Musical Mondays
A weekly pause for song, story, and the honest edges of grief. Each Musical Monday, we share one piece of music that puts words (and melody) to what’s hard to say out loud—offering language, connection, and a little breath for the week ahead.
What you’ll find each week
The Song. A single track that captures a facet of loss—longing, love, ambivalence, rebuilding, or the “both/and” of living with what’s changed.
Why this song matters. A short reflection on the lyric, image, or sound that resonates with grief experiences (personal, family, or community).
A gentle prompt. One or two questions or a brief writing cue to help you notice what the song stirs. No pressure to “process”—just notice.
Listen with us. A direct link to the recording or performance.
Who it’s for
Grievers, supporters, therapists, and anyone who finds that music gives shape to the unsayable. Whether your loss is recent, long‑carried, ambiguous, or ongoing, you’re welcome here.
How to use Musical Mondays
For yourself: Listen and read at your own pace. Step away whenever you need.
With someone you love: Share the song and talk about what stood out—no fixing, just witnessing.
In clinical work: Use the weekly prompt as a quick check‑in, a grounding exercise, or a brief in‑session writing moment. (We avoid pathologizing language; you won’t see “denial,” “bargaining,” or “closure” here.)
A note on language
We treat “acceptance” as acknowledgment, not agreement. Some losses remain unacceptable; we honor that reality while making room for moments of ease and meaning alongside pain.
Add a song
Have a song that’s carried you? Share it with a line or two about why it matters to you. We may feature it in a future Monday post (with your permission).
Transformation Through Grief: Continuing Bonds in Adam Tendler’s “Inheritances”
11/3/2025
Written by Lydia Silva
When I watched CBS Sunday Morning feature pianist Adam Tendler, I was deeply moved—not only by the music, but by what it represented. After his father’s death, Tendler inherited a small envelope of cash. Instead of keeping it or spending it, he transformed it into something far more meaningful: he used it to commission sixteen composers to write piano pieces exploring the idea of inheritance—not just in the financial sense, but as memory, relationship, and emotional legacy.
The result, Inheritances, became an intimate conversation between past and present. As Tendler learned and performed each piece, he found himself thinking of his father more than ever. Through this process, the relationship didn’t end—it changed form. In grief therapy, we call this a continuing bond—the way love persists and evolves, even after loss.
What I found most powerful was Tendler’s willingness to sit in uncertainty. “I liked being confronted with what I didn’t know,” he said. Grief often brings us to that same edge: we don’t know how to live in the world without someone we love, yet somehow we begin again.
I often watch CBS Sunday Morning because it reminds me of my own father—its quiet pace, its reflective tone, the way it notices beauty in ordinary things. Watching this segment, I felt that familiar ache of recognition: the tenderness of missing someone, and the gratitude for how they still shape who I am.
Tendler’s story reminds us that grief, when met with curiosity and creativity, can become a form of connection. Through his music, silence became sound, absence became art, and loss transformed into love that continues to resonate.
As a therapist, I often invite clients to explore what their loved one’s presence still offers—a value, a gesture, a creative spark, a sense of humor that lives on inside them. Continuing bonds aren’t about holding on; they’re about allowing love to take new shape. Like Tendler’s piano, our grief can become an instrument of meaning—one that reminds us that relationships don’t disappear with death; they transform, and so do we.
La Llorona — Carmen Goett
10/27/2025
As Día de los Muertos approaches on Nov 1 and 2, we invite you to visit this haunting folk song — “La Llorona” — performed here by Carmen Goett.
“Don’t think that because I sing, my heart is joyful.
One also sings from pain, when one can no longer cry.”
On this day of remembrance, music becomes an altar of its own — a way to speak with those who are no longer here, to keep company with love that has outlasted life.
La Llorona isn’t about letting go or finding closure.
It’s about continuing bonds — the ways grief, devotion, and memory keep weaving us back into connection.
Across candles, marigolds, and song, we remember:
we sing not to move past sorrow,
but to honor the space where love and loss still meet.
Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd & Guac
10/20/2025
This weekend, Jen and I went to see GUAC — Manuel Oliver’s powerful one-man play honoring his son, Joaquin.
“If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?”
That lyric from “Free Bird” kept echoing for me. Both the song and the play are love stories disguised as grief — about what remains, not what’s lost.
Oliver doesn’t seek closure; he shows how love keeps transforming. The guitar solo in Free Bird feels like that too — soaring, aching, alive.
