Songs for Loss

Music has always been healing for me. There are ways that simple melodies, or an urging baseline, or even the tinkering of a few piano keys can peel down the noise and the pressure of the world until all you feel is the balm and comfort of the music. With our recent loss, music has been one of the ways I have tried to nurture those precious grains of joy left inside while still letting time pass for the wound of miscarriage to heal. I’ll still have a scar carved on my heart, but with that scar will be knowledge. Knowledge of other women who have gone before me and made it past the pain of loss; knowledge of what it is like to experience a great loss but that I can face anything now. With loss has come courage. I am still broken inside, and those pieces won’t fit back to the way they once were, but new vessels will join those broken pieces until I have a new wholeness. And besides, scars are cool, right?

There is a mix of songs I made a number of years ago for a friend after her father passed away. I still go back to that mix from time to time when I need to let the music seep in and either allow the ache or hinder the ache. I called it “Para La Tristeza”, which translates as “For Sadness”, because sometimes it’s okay to feel sad or imperfect or miss the way your pieces used to fit together. I’ve been making new versions of the CD over the years, and shared a few of the songs that are a part of my soundtrack for this season in life on my last post. As I’ve found more songs to add to the list, I thought I’d share them all in one place – partly for my own desire to flip through them, but also in case there’s someone else out there that needs a good dose of music medicine. Here you go: