Grow Resilient Families

Grow Resilient Families offers live music classes, Music in the Park sessions, special events such as Halloween, Mother’s Day, and Pride, and birthday parties with live music. The program also offers daycare, school, and library music programming, Affinity Groups that combine live music class, coffee, and conversation, and a “My Baby's Awake—Now What?!” 6-week series. Additional activities include pediatric massage, infant dance, babywearing dance, aquatic massage, drumming, and music and dance of Africa and the Diaspora.

• Ages: 0–5 years old
• Schedule: “My Baby's Awake—Now What?!” is a 6-week series and a 6-class series
• Price: Music in the Park offers drop-in classes and a six-class pack at a discounted rate (no specific dollar amounts stated)

Grow Resilient Families describes itself as “Sacramento’s joyful music & parenting community” and states that it offers live music and parenting classes to enrich the lives of families with kids age 0–5 across the Sacramento area. The program states an emphasis on touch, sound, and movement, and a stated commitment to social, environmental, and racial justice in the spaces it supports, occupies, and creates. Affinity Groups include Connecting Dads, Working Moms, Stay-at-Home-Parents, and Rainbow LGBTQIA2s+ Families.

Founder and CEO Jillian Van Ness (she/her) is the founder and lead instructor, and the leadership team also includes Executive Assistant Gabby Valero (she/her), Social Media + Marketing Manager Caslynn Keune Rodrigues (she/her), and Facilitator of Connecting Dads Adam Krüsi-Thom (he/him). The team includes guest musicians with a wide variety of instruments, including a musician holding world records for the most instruments played. For birthday parties, Grow Resilient Families brings the instruments and bubble machines, and clients choose the set list.

Jillian Van Ness has a Bachelor’s Degree (B.A.) in Interdisciplinary Arts & Letters and Human Development/Psychology and studied Music Therapy at Berklee College of Music in Boston from 2004–2006. She is an Internationally Certified Pediatric Massage Therapist (CPMT), a Certified Infant Massage Teacher (CIMT) through the Liddle Kidz Foundation, a GroovaRoo Prenatal & Babywearing Dance Instructor since 2016, and a Certified Massage Therapist (CMT #62868) holding the highest accreditation offered by the California Massage Therapy Council (CAMTC). She is also a Watsu Aquatic Massage Practitioner and Teaching Assistant through the Worldwide Aquatic Bodywork Association (WABA), a Red Cross Certified CPR and First Aid Healthcare Provider, and has 550+ hours of training in bodywork, anatomy, and adaptive aquatics.

Grow Resilient Families partners with values-driven, locally owned businesses and guest musicians for special events such as Halloween, Mother’s Day, and Pride, and offers daycare, school, and library programming for parents, principals, or program directors wanting to enhance social-emotional learning and education through music. Jillian volunteers with the Bay Area’s Special Needs Aquatics Program (SNAP Kids) and Pediatric Palliative Aquatics Program at George Mark House in San Leandro. In Spring 2023, she was one of 20 “Phase 1” artists commissioned by the City of Sacramento to make original art about the Del Rio Trail, and she was part of the California Arts Council’s 2021 Individual Artist Fellow program.

Jillian was a 2021 Individual Artist Fellow of the California Arts Council and winner of the 2021 “Small Business Community Impact” Award. One parent testimonial states, “Jillian is truly magic. You feel immediately safe and cared for in her space.”

Last updated June 25, 2026.