Music Heals Minds was founded in 2018 in memory of Julius Cole Rassin, a young songwriter and guitarist from Wilmington, North Carolina. Julius Cole started playing at eight years old, posted his songs on YouTube, and played downtown Wilmington for anyone who would listen. He passed away in February 2018 at 22, after a chronic condition he had carried for two years.
After his passing, Hannah carried six of his unfinished songs into a Nashville studio and brought them to life as the Sunny Day album. That October, at a release party held at The Annex at The Brooklyn Arts Center in Wilmington, Music Heals Minds was introduced to the community. We founded the organization 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 to sustain it 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, or your time, we’d be grateful.
