The VA Legacy Song Group

The VA Legacy Song Group is a collaborative intervention that combines the structure of life review and bearing witness with the art of storytelling, music, and art.

A Legacy Song encapsulates the participant's story through a shared collaborative experience that simultaneously builds connection, healing, and resiliency.

The Legacy Song process provides opportunities to share photos, music, stories, challenges, fears, and accomplishments during a minimum of three sessions with a therapist, chaplain, legacy songwriter, and peer support.

The participants are diverse, with individuals, families, couples, in all stages of life. These participants may be transitioning in end-of-life, experiencing grief, complicated grief, suicide loss, and trauma survivors.

The goals for the intervention are individualized and can include: increasing understanding of grief and loss, increasing acceptance, addressing uncomfortable feelings, creating a new narrative, defining a meaningful way forward, and reducing the potential for maladaptive behaviors.