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). Some also include 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.
Share with someone you love: Share the song and talk about what stood out.
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.)
Share 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).
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.
Listen to the full playlist
Carry You by Tim Minchin with Missy Higgins
6/8/2026
As many communities gather for walks honoring suicide loss survivors, this song reminds me that love does not end when someone dies. We carry people forward in many ways—through memories, stories, rituals, values, and the impact they had on our lives.
One of the most moving lines in the song is:
"I will carry you."
For those walking in memory of someone they love, those words can hold many meanings. We carry their names. We carry their stories. We carry the ways they shaped us. And sometimes, when grief feels especially heavy, we allow others to help carry us, too.
Whether you are participating in a walk, remembering someone quietly, or supporting a friend who is grieving, may you be reminded that you do not have to carry it all alone.
In honor of suicide loss survivors and those who are loved and remembered every day.
What song helps you feel connected to someone you miss?
True Colors — Cyndi Lauper
6/1/2026
For decades, this song has been a reminder that being fully yourself matters and that being truly seen can feel powerful, affirming, and life-giving.
Its message feels especially meaningful as Pride Month begins. The lyrics speak to something deeply human: the longing to be known as we are, without hiding, shrinking, or apologizing—and the relief and joy that can come when our true selves are welcomed with care.
For many in the LGBTQ+ community, being able to live openly and authentically has required even more tremendous courage than ever. Pride honors that courage. It honors those who came before, those still finding their footing, and the communities that continue creating more room for people to be fully themselves.
“Your true colors are beautiful, like a rainbow.”
A beautiful reminder that authenticity matters. Visibility matters. Belonging matters.
Honoring every person learning to trust their own colors—and every person helping create space for others to shine.
What song feels like Pride to you this year?
Memorial Day
5/25/2026
Do certain songs stop you in your tracks?
Today I’ve been thinking about Angel Flight by Radney Foster. It is a moving song inspired by the true story of the pilots and crews who transport fallen service members home to their families.
There’s such tenderness and dignity in that image: bringing someone home.
On this Memorial Day, I’m holding gratitude for those who died in service and for the families who continue carrying their love and memory forward.
Some songs help us remember.
Some help us pause.
This one feels like both.
What’s It All About, Alfie? — Cilla Black
5/18/2026
Sometimes I wake up with a song already playing in my head.
Do you ever have that happen?
This morning it was “What’s It All About, Alfie?” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song was originally written for the 1960s film Alfie — a story about a self-centered man slowly confronting deeper questions about what life is really about.
There is something timeless about the questions in that song:
“What’s it all about?”
“What are we really searching for?”
“What actually matters?”
Searching for purpose and meaning has always been a thread in my life. And honestly, loss tends to sharpen those questions. Grief has a way of turning life upside down and making the familiar feel suddenly foreign.
So much of my work is sitting with people in that disorienting space — helping them find some footing again after loss has altered the landscape of their lives. Not by giving easy answers, but by helping them reconnect to meaning, connection, memory, purpose, and the parts of themselves that still want to keep living and loving.
Maybe that’s why this song showed up this morning.
Some questions stay with us our whole lives.
Here's is Cilla Black who sang the song for the film
It's My Doggy's Birthday — RxckStxr
5/11/2026
Today is Dottie’s birthday. She’s 4 years old today.
Dottie is an amazing creature who is incredibly attuned to emotional energy. She has such celebratory energy herself—I love how excited she gets about the most ordinary things.
But what stands out even more is her laser-focused attention toward someone with a sad heart.
She is at our office every day, sitting quietly with people who have experienced tragic losses. Recently, she felt compelled to get very close (and perhaps a little too personal) with a bereaved mom. Dottie was nose-to-nose with her in a way that surprised all of us, though it also felt deeply comforting.
There is something remarkable about the way animals respond to emotion before words are ever spoken.
Animals have a proportionally larger limbic system than humans—the part of the brain deeply involved in emotion, attachment, sensing safety, and social connection. While humans often move quickly into language, analysis, or meaning-making, animals tend to respond directly to emotional presence itself.
Dottie doesn’t need to understand someone’s story to recognize pain.
She simply moves toward it.
And honestly, there is something deeply healing about being met that way.
So today’s Musical Monday is really for Dottie—whose presence reminds me daily that comfort is not always about fixing, talking, or knowing exactly what to say.
Sometimes it’s simply about staying close.
Hug your animals a little extra today.
Life’s Holiest Lesson — Sara Bareilles
5/4/2026
Sara Bareilles wrote a song inspired by and, in her words, “plagiarized” from a conversation Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert had six years ago about grief and the deaths of their fathers and brothers in very different circumstances. (Here's that video)
A couple of weeks ago, Anderson interviewed Sara Bareilles, and her song “Home” debuted.
It is a beautiful reflection on grief and the importance of telling our grief stories out loud.
What also touched my heart was Anderson’s deep vulnerability as he listened on air, and Sara’s tender embrace with him afterward.
There is something profoundly healing when grief is met not with fixing or discomfort but with presence, witness, and care.
I can’t wait to hear the full album when she releases it later this year.
Here’s the clip of the conversation and song.
I would also recommend watching the whole episode of this podcast in the video above because it is full of heart and wisdom.
8772
4/20/2026
As some of you know, I have struggled with drop foot since the surgery I had in 2021. It impacts me every day. Some days are more wobbly than others, and it has changed my identity in ways both visible and private.
That may be part of why I felt so moved when I recently found 8772, a band created by people with disabilities.
Their name, 8772, resembles BTTZ—short for Bingtong Tiaozhan, meaning Illness Challenge.
There is something powerful in that choice. Not hiding struggle. Not being reduced by it. Naming challenge while still creating music, community, and joy.
I know how easy it can be for a physical limitation to start feeling like the whole story. But it isn’t. We are always more than what our bodies struggle with.
Sometimes resilience is loud and inspiring. Sometimes it is simply getting up, adjusting, and continuing on wobbly days too.
Today I appreciate 8772 for reminding me that challenge can coexist with creativity, identity, and spirit.
Have It All — Jason Mraz
4/6/2026
The hazards of working in the field of grief...
Being on hyper-alert for signs of impending doom.
Inventing stories of illness based on your own history of everyone in your family getting cancer and dying.
Writing full medical tragedies in your head before sunrise.
And then feeling wildly, deeply grateful for a diagnosis of indigestion.
Today’s Musical Monday is about gratitude and relief.
Some days, the gift is not a big breakthrough.
It’s the quiet exhale.
It’s the ordinary diagnosis.
It’s getting to come back into the day you were afraid was about to be taken from you.
Today I’m grateful for that.
Peace Piece — Bill Evans
3/30/2026
I chose a piece of music today that has no words, and yet says so much to my tired mind and body.
Mark and I have had deep-hearted visits with family and friends over the last few weeks—connections I’m still taking in with intention and heart. There was an intensive with a client who did powerful, passionate, transforming work—messy and inspiring. One night I was at Spamalot laughing with my husband, and the next night we were part of a masterful surprise party for a very dear friend.
It has been full. Meaningful. And… a lot.
And today, I notice the need to be still.
Peace Piece by Bill Evans calls to me.
Its steady, grounding, repeating left-hand pattern
and the gentle improvisation on top
gives me the feeling of staying… rather than going somewhere.
I find myself needing the slowness of the lower notes
and the lightness of the higher notes—
like a small glimmer.
No words.
Just something to rest inside of for a few minutes.
The Prayer — Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli
3/16/2026
Grief, Autism, and the Unbearable Loss of a Child
Today’s Musical Monday holds space for a devastating reality: the needless loss of autistic children whose lives should have been protected, understood, and cherished.
When a child dies — especially in circumstances that feel preventable — grief carries layers of heartbreak:
shock, anger, disbelief, and the aching question of why.
Today’s song is The Prayer, written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa, and Tony Renis, and most widely known in the duet by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli. It was featured in in the movie "Quest for Camelot."
