When Women Become Medicine for One Another

Lana Ryder on the Table, and Monica Mullen on the Monochord, at Soundwise Health Associates, in Lancaster PA

Sound, Sisterhood & the Healing of What We Inherited

One of the things that has become increasingly precious to me is participating in ~ and sometimes simply witnessing~ a beautiful, respectful relationship between two women.

There is a reason this touches me so deeply.

My history with relationships between women has not always been easy. That story begins, in many ways, with my own mother.

As a child, I remember watching the relationship between my mother and her mother, my Vovó Aguinar. My grandmother was quiet, shy, hardworking, and had no formal education. She was born and lived much of her life in rural areas of the state of Rio de Janeiro. She was kind and sweet.

My mother could be very passive-aggressive with her.

I didn't have language for any of this as a child. I didn't understand family systems, generational patterns, trauma, boundaries, nervous systems, or the wounds women sometimes inherit from the women who came before them.

But I could feel it.

Being what I have always called an old soul has had its perks. This wasn't one of them.

I saw things I couldn't understand and certainly couldn't change. Yet there they were.

Perhaps that is part of why witnessing women genuinely listen to one another, respect one another, and celebrate each other's gifts affects me so profoundly today.

Sometimes healing arrives because someone helps us understand the past. And sometimes healing arrives because, right in front of us, someone shows us that another way is possible.

🎶 Before I Knew Sound Could Heal Me

I've been increasingly stirred by healing sound lately, although when I look back, sound has been working with me for most of my life.

As a teenager in Brazil, I would retreat to my bedroom and listen obsessively to British rock and, later, American pop music. I studied the lyrics, translated them, and practiced pronouncing the words.

That is one of the ways I learned to speak English.
But I was learning much more than a language.
I was self-soothing.

I honestly don't know where I would be without music.

For much of my childhood, I had the grace of having access to a piano ~ my mother's piano, to be exact. She didn't do much with it, but for me it became an outlet.

Bliss. Anxiety. Anger. Longing. Curiosity.

So much of what I couldn't explain could move through those keys.

And yes, in those days in Brazil, the piano keys were still made with ivory. Looking back through the spiritual lens I have today, I sometimes think about the symbolism of that. Without knowing it, I was sitting with Elephant Medicine while creating sound.

I loved playing music, but I was never the most disciplined student. Theory wasn't where I came alive.

Feeling was.

I could enter an emotional space through music that belonged entirely to me.

The older I became, the more I experienced the vibrations not simply as something I heard, but as something moving around me and inside me.

I didn't have words for it then.

Today, I understand that my emotional body was responding to sound.

🌳 When the Piano Held What I Couldn't

Years later, shortly before my daughter's suicidal crisis in 2002, I had begun taking piano lessons again.

That became a saving grace.

I had no spiritual teachers guiding me through what would become one of the darkest and most transformative periods of my life.

But I had a solid piano, made from beautiful Brazilian wood.
And somehow, that was enough to begin.
The Tree Medicine was there.

It held my pain, my grief, my fear, and the tremendous uncertainty of not knowing what the future would bring.

It wasn't about playing beautifully.

It was about being immersed in sound and allowing something from my soul to pour through my hands.

The piano helped me hold space for myself when I didn't yet know that phrase.

Those years also brought me face-to-face with aspects of myself I had decided, somewhere around the age of twelve, I never wanted to know.

Ohhhh yes... the Universe got me good!

I had to choose whether I would show up for my spiritual awakening. I had to show up for my daughter. And ultimately, I had to show up for myself—for my shadows, resistance, conditioning, and the thick veil that had kept parts of me hidden even from myself.

Sound was there.

🥁 From Self-Soothing to Conscious Sound

As the years unfolded, I began taking Reiki trainings, traveling to local, out-of-state, and international events, attending retreats and meditations, and immersing myself in spiritual education.

And there was sound again.

Only this time, I was meeting it from a different place within myself.

I explored hand drums and frame drums, crystal bowls, and metal singing bowls. Kundalini Yoga teacher training introduced me more deeply to the shruti box, harmonium, chanting, and, of course...

The Gong.

I remember attending a Tantric Yoga workshop in Yardley, Pennsylvania, at a studio owned by two of my yoga teacher trainers. An elder Tantra Yoga master was teaching, and the gong was a significant part of the experience.

I loved it.

As I began incorporating vibrational sound into my own work, I became curious about why it seemed to affect us so profoundly. I researched because I could see and feel shifts happening ~ in myself, in students, and in clients.

Something was happening in real time.

And I wanted to understand more.

🐝 The Student in Me Is Still Very Much Alive

That curiosity eventually brought me to programs through Soundwise Health Associates and back into the orbit of one of my teachers from massage school in 2005, Lana Ryder.

Lana was a phenomenal teacher then, and she continues to be one today.

For this particular sound journey, she was co-piloting the day with another incredible teacher, Monica Mullen.

I have attended wonderful Soundwise programs before, but this was my first experience with Lana in this particular role.

