Healing minds, one note at a time.
In memory of Cole Rassin.

Music Heals Minds was founded in 2018 in memory of Cole Rassin — a young songwriter and guitarist from Wilmington, North Carolina, and my daughter Hannah’s dear friend. Cole started playing at eight years old, posted his songs on YouTube, and played downtown Wilmington for anyone who would listen. He was 22 when we lost him, in February 2018, after a chronic condition he had carried for two years.

After Cole’s passing, Hannah took six of his unfinished songs to Nashville and finished them — the Sunny Day album, released that September. Hannah Kol (Hannah Laham) and Cole’s mother, Mary Jones, founded Music Heals Minds to place music in the hands of people living with mental illness.

Our work is practical. We put musical instruments, lessons, and songwriting journals into mental health facilities for therapy use. Since 2024, we’ve funded grants placing music therapists in outpatient facilities in North Carolina and Tennessee. Our goal is to help organizations not only start using music therapy, but also learn how to make it sustainable through reimbursement and partnerships — and to expand that work across the country.

A recreation therapist at New Hanover Regional wrote to us last year about a patient relearning to walk, harnessed into equipment, while a therapist strummed a donated guitar to keep her rhythm. “The patient was smiling and trying hard,” she wrote. “Please know how much good your organization is still performing and the lives that are still being touched and changed.”

That’s why we’re still at this. If you’re here, thank you. If you can give — an instrument, a donation, your time — we’d be grateful.