5 Ways Music Can Support the Grieving Process
- Jan 13
- 6 min read
Emma G is an award-winning singer/songwriter, 2x TEDx speaker, and empowerment coach specializing in trauma-aware voicework, mental health advocacy, and music-led healing. She is the author of "Mental Health Sounds Like This" and founder of Emma G Music LLC.
Emotions rarely arrive with perfect languaging. Instead, they arrive as sensation. We see this with children all the time. Tantrums. Hysterical crying. Or even hysterical laughter. It is the same for young adults and more seasoned folk alike. Grief, in particular, manifests as a heaviness in the chest and a tight throat. Shallow breathing. Sudden exhaustion. A feeling that something essential has shifted, even if you cannot yet explain what.
For many people, grief becomes overwhelming not because the loss is too big to survive, but because there is nowhere for the emotion to go.
Music offers a different kind of doorway into the grieving process. One that does not require answers. One that meets the body before it asks for meaning.
In this article, we will explore five ways music can support grief, emotionally, physically, and creatively, and how sound can become a companion through loss rather than an escape from it.
1. Music gives grief a safe place to live
I am not a grief therapist, but I do spend my life helping people identify, process, and understand emotional overwhelm, and eventually move through it. And I love this work. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that I do not just talk about it. I have been walking it and singing it for most of my life.
I wrote Proud after my father passed away in January of 2018, a song that allowed me to speak to him, honor him, and continue a relationship that no longer had a physical form, but still holds a very real emotional and spiritual connection.
More recently, I wrote Grieve during a very different season. My mother had removed herself from my life, and without any clear ending, the loss cut deep. There was the quiet, ongoing grief of loving someone I could no longer reach.
That song was born from anticipatory grief, the kind that begins before anything is officially “over.” The kind that lives in the body long before it ever reaches the mind.
And then, of course, there are the songs about breakups, heartache, and friendships ending. While each of these songs came from different experiences, they have all taught me something fundamental.
Grief needs somewhere to exist.
Music can become that place. A place to hold what feels too big for conversation. A place to express what has not yet found words. A place where emotion can be present without needing to be solved.
This is not about fixing grief. It is about giving it a home, so that when we are ready, and alongside appropriate mental health support, music can offer clarity and help establish the foundation on which healing is built.
2. Grief lives in the body, and music meets it there
Grief not only affects how we think. It reshapes how we breathe. How we stand. How we hold ourselves.
Shoulders collapse. The chest caves. The head drops. Breathing becomes shallow. Sound disappears.
We do not just feel grief emotionally. We hold it structurally.
This is one of the reasons posture, breath, and voice are such powerful tools in the grieving process. They meet grief where it actually lives, in our bodies.
Gentle changes in posture, especially posture built specifically for singing, can create space where the body has been bracing. Breath invites movement where things have gone still. Voice allows what has been held to vibrate, soften, and shift.
Music, especially singing, engages our whole system. Lungs, diaphragm, throat, nervous system, and attention. It supports regulation not by forcing positivity, but by changing how the body is functioning in real time.
This is why music can play a meaningful role in mental health promotion and emotional support. It does not replace therapy or treatment, but it can be a legitimate form of early intervention, helping people regulate before grief becomes completely overwhelming.
3. Sound comes before story
Often, the body needs sound before it can make sense. I know that sounds kind of strange, but often, before we can jump to analysis, narrative, or explaining our loss, we need to:
Cry
Sigh
Hum
Exhale
Tone release
Sound bypasses the part of us that wants to organize grief and goes straight to the part that is experiencing it.
This is why humming, toning, and singing can feel so regulating. They stimulate the vagus nerve, support parasympathetic activation, and slow the breath. They give grief somewhere to go without demanding that it be articulate.
Music does not rush clarity. It creates conditions where clarity can eventually emerge.
4. Music supports continuing bonds, not “closure”
One of the most important shifts in modern grief understanding is this. Most people do not “get over” loss.
They have to learn how to integrate it. Learn how the relationship continues and find new ways to honor, remember, and speak. Allow love to move rather than disappear.
Music is powerful because it allows relationships to continue.
A song thus becomes a conversation, a ritual, and a space to remember. It becomes a place to say what was never said, and a place to keep love active.
Both "Proud" and "Grieve" are examples of this in my own life. They did not end the grief I was carrying, but they helped me transform it into something I could carry.
This is often what people are truly seeking, not closure, but healing and connection.
5. Music turns grief into creative movement
This is why my work as a vocal coach and empowerment through songwriting coach goes far beyond performance and technical skill.
Most clients do not come to me because they want to simply “sound better.”
They come because they are holding something:
A loss
A realization
A transition
An emotional season
A life experience
Often, they have already done meaningful work in therapy, reflection, or personal growth. What they have not yet found is a way to move that understanding from the body into expression.
Music can be that bridge. A way to translate experience into sound. A way to move emotion instead of storing it. A way to let insight become embodied.
This work does not replace therapy, but it absolutely supports integration.
Try this: A gentle music-based grief practice
You do not need to be a musician to work with grief creatively. Here is a simple practice you can use whenever grief feels heavy, distant, or overwhelming.
Posture: I work with all of my clients using a vocal performance acronym that I created when I first started coaching, "SHIRTFaN."
Shoulders back
High chest
In chin
Relaxed knees
Tummy breathing
Feet shoulder-width apart
And
Neck long
Breath: Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly. Inhale through the nose. Exhale slowly through the mouth. Let the exhale be longer than the inhale. Continue for one to two minutes.
Sound: Using the same breathing practice as before, this time on the exhale, hum. No melody. No performance. Just vibration. Notice where you feel it.
Music: Put on one piece of music that feels honest for where you are, not what you wish you felt. Sit. Breathe. Let whatever arises be allowed.
Reflection: Afterward, write one or two sentences. “What did my body feel?” “What did this music give me permission to express?” That’s it.
No fixing. No forcing the meaning. Just a relationship.
A final thought
Grief does not move in straight lines. It moves in waves, layers, memories, and moments. Music does not rush that process. It walks beside it. And sometimes, that companionship is what allows healing to begin.
Read more from Emma G
Emma G is an award-winning singer/songwriter, 2x TEDx speaker, and empowerment coach who helps teens and adults transform pain into power through trauma-informed voice work and songwriting. After surviving 10 brain surgeries due to hydrocephalus, she discovered the healing potential of music and self-expression.
Her book and album, Mental Health Sounds Like This, offer a neuroscience-backed, culturally grounded approach to emotional wellness. She’s the founder of Emma G Music LLC and has been featured by FOX, WUSA9, The Washington Post, CBS, CBC, and more. Her mission? To save the world, one song at a time.
