Who Is Tyler?

Tyler Hayes is an award-winning songwriter, singer, therapeutic life strategist, and the founder of Songs That Heal.

As a professional songwriter, Tyler has written songs recorded by artists including Little Big Town, Hilary Duff, Jesse McCartney, Bebe Winans, Rob Thomas (Matchbox Twenty), Tina Arena, Jo Dee Messina, and Gloriana, among others. Her work has spanned genres and audiences, but always with a singular focus: giving voice to the unseen emotional landscape within us all.

In 2010, Tyler expanded her career beyond traditional songwriting, pursuing formal training in addiction recovery, professional life coaching, and trauma healing. She received certification in Traumatic Stress Studies through the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, founded by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a pioneer in the field of trauma research. Through this work, Tyler began to understand what she had intuitively practiced all along—that songwriting itself could serve as a profound mechanism for emotional restoration.

By integrating her clinical trauma training with decades of professional songwriting experience, Tyler developed Songs That Heal, a therapeutic modality that uses songwriting, singing, sound, and frequency to help individuals process trauma, shift neural pathways, and reclaim their personal narrative.

She describes her work simply: “I sing people.”

For over a decade, Tyler served as Music Director at Onsite in Tennessee, a world-renowned emotional health workshop. There, she created and led deeply immersive healing experiences that combined songwriting, singing, sound healing, and music-centered therapeutic processes.

Her work has supported individuals and couples, corporate leaders, active-duty military, veterans, survivors of mass violence, and those navigating addiction, grief, and complex trauma.

Tyler’s work is grounded in both science and faith. She believes each person carries a unique, God-given song within them—one that, when heard and embodied, creates the conditions for lasting healing and transformation.

Emerging neuroscience increasingly supports what Tyler has witnessed firsthand: that creative expression, especially through music, can reshape neural pathways, release trauma-held narratives, and restore wholeness.

Raised in the small Southern town of Thomasville, Georgia, Tyler left home at seventeen to attend New York University, where she studied creative writing and music business, graduating with honors. She later moved to Los Angeles and signed her first publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music, and has since written for Word Music Publishing, Big Loud Shirt, and Razor & Tie. Through her songwriting, therapeutic work, and speaking, Tyler continues to help people remember who they truly are. She believes we are created for healing—that trauma does not have the final word—and that within each of us is a song waiting to be heard.

“May you hear the song God sings over you and be so captured by its love that all which you were never meant to carry simply falls away, and your life becomes the fullness of your song.”