🎵 Music, Movement, & Relief in Grief

The interplay that helps us process our emotions.

Community First

🎬 January 13th: ICIRR is having a fundraiser at the Music Box Theatre! Support our immigrant neighbors and enjoy a screening of KISS THE SPIDER WOMAN.

🧘 January 20th - April 9th: My friend Naomi is hosting Perfectly Imperfect, a series of yoga classes for better body image. Please note that the dates have been changed from the post!

🚶‍♀️ March 8th: The Sarah's Circle Winter Walk is back! Walk through the neighborhood from 1-3 PM to learn about our unhoused neighbors, and register ahead of time to help fundraise!

🎉 Happy Friday, Friends!

I often find solace by processing grief via art, poems, movies and books. These media give me ways of examining other types of parental and sibling relationships in relation to loss, creating a new lens to look at my own relationships. So today, I want to talk a bit about the media that has helped me process, especially as I incorporate them into my movement routines.

Like a lot of music lovers I know, when artists I love pass away suddenly or very young, I tend to celebrate their contributions by digging into their catalog, reading essays about their work, and sharing favorite songs with my loved ones.  

2025, unfortunately, wrought some rough times for the music world - Sly Stone, D’Angelo and Roberta Flack were just a few folx whose passing made my heart ache. 

But it's not just when they themselves pass away! When artists experience their own grief, losing bandmates, spouses, or siblings, I also celebrate their catalog, especially if they create a work with that loss in mind.

This year’s Clipse album, Let God Sort Em Out, really hit me in my feels out of nowhere. I knew it was going to be a great album, but I didn’t expect grief to be so upfront. Clipse is made up of two brothers, Terrence (Pusha T) and Malice (Gene), who lost their parents 4 months apart in 2021-2022.

What came out of that experience is Birds Don’t Cry, the first song of that album featuring John Legend and the choir Voices of Fire. They reflect on last words and interactions, how they’re both managing together without parents, their kids without their grandparents.

Most folx I know who’ve lost people find that grief is not linear, it’s peaks and valleys. Stevie Wonder (who also played piano) speaks on the outro of the song. Grief hits me every time I hear,

“Remember those who lost their mothers and fathers. / And make sure that every single moment that you have with them /  You show them love / You show them love / You’ll see."

I like to let the emotions pass through me, however they come, and take note of where they are in my body. I try to describe the sensations I feel, to truly integrate these feelings as a painful, but precious, part of my time here on earth.

Since I started exercising formally in the early 2000s,  it has become a physical way I process emotions. Sometimes, like I talked about, it’s the music that gets the emotional processing going. In the Pre-Covid days, a group spin class where I could really let go could help me process. Going back even further to a Caribbean cardio class during my time in Cleveland, hyped up by the new-to-me Soca music, I could build new relationships with each feeling that came up in a way that still serves me today.

Movement, especially breathwork (breathing is moving!) helps regulate our nervous system.  A depressed or anxious brain can benefit from a slow, deep breathing, grounding into our bodies, becoming more present in the moment. Even if it's uncomfortable at first - this is how we begin to move feelings through ourselves and learn from them.

Through music and breath, we also give our brains and bodies grace. We are not meant to endure too much physical and emotional stress in a short span of time , with one new and awful event after another. Movement is what helps move stress through the body so it can be released. If we’re anxious and not present in our bodies, a medicine ball slam helps release the pent up stress, completing the stress cycle on a physical level to show our brains, it's safe to let go of this now.

Not every workout for every person can produce endorphins, or a feeling of joy - that’s normal.

Many times, we can just feel accomplished or even neutral that we moved our body to the best of its ability. Like we checked a box - checking a box is GREAT! Especially when doing a task that has historically been associated with punishment or shame. CHECK THE BOX! Eventually, one of those box-checks will turn into a powerful emotional release. Especially if the music is right.

Which music has helped you process your emotions? Have you felt gratitude toward those artists for their expression? Have you cried during movement and felt the powerful release that comes with completing the stress cycle?

With you as we move our bodies and emotions,

Dana