🎧 “Guide us with your grace to a place where we’ll be safe.”
The lyrics capture something so many parents feel — a deep longing for their child to be safe in a world that does not always understand them.
For families raising autistic children, that longing is often magnified.
Safety, acceptance, patience, and compassion should never be uncertain.
When a life is lost because understanding and care were absent, the grief ripples outward — through families, communities, and all who believe every child deserves dignity and protection.
Today we hold space for those families.
We remember the children.
And we recommit ourselves to building a world where difference is not met with harm, but with care.
I’m Iran — Shervin Hajipour
3/2/2026
In the wake of the February 28 U.S. strikes on Iran and the renewed cycle of violence and uncertainty, Hajipour’s “I’m Iran” lands as both lament and declaration.
Like his earlier piece Baraye, this song centers ordinary people — not governments, not geopolitics — but mothers, students, children, artists. It speaks in the first person: I am Iran.
A merging of land, people, grief, and identity.
Why This Matters — Especially for Grief Therapists
When war escalates, our clients may experience:
Collective grief layered onto personal loss
Re-activation of prior trauma (immigration histories, displacement, military service, political persecution)
Polarization and relational rupture within families
Moral injury and helplessness
A shattering of safety and predictability
Music like this can:
Offer language where words feel insufficient
Validate sorrow without requiring political alignment
Humanize those who are often reduced to headlines
Provide a bridge for clients who struggle to articulate what feels “too big"
For Iranian clients — or those with ties to the region — this may not be abstract. It may be ancestral, embodied, and immediate.
For others, it may surface ambiguous grief:
Grief for global instability.
Grief for innocence lost.
Grief for the feeling that the world is not as safe as we once believed.
Music does not solve war.
But it witnesses.
And sometimes witnessing is the first ethical act of care.
A Change is Gonna Come — Sam Cooke (Performed by Thomas Owens & Brian Owens)
2/23/2026
“It’s been a long, a long time coming…”
There are seasons when that lyric feels deeply personal.
In the therapy room recently, I’ve been sitting with people who are tired of “long.”
Long grief.
Long estrangements.
Long illnesses.
Long waits for systems to shift.
The kind of long that erodes hope quietly.
What moves me about this song, especially right now, is that it was written in the midst of struggle, not after it. It wasn’t naïve optimism. It was endurance with dignity.
The choice adds a quiet, embodied layer to the song: love communicated without sound, through intention, presence, and movement. A reminder that love finds ways to speak, even when life has changed how connection happens.
This isn’t “starting over” love.
It’s chosen love—love that exists alongside memory, history, and loss.
For widowed partners and long-term grievers, My Valentine can sound like quiet permission:
to love again without erasing a first great love
to let devotion be different, not lesser
to allow tenderness in a life shaped by loss
Love after loss is not betrayal.
It is not forgetting.
Love after loss is still love.
Debí Tirar Más Fotos — Bad Bunny
2/16/2026
Written by Rose Castellanos Cruz
I’ve never really considered myself a big sports fan.
And yet… over the past few years, I’ve found myself in a fantasy football group (strictly for bragging rights). Somewhere along the way, Sundays became game days. The Super Bowl became something I genuinely looked forward to.
This year felt different.
There was plenty of conversation about the halftime show, but for me, something deeply personal happened. Watching a Latino artist take that stage — speaking about unity, compassion, and acceptance — filled me with pride. It felt powerful. It felt meaningful. It felt like a moment.
And then came the final song: “Debí Tirar Más Fotos (DtMF)” by Bad Bunny.
I didn’t expect it to move me the way it did.
The rhythm makes you want to dance. There’s joy in it.
And yet the lyrics carry tenderness — a longing that sneaks up on you.
As I listened, I found myself thinking about my dad and how much I miss him. Later, talking through the lyrics with my daughter, we both realized how expansive the message really is. The song reaches far beyond one particular loss. It speaks to the many losses in life we may not always name as loss.
For some, it might stir memories of simpler times — when neighbors felt closer, when holidays felt less divided, when connection came more easily.
For others, it may echo the quiet ache of families strained by differences and growing polarization.
It somehow holds space for all of it — the happiness, the nostalgia, the ache.
There’s something beautiful about music that lets you sway and smile while also honoring what you’ve lost.
Listening to Debí Tirar Más Fotos reminded me that while I can’t have more time with my father, I can cherish the photos. I can hold tight to the memories. I can keep love alive in the stories we share.
My hope — personally and collectively — is that we find our way back to one another.
That we lean into acceptance, compassion, and inclusivity.
That we hold each other a little closer.
Take the pictures.
Say the words.
Choose unity whenever we can.
My Valentine — Paul McCartney
2/9/2026
This week’s Musical Monday holds space for love long after loss.
My Valentine, written by Paul McCartney and released in 2012, is a love song composed later in life—for his wife Nancy—after deep personal grief.
What makes this song so powerful is its restraint.
It isn’t performative. It isn’t nostalgic.
It’s attentive, steady, and intimate.
In the official black-and-white video—directed by McCartney—the lyrics are expressed through American Sign Language (ASL), performed by Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp.
The choice adds a quiet, embodied layer to the song: love communicated without sound, through intention, presence, and movement. A reminder that love finds ways to speak, even when life has changed how connection happens.
This isn’t “starting over” love.
It’s chosen love—love that exists alongside memory, history, and loss.
For widowed partners and long-term grievers, My Valentine can sound like quiet permission:
to love again without erasing a first great love
to let devotion be different, not lesser
to allow tenderness in a life shaped by loss
Love after loss is not betrayal.
It is not forgetting.
Love after loss is still love.
Sunday Bloody Sunday — U2
1/27/2026
Written in response to the killing of unarmed civilians in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1972, this song was never meant to stay in history. Its question — “how long must we sing this song?” — is meant to remain painfully current.
Just two days ago, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a nurse, was killed during federal immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis. His death comes amid ongoing killings of innocent people, including civilians caught in state violence, raids, and enforcement actions that leave families and communities shattered.
Sunday Bloody Sunday helps us name something grief work often requires us to hold:
Some losses are not only devastating — they are morally wrong.
Wrong in their violence.
Wrong in their preventability.
Wrong in the way power meets civilian and innocent bodies.
It reminds us that:
Grief following violence often carries outrage alongside sorrow
State actions can create collective trauma and moral injury
Bearing witness — without explanation or consolation — is sometimes the work
This is not a song for comfort or regulation.
It is a song for truth-telling.
A Change is Gonna Come — Sam Cooke
1/19/2026
Continuing this week’s Musical Monday reflection in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., I want to sit with A Change Is Gonna Come.
If Mississippi Goddam is the sound of grief that refuses patience, A Change Is Gonna Come holds grief that has already waited far too long.
This song carries:
Weariness without resignation
Hope without denial
Faith that emerges from repeated injury, not optimism
It names how change is long, costly, and uneven, and how believing in it often comes after profound suffering, not before it.
In grief work, especially with clients impacted by racialized violence, systemic injustice, and generational trauma, this song mirrors something we see often:
the tension between exhaustion and endurance, despair and resolve.
For us as therapists, A Change Is Gonna Come is not a promise to offer clients.
It is a context to understand them.
It reminds us that hope, when it exists, is often hard-earned and that grief and faith can live in the same breath.
Listen not for reassurance, but for truth.
Mississippi Goddam — Nina Simone
1/12/2026
(Week of Dr. King’s birthday)
This week, as we mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., I’m sitting with Mississippi Goddam.
This is not a song for comfort or regulation.
It is a song of grief, rage, and moral clarity. Something we are experiencing more and more of these days.
Written in response to racial terror—the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four young Black girls—this song refuses patience, neutrality, and premature meaning-making. It names violence as violence.
In clinical work—especially with homicide, racialized violence, and collective trauma—there are losses that are not just sad.