Freedom isn’t forgetting.
It’s remembering — and choosing what to do with the love that remains.
Here's the link to the show. I encourage you to see it if you're Los Angeles in the next 2 weeks. The show is playing until November 2nd.
America — Simon & Garfunkel
10/13/2025
(In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day)
I’ve always loved to hum—it relaxes me. Sometimes I catch myself doing it without even realizing it—while driving, working or puttering around. Music was always part of the background of my home growing up, so humming feels like breathing to me: something that just is.
This week, I’ve been humming “America” by Simon & Garfunkel—a song that begins as a search for belonging and drifts into a quiet kind of longing. The gentle humming woven through the melody feels like the sound of wandering, of remembering, of asking who we are and where we come from.
On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I find myself reflecting on how this land holds so many layers of story—those of migration, loss, searching, and the deeper, older histories that came long before. The act of humming feels like a way to listen differently—to the land, to memory, to the stories that shaped us.
❤️ The Healing Power of Humming
Humming is more than sound—it’s vibration, breath, and memory all at once.
It activates the vagus nerve, slows the heart, and gently regulates the nervous system. It also invites us into continuing bonds—connection through sensation rather than words.
When we hum, we:
Ground ourselves in the body’s rhythm and breath.
Soothe the nervous system, helping the body feel safe again.
Remember those who came before us—family, mentors, ancestors, communities, and the loved ones whose stories live through us.
Listen—not just to music, but to the echoes of belonging, to the land beneath our feet, and to what it carries.
🎵 A Reflection in Song: “America”
Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” isn’t just a road song—it’s a hymn to searching. The gentle hum woven through its verses gives space for what can’t be spoken.
"Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together..."
"All come to look for America."
Today, I think about what it means to “look for America”—to hold space for its contradictions and its beauty, and to remember the Indigenous peoples whose lands we stand on, whose songs were once carried by wind and drum long before highways and folk guitars.
So perhaps humming, in its quiet simplicity, is a way of honoring that lineage—of staying connected to those who’ve gone before and those whose stories we are just beginning to hear.
I’m Not Gonna Miss You – Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond
10/6/2025
Written by Michelle Webb
This song captures the devastating tenderness of memory loss — not from the perspective of those left behind, but from the one who is leaving.
Glen Campbell wrote “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” as Alzheimer’s began to take his memories — a farewell sung with heartbreaking clarity. “You’re the last person I will love,” he sings, not because love has faded, but because memory itself is slipping away.
In grief work, we often talk about continuing bonds — the ways we carry love forward after loss. This song turns that concept inside out: it asks us to imagine what it means when the one we love can no longer carry us. The bond, then, becomes our responsibility to hold — to remember, to tell their story, to keep love intact even when they can no longer do the same.
This isn’t a song about forgetting. It’s a song about the cost of remembering. About the sacred work of bearing witness for someone whose memory is dimming.
Reflection prompt: Who are you remembering today — not because they can remember you, but because you refuse to let their story fade?
Cool as the Breeze — Stephen Marley
9/29/2025
Written by Lydia Silva:
There are songs that don’t just play through the speakers — they move through you, like air, like memory. Stephen Marley’s “Cool as the Breeze” is one of those songs.
With only his voice, a gentle guitar, and the space between notes, Stephen sings of love that refuses to vanish with death. The wind becomes a messenger, carrying a familiar voice. The sun becomes a reminder, warming the face with a smile that is no longer here but still felt.
Grief is present, but it is tender — not a storm, but a breeze that brushes against the skin, reminding us that absence can still be full of presence.
For Stephen, these words carry generations of loss. He grew up in the shadow of his father’s passing, and more recently, he buried his own son, Jo Mersa. To lose a parent so young, and later a child so full of life, is to know grief from both directions.
Yet in “Cool as the Breeze,” he does not collapse into despair — instead, he honors those missing by giving them new life in the natural world around him. The song does more than remember; it hints at reunion — a belief that love endures beyond separation, and that what is lost in this life may be found again in another.
And within that longing, there is also hope.
“Cool as the Breeze” carries the quiet conviction that even in mourning, joy can return. The song suggests that grief and hope can walk side by side — that the same wind that stirs our tears can also carry comfort, and the same sunlight that reminds us of what we’ve lost can warm us with the promise of what still remains.
Listening to this song feels like sitting quietly with your own memories — the people you long for, the ones you still search for in clouds and rays of light. It suggests that perhaps they are still with us, not in the ways we once knew, but in whispers, in warmth, in wind. And it promises something more: that one day, as cool as the breeze and as certain as the rising sun, we may meet again.
It is a song of lineage, of resilience, of hope, and of love that keeps moving — cool as the breeze.
“When the wind brushes your face or the sunlight warms your skin, whose presence do you still feel lingering with you?”
“In the spaces where absence feels heavy, what signs of presence do you notice around you?”
Do You Realize? – The Flaming Lips
9/15/2025
Some songs hold up a mirror to life’s most fragile truths. Do You Realize?? by The Flaming Lips does just that — reminding us of beauty, impermanence, and the inevitability of loss.
“Do you realize… that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize… that everyone you know someday will die?”
When the band wrote this song, they were immersed in pain and existential questioning — guitarist Steven Drozd in heroin withdrawal, and Wayne Coyne grieving the loss of his father.
Out of that rawness came a song that marries heartbreak with wonder. Coyne later described being struck by the terror and awe of existence: how precarious, how fleeting, how miraculous it all is.
The song has since taken on a life far beyond the band. Listeners have shared that it accompanied them in their loved one’s final moments, or after tragedy — not because it erases grief, but because it holds space for it alongside beauty.
For grievers, this song is both a balm and a challenge: to hold loss and presence together, to notice what is luminous even as we ache.
Today, may you pause, notice something beautiful, and let it matter.
Visiting Hours – Ed Sheeran
9/8/2025
Written by Todd Kirby:
Ed Sheeran wrote Visiting Hours after losing a close friend, but when I hear it, it feels like he wrote it just to get me sobbing into my cereal. Since my dad died, I’ve carried this ache that no well intentioned grief platitude, no TikTok self-care trend, not even a Costco-sized bottle of time could touch: I just want to see him again. To ask his advice. To share the recent absurdities of my life’s journey. To lament about how our beloved NY Mets still suck.
Visiting Hours is a song about longing—about wishing we could sit across from the people we’ve lost, even for a little while, to share life’s news, to seek their guidance, or simply hear their voice again.
When I hear the lyrics, “I wish that Heaven had visiting hours, so I could just show up and bring the news,” my chest tightens. That’s the dream, isn’t it? A cosmic waiting room where you can check in for a half hour, catch them up, gather some wisdom, and walk out lighter. The grief isn’t only about missing what was — it’s about missing what is. The moments that keep happening without them. The new chapters they don’t get to see.
But here’s the twist: sometimes I actually do get visiting hours. Not in the Sheeran sense, but in my own. Through meditation, I’ll drop into a memory — the warmth of his laugh at the dinner table — and if I sink deep enough, I don’t just recall it, I feel it. The warmth, the ease, the love that was there comes alive again, right here in the present. It’s not him in the flesh. But it’s something. It’s a reminder that our bonds don’t vanish with death; they shape-shift. That’s my version of visiting hours.
Reflection prompt: If you had visiting hours today, what would you most want to ask or share with the person you miss?
9 to 5 – Dolly Parton
9/1/2025
Labor Day honors the dignity of work, yet it can also stir grief. For many, the workplace is where we carry loss quietly while trying to keep up with daily demands. The effort of showing up while grieving is its own kind of labor.
Today’s song is “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton — more than just a catchy anthem, it was the theme of the 1980 film 9 to 5, which spotlighted themes of gender inequality and female empowerment in the workplace. Beneath the humor and energy of the song lies recognition of exhaustion, repetition, and longing for change — feelings that resonate not only with labor but also with grief.
For those working through grief this Labor Day: your strength in carrying both professional responsibilities and personal heartache is seen. The work of healing deserves as much dignity, rest, and compassion as any labor.
Let’s Write a Musical – Elizabeth Coplan
8/25/2025
My friend, playwright Elizabeth Coplan, wrote Let’s Write a Musical, based on the real-life story of Lawrie Chiaro Symlie and her husband Ben Symlie. It follows David and Lucy, a couple who, in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis, decide to create their own romantic-comedy musical—capturing love, laughter, and legacy. As their story unfolds, so does the 1950s love tale of Olive and Blake, an ode to classic musicals and the power of storytelling.
It’s playing in Los Angeles this September, and I urge you to experience it. I’m looking forward to being there with dear friends on opening night!
A heartfelt celebration of love, loss, and creativity. What song helps you hold onto love through loss?
