Sitting across a piano in the music building, the hallways filled with harmonious melodies, Pauline Tamale, singer and Tongan native, feels most at home. Empowered by her scars, she lets nothing get in the way.

“[Last year] I had a brain aneurysm,” Tamale, 23, music major, said. “The day I got sick, I had a midterm for an opera workshop class.” As her mother tried to calm her down in the ambulance, Tamale said to her, “I finally found something that describes me as a person. I can do other things but at the end of the day, it’s music.”

While laying in the ER, surrounded by medical professionals, Tamale only knew of one way to ease her pains.

“I ended up singing to the surgery room. I [had] to do it because the pain was just killing me,” she said. “I sang the hymn ‘It Is Well with My Soul.’ It was such an emotional moment—can’t imagine I went through it and got out.”

From the moment her surgery was over, Tamale suffered weak limbs and memory loss.

“People came and visit me, I [talked] to them like nothing [was] wrong, but when they left I couldn’t remember what we talked about,” she said. “There were so many stuffed animals, but I couldn’t remember who gave what.”

“It was so hard for me to sing. The surgery was on this side [of my forehead] with the [scar] curved right here, and this [other] side was so tight I couldn’t sing,” Tamale added.

Despite these challenges, she was adamant about making a quick recovery. She was determined to finish her four months of rehabilitation and therapy in half the time, and went on to do so.

“Music is a healing power,” Joanna Nachef, director of choral activities, said. “I was distraught when I got the phone call from her mother about what happened, but it was her drive, as a student and as a human being, that was amazing.”

“The speed at which she recovered and gotten herself back, like she used to be prior to her aneurysm, is just remarkable to watch,” Nachef said. “How incredibly beautiful her voice is, rich, and a joy to listen to.”

Dane Teter, director of instrumental music and coordinator of the applied music program, has worked with Tamale for a several semesters now and has only positive things to say as well.

“She had that little set back, but she didn’t let it keep her down,” Teter said. “She made a full recovery and continues on making wonderful progress; her voice is getting more and more beautiful all the time. She is so well loved by her fellow students.”

“Music has done a lot in my life that I can’t [even] explain,” Tamale said. “Last year I was one of the candidates for the master class here on campus. At the time that was the biggest accomplishment I ever did. After I got sick and came back in spring, I got the chance to go to Carnegie Hall in New York and perform there.”

Nachef, along with others, joined together to celebrate Tamale’s birthday last Wednesday.

“Not her real birthday, but celebrating her one year mark of returning from the hospital — a year of success,” Nachef said.

Tamale’s future plans including transferring to Chapman, hoping to join their classical program and continue her path to becoming an opera singer.

“Music really did heal me as a person,” she said, “and I believe it was a healing therapy.”