Words of healing: The works of Deborah Thatcher Robbins

Deborah Thatcher Robbins grew up in Wareham with an inherent love of the arts. Robbins is a lifelong musician and writer as well as an amateur photographer who wants to heal those around her the way her art has healed her.

The 1971 Wareham High graduate quickly took to the piano and poetry at six-years-old and was often found making her own poetry books with glue sticks and staples.

“I would go to magazines and cut out pictures and paste them in the paper, I’d staple it and give them to my mom or my sister,” she said. “I’ve just written all my life.”

Despite poetry being her first written pieces, Robbins said she eventually got away from it and moved to putting together books of inspirational messages that she said have helped her heal.

“I’ve been through two divorces and my first one was when my children were two-years-old and two-months-old,” she said. “I had another marriage that lasted for 25 years but it was not a good marriage. All of those things are traumatic and require healing.”

Robbins has published two books of inspirational messages in the last three years with a third on the way to offer messages of happiness for those struggling.

One day, Robbins said she received a letter from a grieving widow who told her the messages in her book allowed her to begin processing the loss of her husband.

“She said because of the mere shock of losing her husband she hadn’t been able to cry and she thanked me because it finally made her feel it,” Robbins said.

The written word was never Robbins’ only medium. At the same time she began putting her own poetry books together as a kid, she began taking piano lessons.

“I took piano lessons for 11 years from Mrs. Kelly,” Robbins said. “Gina Davis and I used to walk to piano lessons together.”

As she got older she continued to write instrumental music for the piano but music took a backseat when she married her first husband at 21-years-old.

“In my spare time I would go and play my piano,” she said. “My husband took note of it and he goes ‘you know that’s really beautiful maybe you should be doing something with that.”

In the early 1990s, the two took the many songs Robbins had written and recorded on CDs and went from record store to record store until they would find some that agreed to sell her music.

“I just went to small local stores and asked if they’d carry it and I had a couple of places,” she said.

It wasn’t until her music hit the radio that she began to build a name for herself. She got her music on over 350 radio stations across the U.S. and Canada and her song “Cat N’ Nine Tale” nearly ended up on the ballot for a grammy in 1998.

Robbins did not walk away with a grammy but what she did gain was a plethora of support from listeners.

Similar to her written pieces, listeners wrote to Robbins expressing their gratitude for the healing her music supplied.

“This woman who was abused as a child wrote to me and said ‘I have buried that happening for so long and your music has let me bring it out and get through it,’” she said.

Today, Robbins has moved in with her son and grandkids in Minnesota where she works part time in a school cafeteria and continues to create art.

“I love it because I love little ones,” she said.

On top of her third book of inspirational messages, Robbins is also working on her first novel, a mystery story taking place in southern California.