343. Music Therapy for Grief: An Interview with Tim Ringgold
The Widowed Mom Podcast
Krista St-Germain
4.9 • 695 Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does grief feel like you're missing a limb? Like phantom pain that won't go away? When someone dies, we experience what's called a "social amputation." We literally lose a piece of ourselves, and our brain keeps searching for that missing connection. The good news? There's a powerful healing tool you already use every day - music.
This week, I'm joined by board-certified music therapist Tim Ringgold for a conversation that opened my eyes to something I knew nothing about: how music can actually help us process grief. Tim brings not just professional expertise but deep personal understanding, having lost five of his best friends, his dad, and one of his daughters. His journey from aspiring rock star to music therapist began when he discovered that music was the only thing that brought him peace after experiencing profound loss.
Join us to discover why all humans are inherently musical, practical tools you can start using today to bring your mind to the present moment, and the role that music can play in your grief journey.
Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/343
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 343, Music Therapy for Grief, an interview with Tim Ringold. |
| 0:10.3 | Welcome to the Widowed Mom podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. |
| 0:24.2 | Here's your host, Master Certified Life Coach, Grief Expert, Widow, and Mom, Krista St. Germain. |
| 0:33.0 | All right, friends, I have something good for you today. I have a board certified music therapist, |
| 0:39.4 | which we have never talked about before because I don't know anything about music therapy. So |
| 0:42.3 | let me tell you a little bit about Tim and then I'm going to have him introduce himself. |
| 0:46.1 | Tim has been facilitating grief retreats since 2007. And unlike most people who do grief work, |
| 0:52.6 | they don't really know anything about what grief is actually like, Tim really does. So his grief journey actually includes the loss of five of his best friends in 1995, his dad in 1997, and one of his daughters in 2010. So we have with us someone who understands grief, which makes me very happy. |
| 1:14.0 | Tim is also the author of a book called Sonic Recovery, Harness the Power of Music to Stay Sober, |
| 1:20.1 | and he's provided music therapy to thousands of teens and adults in residential treatment, |
| 1:24.6 | and is a sought-after international speaker, having shared the stage |
| 1:27.6 | with some of the top minds on the subject of music, the brain, and personal growth, including |
| 1:32.9 | Tony Robbins. Tim was the first person to give a TEDx talk on music therapy in 2012, |
| 1:37.9 | and is a former regional president of the American Music Therapy Association. Tim, welcome to the |
| 1:43.4 | Wooden Mom podcast. Thanks for having me, Krista. I'm kind of giddy with excitement to spend this time with you. You know, whenever I go and I talk to other people on their podcasts, I think they always think it's going to be this really heavy, hard conversation. And when I show up giddy, they think it's weird. So I don't think it's weird at all that you show up giddy. |
| 2:02.5 | I'm glad that that's the case. |
| 2:04.3 | Yeah, okay. |
| 2:04.7 | We will get along well. |
| 2:06.2 | Okay, good, good stuff. |
| 2:07.8 | All right. |
| 2:08.1 | So having just read your bio and the listeners now just having heard that you have experienced a lot of profound loss. |
| 2:15.5 | So you get this. |
... |
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