Amazing Grace – Phyllis Adams & Leila Bolden
8/18/2025
I'm at the Portland Institute of Loss and Transition's annual grief retreat and tonight I found myself sitting around a pseudo-campfire with people I didn’t even know four days ago. We sang songs we half-remembered, laughed through the forgotten lines, and let the music carry us into something deeper.
We stumbled through Sweet Caroline (sorry, Neil Diamond—we didn’t quite get it right!), but when we sang Amazing Grace, something shifted. Strangers felt like companions. Grief felt a little lighter. And for a moment, connection wrapped around us like warmth.
Music holds us—when words aren’t enough, it sings what our hearts can’t.
Reflection prompt: What song has carried you through hard times?
Not as We – Alanis Morissette
8/11/2025
Some words capture the impact of grief so vividly, it feels as though someone has traveled through our soul and returned with the truth. When paired with melody, they cut achingly to our core.
Leave it to the goddess of song, Alanis Morissette, to embody that experience—powerfully, painfully, and beautifully.
“Reborn and shivering
Spat out on new terrain
Unsure, unconvincing
This faint and shaky hour...”
In just a few verses, Alanis gives voice to the fragile, trembling place of “day one” after loss—where the self must learn to exist again, but this time as I, not We.
For anyone rebuilding after a seismic change, this one’s for you.
El Condor Pasa (If I Could) – Simon & Garfunkel
8/4/2025
This song brings me back to a very specific moment in 1973. My mom and I were sitting on the couch watching Voyage of the Yes, made-for-TV movie with Desi Arnaz Jr. (who I was completely in love with at the time) and Mike Evans. It was a coming-of-age sailing adventure—pretty cheesy in hindsight—but what really stuck with me wasn’t the plot. It was the rare, quiet way my mom watched the whole thing with me, without offering life advice or commentary, just being there.
That kind of memory lingers. And it’s the music that brings it back.
Is there a song from a movie or show that instantly brings someone—or some moment—back to you?
Reflection prompt: Is there a song from a movie or show that instantly brings someone—or some moment—back to you?
Choosing Music for a Funeral, Memorial, or Celebration of Life
7/28/2025
Planning a service after the death of a loved one often brings a wave of decisions—some practical, some deeply emotional. Choosing the music is one of the most personal parts of the process. It may feel overwhelming, especially when grief is fresh, and emotions are layered.
Recently, a family member of mine died after a long decline. We had been expecting it for a while, and when the moment came, there was both sadness and a quiet sense of relief. That complexity is normal. Grief can be mixed with release, gratitude, or even peace—and the music you choose can reflect that.
Music speaks when words fall short.
It can:
Reflect who your loved one was
Offer comfort to those attending
Create moments of shared memory
Acknowledge both sorrow and love
Some families choose classical pieces or religious hymns. Others pick songs their person loved, or music that brings a smile through the tears. When my mom died, we played “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler. For others, it might be:
“Because You Loved Me” – Celine Dion
“Candle in the Wind” – Elton John
“Dancing in the Sky” – Dani and Lizzy
“See You Again” – Wiz Khalifa & Charlie Puth
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World” – Israel Kamakawiwoʻole
“My Kind of Town” – Frank Sinatra (for someone who loved Chicago or called it home)
Including a city or place-specific song like “My Kind of Town” can be a beautiful nod to a person’s roots, memories, or identity—whether it was their hometown, favorite travel spot, or simply a place they carried in their heart.
Questions to help you choose:
Is there a song that reminds you of them instantly?
What music did they always turn up when it played?
What song could offer comfort or reflection to those attending?
Are you looking for something traditional, personal, or uplifting?
Is there a song that reflects their favorite place, era, or style?
If your feelings are complicated—grief mixed with relief or exhaustion—is there a song that speaks to that too?
Grief is not one-dimensional. Music doesn’t have to be either. Whether it’s a single song or a full playlist, your choices become part of the story you’re telling about their life and legacy.
Jaws — John Williams
7/21/2025
“Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum!”
Have you ever had a theme song get stuck in your head?
This weekend, I watched the 50th anniversary celebration of Jaws and found myself captivated by Steven Spielberg talking about the music. That iconic two-note theme made the shark terrifying—not because we could see it, but because we could feel it coming. The music created tension, anticipation, and dread before anything even happened.
It got me thinking: sometimes grief does the same thing. A sound, a song, a few piano notes—and suddenly we’re back in a memory, a moment, a feeling. Music doesn’t just accompany grief. It scores it.
