Where words fail, music speaks: the choir giving voice to grief and healing

On a Wednesday evening in the centre of Manchester, just a stone’s throw from St Peter’s Square, the sound of voices rises, full of warmth, and something harder to define: hope.

This is Sing Their Name, a choir like no other.

Made up entirely of people who have lost someone they love to suicide, it offers a space to grieve, to heal, and perhaps most importantly, to sing.

“You don’t have to talk about your loss if you don’t want to,” said Lahra McClean, one of the choir’s committee members.

“You can just come in, sing, and feel that you’re with people who just… get it. There’s something really special about that.”

Sing Their Name Choir

The idea for Sing Their Name began in early 2023, when Adele Owen QPM , Programme Manager for the Greater Manchester Suicide Prevention and Bereavement Support, realised there was a need for something different:  an opportunity for people to gain support informally while actively taking part in something uplifting.

“I knew that singing as part of a choir could be really beneficial to people’s health and wanted to offer that opportunity to all those bereaved by suicide across our city region, whilst also encouraging more peer support which can play a vital role after a bereavement.

“What the Sing Their Name Choir has achieved has gone far beyond my expectations. They have given hope to so many who have also lost loved ones to suicide and provided support to each other that is second to none.”

Originally funded by NHS Greater Manchester as part of its bereavement support offer, the choir has since become a self-funding community interest company, sustaining itself through goodwill, determination, and the shared need for connection.

Dealing with suicides

Grief after suicide is often described as uniquely complicated, filled not only with sorrow but also confusion, anger, guilt, and unanswered questions.

For many, it changes the way they experience even the simplest parts of life: breathing, sleeping, getting through a day.

Lahra knows that landscape all too well.

“In the early years after my husband died, I remember it felt like someone was sitting on my chest,” she said.

“Breathing wasn’t subconscious anymore. I had to pull in every breath, every single one. Life was just exhausting.”

It’s a description that will ring true for countless survivors of suicide loss. The exhaustion of grief can make everyday activities seem impossible, let alone something as outwardly joyful as singing.

And yet, as Lahra and the rest of the choir have discovered, making music together offers a kind of healing that words alone often can’t.

The healing power of music

“No matter what kind of day you’ve had, you always feel better by the end of rehearsal,” Lahra said. “It’s like singing clears the fog. I would describe it as singing the slate clean.”

There’s something uniquely profound about walking into a room where no explanations are needed. Where you don’t have to stumble over your words, worry about saying the wrong thing, or field awkward silences.

“Suicide loss can feel so isolating,” Lahra said. “People often don’t know what to say, or they’re afraid to mention your loved one’s name. But when you’re with others who have experienced it too, you don’t have to explain.”

At Sing Their Name, no one flinches at the hard words. No one avoids eye contact when you talk about your person.

Instead, you find yourself among people who understand:  instinctively, wordlessly.

“It doesn’t matter whether you lost your person in the last year or 30 years ago,” Lahra said. “We have people in the choir who lost loved ones very recently, and others whose loss dates back to childhood. Every loss is understood here.”

The power of community

The choir meets most weeks of the year, their rehearsals structured but always gentle

There’s a warm-up, then practice on whatever songs are currently in the works. Some evenings end with tea and conversation. Others simply end with the quiet, shared satisfaction of having sung through another hour.

“You don’t need to be able to sing to join us,” Lahra laughed. “Our musical director, Dan, works miracles. Honestly.”

With around 30 members and about 20 to 25 attending regularly, the group feels like a community in the truest sense: somewhere between a family and a team, built on mutual support rather than obligation.

They perform several times a year, too.

“We’ll be singing at an NHS awards ceremony in July, and at the Trafford Centre before Christmas,” Lahra said. “And around World Suicide Prevention Day, on September 10th, we have a lot of events planned.”

Recently, the choir was even featured on Songs of Praise – a surreal and emotional experience for many of its members.

“They were doing a feature on community choirs,” Lahra explained. “They came and filmed one of our rehearsals. It was so powerful for them to see what we’ve built, and how we help each other through our grief.”

Healing through music

It’s now widely recognised that singing offers both physical and mental health benefits.

It exercises the lungs, lowers blood pressure, releases endorphins, and can even strengthen the immune system.

But in the context of grief, singing provides something even more vital: a way to express pain, hope, anger, love, all the feelings that grief holds, without needing to speak.

“Sometimes words aren’t enough, ” Lahra said. But there is something special about being with other people, and singing together.”

Remembering those who have passed

When someone dies by suicide, survivors often struggle with how to remember and honour them. There can be a terrible fear of their memory being forgotten, their story overshadowed by the manner of their death.

Sing Their Name offers a way to keep those memories alive. Every note, every song, is sung for the people they’ve lost — and for themselves, too, as survivors learning to live again.

“It can feel so wrong that life continues after your loved one has died. The seasons change, friends and family welcome in new years and your loved one isn’t a part of that. There is before your loss, and there is after. Your grief and pain will never go away. But you get better at bearing it, and it is possible to build a new life around it.”

In many ways, the choir itself is a living, breathing example of that process: a community grown from heartbreak, offering moments of connection, joy, and even laughter in the face of unspeakable sorrow.

How to join Sing Their Name

For anyone struggling after a suicide loss, the idea of joining a choir, or doing anything, might feel impossibly distant.

Lahra understands that hesitation better than most.

“The early days, weeks, months and years are agonisingly painful; it can be almost impossible to function,” she said.

“You are certain that you will never feel any joy again.”

But she also knows the other side: that pockets of joy, though it may seem unimaginable, can return.

And that connection, real, empathetic connection, can begin to stitch something new together.

“If you’ve lost someone to suicide and you’re thinking about joining, just know: you’ll be met with understanding,” she said. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. You can just come along, sing, and be with people who get it.”

In a world that often struggles to find the right words for grief, sometimes a song — imperfect, honest, heartfelt — is the most powerful language there is.

And at Sing Their Name, every voice matters. Every name is remembered. Every life is honoured: one note, one breath, one song at a time

Find out more on Sing Their Name’s website here

Suicide or bereavement support

If you or someone you know is affected by suicide or bereavement, you are not alone. Help is available:

Greater Manchester Bereavement Service

Suicide & Co

PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide

Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide

Samaritans (Call 116 123 free, 24/7)