If talking about your grief hasn’t been enough, episode 470 of Grief and Happiness is for you. Music therapist Victoria Di Giovanni shares how her partner’s sudden death inspired an album built on the tasks of mourning, and how she records hospice patients’ heartbeats for families. Her advice: when in doubt, make something.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
(00:49) Victoria’s work as a music therapist, grief counselor, and PhD researcher
(02:01) Why living through grief felt so different from studying it
(03:30) How one song, “When You’re Gone,” grew into an album built on the tasks of mourning
(07:56) Bedside music therapy in hospice and the heartbeat song recordings families keep
(13:33) Why creative arts therapies can help when talk therapy doesn’t
(16:11) How her first year of making music became a foundation that made her a better therapist
(17:35) Pivoting her PhD after her partner’s death to study music and grief
(25:04) “When in doubt, make something”: creativity as a way through grief
Victoria Di Giovanni is a Toronto-based music therapist, grief counselor, and singer-songwriter who records under the name SH3. She provides bedside music therapy in hospice care, where she makes heartbeat song recordings that pair a patient’s heartbeat with a song of meaning for loved ones to keep. She is also a PhD student in music therapy, researching how musical recordings can help people through grief. After her partner died suddenly in November 2024, she wrote and self-produced The Blue Album, with each song representing one of J. William Worden’s Tasks of Mourning. The album came out in November 2025, followed by a deluxe edition.
Victoria talks about what changed when grief moved from her coursework into her own life. Her partner died suddenly two months after she started her PhD, and she stepped away from counseling to process the loss. A melody and a lyric became the song “When You’re Gone,” and she realized she was doing music therapy on herself. That idea grew into a full album built around Worden’s Tasks of Mourning. She explains how her research shifted to study whether musical recordings help people grieve, including her own songs and the heartbeat recordings she makes for hospice families. Victoria says that first year of making music gave her a foundation she still leans on, and she believes it made her a better therapist. Her advice for anyone who is struggling: when in doubt, make something.
Connect with Victoria Di Giovanni:
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The Grief and Happiness Alliance
Book: Emily Thiroux Threatt - Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief
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