This Week’s Reflection Prompt:
What’s a song (or sound) that cues your grief?
What emotions rise up when you hear it?
Is it tied to a person, a season of life, a goodbye?
What part of your story does it hold?
In the Blood – John Mayer
7/14/2025
John Mayer’s “In the Blood” is a haunting reflection on family, identity, and the complicated inheritance we carry from those we come from. It’s a poignant companion to the experience of estrangement—where grief, longing, and self-preservation often coexist.
Here are just a few ways this song speaks to estrangement:
Inherited Wounds and Patterns
“How much of my mother has my mother left in me?”
“How much of my father am I destined to become?”
Many who are estranged from family carry a quiet fear: of becoming the very people who hurt them, or of being unable to separate identity from inherited pain.
Identity and Longing
“Could I change it if I wanted? Can I rise above the flood?”
Estrangement is rarely simple. Mayer captures the ambivalence—wanting to be known and connected, but needing distance to stay emotionally safe.
Emotional Invisibility
“Will I dim the lights inside me just to satisfy someone?”
This lyric speaks to the years many spend quieting themselves to keep the peace. For some, estrangement becomes a way to reclaim authenticity.
“In the Blood” doesn’t offer “closure”. Instead, it honors the ache and ambiguity. It resonates with those grieving relationships that never had a clean ending—only questions, boundaries, and the work of making meaning in the aftermath.
Give it a listen if you’re exploring the intersections of grief, identity, and family distance
Now Comes the Night — Rob Thomas
6/30/2025
I hear my own silent promise to him. That he wouldn’t die alone. That even though I fell asleep before he took his last breath, my love was there—woven into that room, into his breathing, into the ending.
This song reminds me of the ache of wanting to do it perfectly. And it reminds me of the grace of showing up anyway, in all our humanness, because love was there. Even in the sleep. Even in the imperfection.
Now Comes the Night is for anyone who has kept vigil. For anyone who tried to ease a loved one’s fear. For anyone who wanted to honor a life, no matter how complicated the relationship was.
Listen if you need a song that understands.
Reflection prompt:
Who have you kept company with at the end of their life?
What did you hope they knew before they left?
This song holds a place in my heart that’s hard to name.
Now Comes the Night isn’t just about death. It’s about love at the end. It’s about staying close when everything else is falling away.
When my dad was dying, I wanted to be there to comfort him. To sit with him in his final hours as a way of honoring all the times he had been there for me. Our relationship wasn’t perfect—there were hurts and distance and unspoken things—but in those last days, what mattered most was presence.
Listening to these words:
“Now comes the night
Feel it fading away
And the soul underneath
Is it all that remains?
…Let us hold to each other
Until the end of our days
And when the hour is upon us
…You will not be forgotten
And you will not be alone.”
I Drive Your Truck – Lee Brice
5/26/2025
On this Memorial Day, we honor the ways grief moves—through roads driven, songs played, and stories remembered.
The song “I Drive Your Truck” was inspired by a true story. U.S. Army Sgt. Jared Monti was killed in action in Afghanistan while trying to save a fellow soldier. His father, Paul Monti, told NPR that when he misses his son, he drives Jared’s truck—still dusty from military gear, still filled with traces of him.
That interview led to the creation of this song, now a deeply moving tribute to how grief is carried not just in memory, but in motion.
Lyric spotlight:
"I drive your truck / I roll every window down / And I burn up / Every back road in this town..."
On days like today, that truck becomes more than a vehicle. It’s a way of staying close. A way of remembering. A way of saying: I’m still here. I’m still holding you.
Reflection prompt:
Who do you still carry with you?
Grass is Blue — Dolly Parton
5/19/2025
There are a handful of songs that instantly transport me back to the early days of grieving my mom. I was 23 years old when she died by suicide. She had struggled with mental illness and substance use, but I always believed she would get better. It truly never occurred to me that she could actually die. The healed version of her always seemed just around the corner—just out of reach. In hindsight, it’s not surprising that she died, but at the time, it was deeply shocking.
Her suicide forever altered the path of my life and changed the way I saw the world.
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My mom loved Dolly Parton, and listening to some of her favorites brought me solace after her death.
“Coat of Many Colors” was the closest thing I could get to a hug, “Jolene” felt like dancing in the living room, and “I Will Always Love You” sounded like ….
Join in
Have a song that’s carried you? Share it with a line or two about why it matters to you. We may feature it in a future Monday post (with your permission).