Shane’s Beats From the Heart

Shane loved music.
Music therapy was his favorite activity during our hospital visits or inpatient stays. After Shane passed, we used music as a way to express our loss and grief. It was our therapy.

We wanted to establish a bereavement project that would provide a family with a connection to their child and to integrate Shane’s love of music. We wanted an experience that a family would help create, especially the siblings. What better way then to have a project focused on the heartbeat!

To us, the heartbeat represents the ability, to keep moving forward. This is why we always tell our children that Shane is a part of them. He lives in their hearts.

Shane’s Beats from the Heart is our legacy project which will provide bereaved childhood cancer families with a heartbeat recording. This recording includes the child’s synchronized heartbeat to a favorite or meaningful song. This specially curated keepsake is made by the music therapist in collaboration with the family, who is integrated throughout the creative process. It is the perfect duet of a child and family, symbolizing their legacy of love.

Shane’s Beats From the Heart is a collaborative effort created by Shane’s Future Days, Kelly Goldin, BS, CCLS, CTRS, who is a bereavement coordinator with the Justin Michael Ingerman Center for Palliative Care at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Kathleen Summers, MA, MT-BC, a board certified music therapist.

Shane’s Beats


Kathleen says :
“In collaborating with Shane’s Future Days and the CHOP Palliative Care Team, my goal is to provide meaningful legacy building projects and to support and empower families through their grief process. “