Music as Medicine

There is a part of me that still hesitates to say this out loud: I am creating my own songs. My own playlist. My own musical voice. And I love it.

I am not a trained musician. I did not study composition or grow up performing. And yet lately, when the world feels loud and my interior feels crowded, I find myself turning toward melody. Not to impress. Not to reinvent myself. But because music has become a place to put what I have been carrying.

For most of my life, I wrote.

I journaled daily. I wrote essays and poetry. I would fill pages and then distill the swirl into a short poem. It was how I unclogged the drain in my brain.

After COVID and burnout, even writing became impossible. I had no words for what I was feeling. The exhaustion was deeper than language. Through social paint nights and then working with an artist friend, I discovered painting could express what language could not. I began painting small pieces each morning and sharing them quietly on Instagram. The canvas could hold what I could not yet articulate.

Writing and painting were never about product. They were process — a way to move big emotions instead of storing them. Creativity was the way, even before I understood it was helping me metabolize grief, burnout, and the strain of living in a chaotic world.

The power of painting as a process eventually led me to my first Intuition Painting® retreat. I did not go seeking certification. I went because something in me recognized the medicine of it. To paint without critique. To let the body lead. To allow image to emerge without explanation. It opened a depth of integration I hadn’t known was possible. I eventually became a certified facilitator — not for the credential, but because I had experienced how transformative the process could be.

Music adds another layer of medicine.

I have always loved music — folk, rock, country, classical, love songs. When my son helped me animate my paintings, he introduced me to Suno and suggested I try writing a song to accompany the imagery. That idea felt overwhelming. Who was I to write a song? Especially one that would become public?

But something in me said yes.

I began putting my own words — and even poems I had written years ago — into musical form. AI tools helped shape them into lyrics with choruses and structure. I layered melody beneath emotion. I watched my paintings come alive through animation. And something shifted. This was not just expression. It was integration.

Like painting, the tool is part of the process — the integration is the point. I use AI as a creative instrument, but the emotion, memory, and meaning are my own.

When I write a song, something that was frozen begins to thaw. Grief finds rhythm. Anger finds shape. Confusion finds a pattern. A melody carries what would otherwise remain lodged in my chest. What felt chaotic becomes structured enough to hold.

This is not avoidance. It is integration.

There is a difference between numbing and metabolizing. Numbing disconnects. Metabolizing transforms. When I turn a feeling into a song, it stops swirling as unnamed intensity. It becomes something I can hear and sit with. Something that exists outside of me and yet remains true.

Music gives my nervous system somewhere to land.

There is nothing new about this. Long before music became entertainment or profession, cultures across the world used sound as a means of healing and connection. In ancient Greece and other early societies, music was woven into healing rituals because people understood its effect on the mind–body relationship. By the late 1700s, writers were already noting its therapeutic use. By the early 20th century, music was being integrated into hospital settings to support emotional well-being and morale.¹

I witnessed this personally at the end of my mother’s life.

When she was on hospice, she would lie in her hospital bed, quiet and sad, as if simply waiting for the end to come. Then a music therapist would arrive with a guitar. She would ask my mother what she wanted to hear. Frank Sinatra songs were among her favorites. And though my mother had always said she wanted “Over the Rainbow” sung at her funeral, she didn’t have to wait for that moment. The therapist sang it right there in her room.

The air changed.

Something softened. Something lifted. The room felt less like waiting and more like living. To witness that — music offered not as performance but as care — was beautiful.

That memory lives in me.

That history echoes in what I am doing now — not as clinical therapy, but as personal medicine.

For a while, I questioned it. Was this just coping? Distraction?

But I don’t need numbing.

What I need is containment.

Containment is not suppression. It is creating a vessel strong enough to hold what is real without flooding. My songs have become containers. They hold grief without letting it swallow me. They hold anger without letting it spill sideways.

When I look honestly at this season of my life, it makes sense that something needs to move.

There is the identity shift of retirement — decades of structure dissolving. There is the nervous system recalibration of menopause, where what once felt manageable suddenly feels amplified. There is the ache of watching the world fracture. There is accumulated grief from motherhood, addiction in the family, complicated histories, and leaving belief systems that once defined me. And there is the quiet demand of creative rebirth.

That is a lot for one body to hold.

Creating my own music does not erase any of it. But it gives it shape. It allows what is unprocessed to move toward coherence instead of remaining suspended as tension.

Through creativity, spaciousness opens.

In that spaciousness, allowance deepens. I do not have to justify the feeling before expressing it. I do not have to decide whether it is polished or perfect. It is like posting my morning paintings regardless of how they looked — process, not product. Real, not perfection.

From allowance, a quiet freedom becomes possible. The freedom not to perform wellness. The freedom to be in process. This is not dramatic reinvention. It is steady inhabiting.

Sometimes I worry how it looks. I am in my sixties. I have built a career. Raised children. And here I am, writing songs with digital tools and sharing them publicly. It might appear impulsive. It might appear frivolous.

But my body tells me the truth.

After I create a song, my shoulders lower. My breath deepens. My thoughts quiet. The pressure softens. That is not escape. That is coherence. Something fragmented has been woven back together.

Music is medicine — not because it erases pain, but because it gives pain a safe form. Not because it fixes what is broken, but because it allows what is present to move.

I am not creating songs to become a musician. I am creating them because my body no longer wants to hold everything alone. Melody has become a bridge between what I feel and what I can say.

Music does not solve the world. But it creates room.

And sometimes room is what allows healing to begin.

If this resonates with you and you feel curious, try it. Put your own words to music. Use one of the creative tools available. It is simply another way to express what lives inside you — one more instrument in the toolbox of creativity.

Music does not fix us. It makes room for us.

And in that room, something steady and alive can emerge.

If you’d like to listen, I’ve linked my Suno playlist and YouTube videos on my ABOUT ME page.

If this reflection resonated, you’re welcome to join my weekly reflections below.

My soul journey to yours,
Maria

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¹ For a historical overview of music’s therapeutic use and its role in healthcare across cultures and clinical settings, see “History of Music in Healthcare” at Harmony & Healing — https://www.harmonyandhealing.org/history-of-music-in-healthcare/