How Music Can Help Us Heal Through Grief

Few things can move humans, like music. It’s emotive in every sense of the word and can be a powerful aid in healing. If you’re grieving a loss of any sort, music can help.

Research shows that music is therapeutic and can help heal trauma. Music was used in traditional African societies and across the diaspora. In the Bori religion in Northern Nigeria, for example, music was used to revive the dying.

Enslaved Africans used spirituals to express both sorrow and hope in pursuing freedom.

Living in an anti-Black world means our people constantly grieve individually and collectively. Music has long been a source of liberation for our people, and it can be beneficial when struggling with grief.

Try creating a playlist that begins with 1-2 songs that evoke your current emotional state and then add 3-4 songs that evoke your emotions that move toward your desired emotional state.

We owe it to ourselves to find all the small ways to keep going when everything feels difficult. Grief is heavy and isolating, but music is just one tool to help us cope and begin the healing process.