I Am…Rescued by Music
Movement III: Staying with It
This four-part series traces a conversation the way a song unfolds. Movement III is the quiet, heavy center—where music gives people permission to stay with what hurts.
Movement I explores how music gets people through the day: Read Movement I
Movement II focuses on music and memory: Read Movement II
Not all rescue looks like relief. Sometimes it looks like sitting still with what you'd rather run from: grief, fear, exhaustion, and anger that has nowhere productive to go. As the "Music to the rescue" conversation deepened, members began sharing music that didn't fix anything—it just told the truth.
"My wife always wants to play happy music to banish the blues away while I want to find the saddest music I can find and just wallow in the sadness until my body is ready to be happy again."
There's no judgment in that distinction. Just self-knowledge. Others agreed that sometimes tears aren't something to avoid. They're part of the process. Music becomes a place to put emotions that don't yet have words or feel too big to carry alone.
Then there's humor that’s sharp enough to cut through fear. One Smart Patient brought up how Warren Zevon kept making music after his mesothelioma diagnosis.. The group appreciated one song in particular.
"If you can get over the cursing, listen to the message and acknowledge the guts he had to write this with stage 4 cancer and perform it. He has my respect."
Our members hold space for anger without trying to soften it and support grief without platitudes, especially when life brings news there's no way to prepare for. One member's 23-year-old nephew was entering hospice after a year battling sarcoma. She shared two songs by Saturn that helped her survive what words could not.
"Amazingly, these songs have helped me in a way that's hard to describe…. I cry so hard listening to them. I get some peace and that brings me release, and strength."
Another member described anxiety that surfaces without warning—free-floating, unpredictable, heavy. Music doesn't make it disappear. But it gives her a way to move through it.
For her, music offers companionship. A rhythm to follow when your own rhythm feels lost. A way to stay with what hurts until something inside begins to loosen.
The bridge of a song is where things shift—not necessarily toward resolution, but toward something bearable. This is that moment when the music doesn't rescue you from the hard things: it rescues you through them.