They are wrong. This song models what it means to bear witness without softening the truth or rushing toward resolution.
For us as therapists, Mississippi Goddam is a reminder that:
Grief can be protest
Anger can be accurate
Bearing witness is sometimes the intervention
A Shared Playlist for Grievers
1/5/2026
Music often reaches places our clinical language cannot.
Certain songs hold grief, memory, love, identity, and endurance in ways that feel both personal and relational.
This year, I’m curating a shared playlist made up of songs that move us—songs that have mattered in your own grief, or that have quietly accompanied clients in meaningful ways.
If you’d like to contribute, please share:
A song that moves you
Feel free to add a short note if you’d like:
What does this song hold?
When does it tend to surface (early grief, anniversaries, identity shifts, unfinished business, etc.)?
This will be a living playlist, growing across the year, reflecting the many forms grief takes—and the many ways we stay connected.
I’ll compile the songs into a shared Spotify playlist and post the link here once it’s underway.
Thank you for the care you bring—to your clients, to each other, and to yourselves.
Sometimes, music does what therapy cannot do alone.
Anywhere With You — Mary Steenburgen
1/5/2026
This week, Anywhere With You by Mary Steenburgen really speaks to me. I’m part of two different groups of women — therapists who have become dear friends — and both circles have been places of fierce love, support, and deep cheering through the hard and the good. This song feels like a quiet reflection of that bond.
I Lived — OneRepublic
12/29/2025
This past year was hard for too many people.
Loss piled onto loss. Fatigue lingered. Certainty thinned.
For many, getting through the year required far more than anyone saw.
For grievers, this song isn’t a victory anthem.
It’s an acknowledgment of survival.
The music video—featuring skydiver Bryan Warnecke and the real risk he takes—underscores something important: living is not the same as winning, conquering, or overcoming. It’s choosing to step forward despite fear, despite loss, despite knowing there are no guarantees.
Entering a new year having lived through what you never wanted to live through still counts.
If you’re arriving in 2026 tired, changed, carrying names and memories with you...
no resolution is required.
Being here is already evidence of courage.
Solstice, Christmas & the Nature of Grief
River — Joni Mitchell
12/22/2025
This week holds a lot.
The Winter Solstice—the longest night of the year—arrived just as Christmas approaches this week. For many grievers, that combination can feel heavy, tender, and quietly exhausting. When the world keeps insisting on light, cheer, and celebration, grief often wants something slower. Softer. Truer.
Today’s song is River by Joni Mitchell.
It’s a song about longing, regret, and the ache of wanting to escape the pain—set against a backdrop of Christmas imagery that never quite fits. For many grievers, that mismatch feels painfully familiar.
The solstice reminds us that darkness is not failure—it’s a season.
Christmas can be present and painful at the same time.
You don’t have to feel merry to belong in this week.
If you’re grieving:
It’s okay to mark the solstice quietly—with a candle, a moment, a breath.
It’s okay if Christmas feels complicated, hollow, or bittersweet.
It’s okay to want a river to skate away on and to stay right where you are.
May this week hold gentle light, not forced joy.
May you honor what’s missing without rushing yourself toward cheer.
And may you remember: the light does return—but it does so slowly, patiently, and without demands.
Anthem — Leonard Cohen
12/15/2025
We are needing this so much more this week.
In the shadow of recent murders—lives taken violently and senselessly—many are carrying grief that is raw, collective, and destabilizing. For some, the world feels less safe. For others, the losses echo personal grief already held in the body. Hanukkah’s language of light can feel fragile in moments like this.
Leonard Cohen does not offer comfort that bypasses devastation. He offers truth:
“There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”
This is not light as reassurance.
It is light as witness.
Light that does not justify violence, minimize horror, or rush healing.
In grief work, we know that light does not require acceptance of the unacceptable. It can simply mean staying present, remembering the dead, refusing numbness, and allowing sorrow to matter.
This week, light may look like mourning.
It may look like anger.
It may look like naming what should never have happened.
And still—one candle. One song. One breath.
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).