I love her knowledge and her beautifully well-rounded skill set. But there is something else about Lana that I value tremendously:

She's real.

Her teaching feels authentic, grounded, and practical. In a world where it can be very easy to become enchanted by appearances, that quality is special to me.

Monica brings her own tremendous body of experience. She has studied and integrated a variety of skills that, in my opinion, deepen the sound work she shares so expertly.

I went there ready to learn from two skilled women.

I did.

But they taught me something I wasn't expecting.

💗 The Lesson That Wasn't on the Curriculum

What shook me most deeply was not their knowledge.

It wasn't their instruments.
It wasn't even their dedication to teaching.

It was watching how they related to one another.

They listened.
They respected one another.
They gave each other room.

There was playfulness and generosity. There was an ease in how they exchanged knowledge without diminishing one another's contribution.

I found myself deeply moved.

I don't imagine that kind of relationship simply appears from nowhere.

Working closely with another human being ~ especially building, teaching, creating, or running something together ~ can bring up triggers, misunderstandings, disappointments, old wounds, and different ways of seeing the world.

Yet what I witnessed between Lana and Monica suggested something precious to me: that they have cultivated enough trust and respect to create room for honest conversation and each other's humanity.

And because they have created that between themselves, we ~ the students ~ get to feel the fruits of it.

That may have been one of the greatest teachings of the entire day.

🌹 When Witnessing Becomes Part of the Healing

Relationships may be some of our greatest spiritual classrooms.

I know they are one of mine.

The more authentically and deeply I work on myself, the more interested I become in learning how to communicate well—not perfectly, but honestly, compassionately, and courageously.

Even my exploration of astrology has helped me understand this part of my path differently. Discovering my North Node in Gemini and South Node in Sagittarius gave me another language for something I was already experiencing.

For me, it has symbolized a movement away from believing that wisdom must always be found by going off alone into the proverbial cave, monastery, or faraway hut.

There is wisdom in solitude. I know that terrain well.

But there is another kind of spiritual practice in relationship.

Listening.

Asking.

Clarifying.

Being willing to discover that our perception isn't the only perception in the room.

Finding the courage to say, This hurt me.

And sometimes finding the humility to hear, This hurt me too.

That requires another person who is willing to remain in the conversation with us.

🫶 The Courage to Stay in Conversation

We live in a time when it has become incredibly easy to shut down difficult conversations with an email, a text, an unfollow, or silence.

Sometimes ending communication is necessary. Boundaries matter. Safety matters.

But there are also moments when we may be walking away from an opportunity to understand one another ~ to agree to disagree, to step momentarily into another person's shoes, to acknowledge the wound that has been activated, or simply to practice empathy.

I find the loss of those opportunities deeply painful.

No matter how joyous I may appear, how strong I may be, or how self-sufficient I have learned to become, I am human.

Disconnection hurts me too.
Misunderstandings can make me deeply sad.
And sometimes relationships break my heart.

I am grateful that today I have practices that hold me when another person cannot.

Perhaps that is another gift sound has given me.

🎼 I Came for the Monochord...

Back to the class.

I originally signed up because I wanted to learn about the monochord, an instrument that had captured my curiosity.

What a phenomenal experience.

There was something incredibly loving and blissful about working with those strings and allowing myself to feel their resonance.

I also wanted to deepen my knowledge of the shruti box, so of course I brought my beloved one with me. I've had it for approximately twenty years, and it still looks, feels, and sounds wonderful.

I was delighted to discover that one of Monica's shruti boxes was just like mine. Even better, she knew things about it that I had never learned. How cool is that?

The atmosphere in the room was heartfelt, warm, experimental, curious, and generous. Everyone had opportunities to explore and share.

And I was in my happy place.

✨ May I Always Remain a Student

Learning is therapeutic for me.
It is fun.
It is necessary for my quality of life.

No matter how many years I teach, facilitate, study, travel, practice, or guide others, I absolutely adore having the mindset of a student.

It feeds my soul.

Especially when I can learn from highly skilled, deeply committed people who don't need to diminish one another in order to shine.

Perhaps that is what stayed with me most from this particular day.

Yes, I learned about instruments.
Yes, I experienced beautiful sound.
Yes, I came home with new information that will influence the work I continue to offer.

But something much older in me received medicine too.

The little girl who once watched the women in her family struggle to be tender with one another got to sit in a room and witness something different.

Two women could be knowledgeable and powerful without competing.

They could listen.
They could honor each other's gifts.
They could create together.

They could laugh, experiment, teach, learn, and make room for one another.

And their relationship didn't take anything away from their individual brilliance.

It amplified it.

Maybe some healing happens when we finally find the words for what happened to us.

Maybe some happens when we release what we've carried.

And maybe some happens very quietly when life places us in a room and says:

Look.

Women can love one another this way, too.

And sometimes, that is medicine enough for the day.

Bee Bold, Bee Wise, Bee Present! 🐝💛
Jaque Hanson