She was sitting in the audience at a recent graduation ceremony at Virginia Commonwealth University. They were playing her composition, of "Hide and Seek." Like thousands of other graduates for advanced music degrees she had to write several good and acceptable pieces of music. After the composition was finished there was great applause. The composer however could hear neither the applause nor the music, for she is profoundly deaf. On that day she had reached one of her major goals, a Masters degree in Music Composition. 

Tammie Willis lost her hearing after being severely assaulted in her home. At first she was very depressed over the loss of her hearing. However, she was motivated and inspired by the story of Ludwig Van Beethoven who had written many of his compositions after he had gone deaf. So Tammie decided to study music. She said, "I started studying music because I really, really didn't like the silence I was living in and wanted to find some way to acknowledge, appreciate or be aware of sound."

Beethoven lost his hearing after several years as a successful musician. Ms. Willis on the other hand had to construct a whole new sense of music based on the vibrations she can feel using powerful hearing aids. "I have no functional hearing. I wear the hearing aids and they do provide me with sound but they but they amplify sound so I feel a vibration on my eardrum. I started studying music and that's when I discovered I could feel the vibrations on my eardrums and that there were patterns to them, things that I can recognize and assign a meaning to," she says.

Bill Eldridge an instructor who guided Tammie's studies said, "meaning is what music is all about. A lot of the emotional content of music comes from changes in the pitches, A-B-C-D-E-F sharp, not only the rhythms, or the sounds." He further stated, "what she's done is to some extent a great leap of imagination." Mr. Eldridge calls Tammie's pursuit of music "a heroic achievement." "Her scores reflect a critical understanding of the last hundred years of music history, he continued. She has somehow managed to write music so well even if she comes at it from different angle and has to use a whole different set of skills, but she's managed to write music that doesn't sound like whatever one imagines a deaf person's music would sound like, it holds, it definitely stands on it's own, and holds it's own against other composers," he says.

In order to add a part of herself to the music she has developed her own sense of how vibrations can stir musical feelings. "There are certain vibrations that I find increase tension or become very unstable and there are vibrations that feel very stable," she says. "It's how I put the stable and unstable vibrations together that seem to make things move, make the music move, make the vibrations move and change and that's really what it's about, it's about how things change." The composition of music didn't come easily and there were many frustrating times trying to put vibrations with notes on the page. "Part of the problem comes from the fact that I don't perceive individual lines of music. If you have two or more instruments performing at the same time, I can't tell what vibrations are coming from what instrument, because they all combine to form one instrument," she says.

Tammie says she feels she has filed her music with a sense of emotion, especially in the piece called "Mad Women in the Attic", a reference to a character in Charlotte Bronte's classical novel, Jane Eyre. "It's based on experience of Ms. Rochester from Jane Eyre and it's this idea that you've got this women who's been locked in the attic," she says. "She's being locked in the attic by angels, which are people who think they are helping you, keeping you safe, but in truth, they're what's driving her insane. The only way to get rid of the angels is to kill herself." The flute represents the angels and it's a melodic line to the flute throughout the entire piece. Then you have the piano which uses a pitch set and the pitch set is D-E-A-D. At the very, very end, what I think makes it unique is that the pitch set, the piano goes from D-E-A-D to D-E-A-F," she said.

Tammie Willis says the piece is largely autobiographical. When she first began to study music, many people discouraged her from studying music because they thought she would fail. "I don't want other people dictating to me what I can and can't do. I don't want them setting my limits. Part of studying music, I went in with the idea, okay, this is going to help me identify what my limits are and through the course of my studies, I have not found any limits.." Tammie is going to continue her studies and pursue her Doctorate in Music Education. WE know she will be as successful in her pursuits as she has been in the past.

Publishers note: You can see in this story an individual who used her inner power to help her accomplish what most people consider near impossible. She didn't let other peoples negativity influence her own inner positive mental attitude. Most important is she saw no limits, even with her deafness. Let this inspirational story be motivational to you. Set your goals and aspirations high. The only limits are those that are self imposed.