Six years ago, I didn’t know much about sexual violence. Really. As a woman in my late thirties... sure, I thought about it a little bit. Like when I was walking alone to my car at night, or traveling in a foreign country by myself. Or if I happened to catch Law and Order SVU once in a while. But really, I didn’t think about it much.

All of that changed on the morning of July 19, 2009.

One of my best friends, Teresa Butz, and her fiancée, Jennifer Hopper, were raped and stabbed in the middle of the night by a stranger, Isaiah Kalebu. He broke into their house in south Seattle and brutalized them at knifepoint for an hour and a half. Teresa died of her stab wounds in front of her house, in the arms of a neighbor who had never met her. Jennifer narrowly escaped the misery, running from her home bleeding profusely and begging for help. Two years later, Jennifer took the witness stand at Isaiah Kalebu's trial and a story that Eli Sanders wrote in this paper about her brave testimony won a Pulitzer Prize.

The sweet little world I lived in changed forever after that night in 2009. Evil had touched me in a personal way. And it was scary.

Two months after the attack, another one of Teresa's best friends, Jean Purcell, set out with me on a mission to create something beautiful out of a heinous act of violence. Although we were still grieving, we somehow channeled that pain into making a benefit album to raise funds for programs that help survivors of sexual violence, created under the name “Angel Band Project.” Within a year, we produced a record comprised of dozens of musicians from around the country—including several generations of Teresa’s family, as well as Jennifer herself. Teresa's brother, Norbert Leo Butz, is a Tony Award-winning Broadway actor. Jen is a conservatory-trained musician, and in her words, “the project helped give me my voice back at a time that I may have chosen to be silent.”

What we learned from that process is that music can give us comfort when not much else can. We all gravitate to our favorite albums or songs on the radio because music connects our brains, our emotions, and our hearts with words, beats, rhythms, and melodies. It can change our mood, or take us back in time, slow or quicken our heart rate, or maybe just suspend time for a few minutes. Music also has the power to create social change. Think about Farm Aid or Hope for Haiti, or the mission of the late folk-singer Pete Seeger to use music as a tool for activism. Live music has the ability to gather communities together in one place in time to perhaps shift our thinking, and our swaying, and our clapping, just a bit.

But when music is used specifically for therapeutic benefits, it can create an opportunity for healing on a deeper level.

What is music therapy? The American Music Therapy Association defines it as “the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program." It can be used "to address physical, psychological, cognitive and/or social functioning for patients of all ages.”

The Angel Band Project hires board-certified music therapists to work in small groups with both teen and adult survivors of sexual and domestic violence. The program, called “Songs of Survival,” piloted in 2014 in St. Louis—Teresa's hometown—and is now offered to agencies throughout the St. Louis metro area. More than 125 survivors have benefitted from our programs to date. Music therapy sessions include the use of active music making, music listening, discussion and songwriting, and lyric analysis. The goal is to help the participant develop relationships and address issues that words alone might not achieve.

And what do these folks say? Here are some lyrics from a song-writing session involving members of an Angel Band-sponsored music therapy group: "We are free / Listen to me / Loved, worthy, and validated / More than anticipated / We are empowered and safe.”

Today would have been Teresa’s 46th birthday. The present that I’m giving her this year is a benefit concert taking place this Thursday, October 22, at the Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall. Her beloved fiancée, Jennifer Hopper, will headline a beautiful evening of music. Jennifer is using her voice to bring awareness to the fact that every two minutes in this country, someone becomes the victim of a sexual assault. And that survivors need to be able to come forward, share their stories, and be supported. Because sexual violence is a silent issue. And we are using music to break that silence for good.

At the concert, we will feature our One Voice Virtual Choir—a “virtual” collection of survivors and advocates who are uniting in solidarity through song. A live choir and instrumentalists will accompany this multimedia production. Jennifer has handpicked a lovely selection of songs that will keep us on our feet all night long.

And how is the virtual choir impacting those who participate? In 2014, one virtual choir participant told us, "I survived this experience because I found myself in a safety net of voices saying, 'You can do this, you aren’t alone.' I’m singing because I want to be that voice for others.”

And here's the best part. All of the money raised at this Thursday's concert will be used to start a music therapy program for survivors in Seattle in January 2016. Another tool in the toolbox for healing broken hearts.

I'm excited to fly from St. Louis to Seattle for this event this week, and I hope Seattle comes out for this special night of music, inspiration, and hope. And Teresa, I hope you hear the music and are clapping in sync up there on Thursday night. Happy birthday, my dear friend.

Rachel Ebeling is a co-founder of The Angel Band Project.