, seemed bolstered by my ignorance. "Got a million more to read. All better than anything you just put in my pocket again."
I had to hold back the smile. "This one sentence means more than any you've ever written."
Strand laughed out loud. He slid the bunched up paper out of his pocket, put it on the desk and smoothed it down with both hands. Then he read the words I'd written out loud. "Words mean nothing if they're not about Jesus." .
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Our Neck of the Woods
MN 2015
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Harping on the Needs of Others
by Kate Perkins
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Today, Marja Healy is first and foremost a harpist. In her former home of Chicago, she played for weddings, corporate events, fundraisers and private parties, but she really loves to volunteer for the people she believes need it most, people who are sick or have suffered great loss.
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But Marja wasn't always a harpist, and certainly isn't just a harpist. A classically trained singer, flutist, stand up comic, actress, wild animal handler, writer, and impersonator, she feels her life has always led to inexplicable places.
Marja and her husband, Jeff Turner, whom she taught to play harp, moved to Crosslake in January. Taking 6 years to sell their house in a NW Illinois farm community, where they lived for 15 years, they longed to retire where Jeff's grandfather had.
(More article coming soon...)