LEWISTON, ME – Maine’s Got Talent winner Amy Stacey Curtis will be performing at the Franco Center in Lewiston, Maine, July 30th, 6-7pm! The performance has been described as a “celebration of strength, creativity, and the healing power of music.”

More about Amy Stacey Curtis:

In early March 2017, like the flip of a switch, something was horribly wrong with my brain. My brain was deluged with horrific, repetitive, vivid, moving images, images that would play nonstop, 24 hours a day, for 22 months. Six months into this psychosis I lost all control of the muscles in my body including the muscles in my face. I lost my ability to speak, stricken with a severe palsy and sometimes complete non-verbalism, as if the cord between my brain and my mouth had been cut.

 After 15 months of schizophrenia-diagnosing doctors, two psychiatric wards, and eight antipsychotic drugs, it was finally determined by a naturopath that I had had Lyme disease some time in my past and that it had attacked and severely injured my brain. By then it was too late to treat the Lyme disease; it was all about strengthening my brain and trying to reclaim my abilities.

 After 22 months, the psychosis would eventually be slowed with 16 treatments of electroconvulsive therapy. But it would take two more years for the images to completely stop. Meanwhile, I met a local occupational therapist with whom we figured out muscle control fixes through trial and error. After six years of progressing from psychosis and wheelchair, to walker, to cane, back to my feet, I was still struggling with my speech when I intuited that playing an instrument could help, doing multiple things at the same time as a regular practice.

 Within a week of playing the ukulele I was capable of perfect-for-me speech unless overstimulated. For over two and a half years, I have practiced an hour every day, learning five new songs a week, as a self-prescribed occupational therapy. To date I have learned over 500 songs, and over the past two and a half years, my speech has improved even when palsied. I share my story and sing my latest new-for-me cover songs publicly and on social media including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok where one of my videos has over 600K views.

 And I recently won Maine’s Got Talent! View the performance at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyEl2a83B5s