As the notes of Make You Feel My Love dripped over the audience in Boulder two years ago, you’d never know Erin Newton was playing one of the most difficult instruments in the world. The double action concert pedal harp. Her fingers plucked the strings while her feet changed the key signature using a complex seven-pedal mechanism demanding focus, control, and dexterity to produce the perfect melody. Thunderous applause. That was easy for Newton compared to her life’s ballad. She was dealt a difficult, discordant score. But like the pedal harp, it is something to master.
While she performs and teaches the pedal harp through her business Alpenglow Harp Studio, Newton is also about to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from the University of Colorado College of Nursing at Anschutz Medical Campus. She’s a mom of two boys, wife to a supportive husband, the president of the CU Student Nursing Association, and the Legislative Education Director of the Colorado Student Nursing Association. At age 44, she’s a symphony of resilience and adaptability.
“I’m not a traditional student and I think that affords a lot of insight. I’ve had a lot of life experiences and direction when it comes to values, motivation, and purpose,” Newton says.
“It’s really motivating knowing you're here with a servant's heart. You're trying to provide people with respite in their time of need when they're at their lowest, and it’s an art. If you’ve had some of those scary experiences yourself in healthcare, you can use your insights to provide customized care.”
In her first career, Erin was a geologist with a master's in geology she completed in New Zealand. She was also a rock climber, hiker, biker, skier and swimmer. For ten years, she traveled the globe studying the earth and climbing its rocks and mountains. Then, the tempo changed.
She was with her then-husband in a remote area when someone’s parked truck and trailer popped out of gear, rolled down a hill, and dragged him 40 feet under the truck. Erin found him trapped and critically injured and ran for help. A masterful crew of firefighters and paramedics were able to use an inflating pillow to lift the truck off of him and race him to Denver for lifesaving measures. For the next two years, she took care of him.
“He was in St. Anthony's trauma level one for a couple of months getting transfusion after transfusion while his organs failed one by one due to the crushing injury and his care team worked to find the sources of bleeding. They put him in an induced coma on a rocking bed to clear his lungs. Most of his back ended up being fused, both of his femurs were broken, and his knees ripped out. Many surgeries followed to fix his legs. So through all that, I got to see what it was like to be a bedside caregiver of a loved one and experience the associated trauma of having been the first responder on the job site. All of that was hard. I learned that playing harp at his bedside lowered his heart rate and allowed him to rest and recover, and gave me some way to help," she says.
One year later, she developed breast cancer, had bilateral mastectomies, and for rehab, played the harp for the CU Summer Opera series wrapped in gauze, only able to lift her arms to the string height. Then at 38, she was diagnosed with the birth defect hip dysplasia. With cartilage worn away, nerve pain flared through her hips and she could not get up her stairs. She worried she’d never get outside again or play with her sons.
In desperation, Newton decided to undergo two highly-invasive surgeries to try to repair her hips. After the surgeons cut out and rotated her hip socket and replaced the cartilage, she started the long road of rehab, dealing with a massive blood clot and debilitating muscle spasms. Despite a long recovery due to nerve damage, the surgery worked. After nearly a year of physical therapy, and progressing from a wheelchair to long-term MobiLeg crutches to a cane, she could finally get back to rock climbing, playing with her kids, and teaching and performing on the harp.
Then COVID-19 sickened the world and the demand for freelance harpists faded.
“I thought, ‘You know what? There's a huge nursing shortage. I'm a caring person. I think that I could do that, plus I’ve had a lot of health issues…and a lot of experience with healthcare workers.’ Some were just amazing. I thought, ‘those are the heroes; those are the people who I look up to and the ones making a difference in people’s lives'. I wondered what the journey was to get there,” she says.
Newton researched nursing and discovered the one-year University of Colorado Accelerated Nursing program (UCAN). She took her prerequisites at several community colleges and then was accepted into the UCAN program. Suddenly, that cacophony of tragedies made more sense. She could tune in to her patients and use all that pain for change.
“It's with me every day and every moment with patients because so much of dealing with people's challenges, their pain, their anxiety, their fears, going into hospitals and treatment centers, is a mental health challenge. I had to literally, crawl out of a very low place. So, I think going through all that was a way to understand. When you see how depressed a patient is, or how they're struggling with uncontrolled pain, I know there are other ways to help them besides handing out medications,” she says.
“You can provide patients with many other therapeutic ways to support them. Talk to them, and ask what their fears are, about their anxiety, what their past experiences with medical experiences have been, what their past traumas are, and what their future goals are. I also think touch is powerful. Being able to hold someone's hand as they're going into surgery or playing their favorite music. Asking what they need and giving them choices when everything feels out of control. It makes a huge difference.”
Newton just returned from a global health program in Guatemala to hone her nursing skills with struggling populations. After graduating in August, she hopes to work at the University of Colorado Hospital where she was trained, and pursue nurse practitioner training in critical care and possibly oncology. She’ll also still be playing the harp. Whether you’re a concert-goer or a patient, Newton plans to make you feel my love.
