The Healing Power of Music

Music has always been a very important part of my life.  I have what I suppose would be called “eclectic” taste ranging from hard rock and heavy metal to alternative, New Age, and classical.  Music helps energize me, inspire me, get me moving, or help me slow down.  But one area in particular where music has always been very important to me is when it comes to its healing power during times of loss, sadness and grief.

While there are commonalities when it comes to dealing with loss and grief – most of us will go through Elizabeth Kuebler Ross’ five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance) – grief is a very individual journey.  Everyone brings different experiences to each loss, and those past losses will color how we experience and cope with grief.  Different things work for different people.  What works one day may not work the next day.  Grief is not for the faint-hearted, and the only way to deal with grief is to get through it.  There are no short cuts, and if we don’t deal with it when it happens, it will come back to haunt us in the future. 

I’ve found music to be an important part of dealing with grief in my life.  The music that soothes my soul during periods of loss and sadness is the gentle, mellow, soft kind.  One album that has stood the test of time for me through a series of losses in my life is Beth Nielsen Chapman’s Sand and Water (1997).  I first discovered it after the loss of my soulmate cat Feebee.  The singer songwriter wrote all the songs on this album after she lost her husband to cancer.  The lyrics are poignant, and the music is beautiful.   These haunting words from the title track have always felt comforting to me:

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water and a million years gone by.

Another song on the album that has always spoken to me is No One Knows But You:

I’ll cry this empty canyon
An ocean full of tears
And I won’t stop believing
That your love is always near.

These lyrics, to me, perfectly express the heartbreak of missing the physical presence of our loved ones in imagery that is very powerful to me.

Other music that has comforted me through times of loss includes Jimmy Buffett’s Ballads collection – granted, an odd choice, but it was the only thing I could listen to for weeks following my mother’s death.  After Buckley’s passing, I made a mix cd of several songs that resonated with me, including Diana Krall’s When I Look In Your Eyes.   My frien d Diana Bridge dedicated this song to Buckley at a performance she gave less than a week after Buckley’s passing.  Other songs on the cd are Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, Carly Simon’s Like a River, and Warren Zevon’s Keep Me In Your Heart.

It can be difficult to feel our connection with our lost loved ones when we’re in the throes of grief.  Music can be a gentle way to help us connect with our hearts in a way that allows us to feel the connection, even if only for a fleeting moment.