Walking Towards Hope: Exploring Nontraditional Grief Support

Seated Yoga

Models for Understanding the Bereavement Process

• Grief Vs. Mourning• Grief: how the individual experiences the loss

(feelings, thoughts) • Mourning: outward /public expression of grief

(ex: funeral rituals)

Factors impacting intensity of grief

• The kind of relationship you had with the person who died

• The circumstances of their death (sudden vs. long illness)

• Multiple losses• Support system• Your own life experiences (how you were

taught to grieve)

Stages

• Kubler-Ross (On Death and Dying, 1969): description of the emotional process of the dying person.

• Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance

Phases

• Colin Murray Parkes: 1) numbness 2) yearning 3) disorganization 4) reorganization

Tasks

• William Worden• To Accept the Reality of the Loss • To Experience the Pain of Grief • To Adjust to an Environment in Which the

Deceased is Missing• To Withdraw Emotional Energy and Reinvest it

in another relationship

Phases/Tasks Therese Rando Phases: Avoidance, Confrontation, Accommodation

Tasks• 1) Recognize the loss: this means acknowledging the death and

understanding the death. This occurs in the avoidance phase.• 2) React to the separation: this process involves experiencing the pain,

feeling, identifying, accepting, and expressing reactions to the loss. It includes identifying and reacting to secondary losses. This occurs in the confrontation phase.

• 3) Recollect and re-experience the deceased and the relationship: this requires realistically reviewing and remembering the deceased, as well as reviving and re-experiencing feelings. This occurs in the confrontation phase.

• 4) Relinquish old attachments to the deceased and the old assumptive world: this occurs in the confrontation phase.

• 5) Readjust to move adaptively into the new world without forgetting the old world: this means developing a new relationship to the person who dies, adopting new ways of being in the world, and establishing a new identity. This occurs in the accommodation phase.

• 6) Reinvest. This means putting emotional energy into new people, goals, etc. This occurs in the accommodation phase.

How do we encounter human suffering?

“The true root of suffering is loss of meaning and purpose in life.” Victor Frankel

“He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how.”Nietzche

Care for the soul through hospitality“When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden. In this culture the soul and heart too often go homeless.”Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

“Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.”

Parker Palmer

“This is the first, wildest, wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness.” Mary Oliver

Choice/ Empowerment• “You will and must grieve. Your choice is when and how.”

Constance Mucha, widow “Gently Grieving”

The “Traditional” Grief Group

Bereavement Organizational Chart

July 2009 Tuesday at 7:30 a.m.

How It Evolved and Guesses About Why

Story of Art

Pitfalls/ Growth Edges

• Larger size, less individual attention• Differing needs of newly bereaved and

“seasoned grievers”• Danger for dependence for social organization• Technological gap

Mission Statement

Advantages/DisadvantagesGroup Type Structure Appeal Challenges

Traditional Bereavement Group

Closed group Structured agenda10 maximum

Women>menBest 4 mo. After lossClear beginning and end

Women>menNecessary vulnerability for quality discussion

Walking/Social Group

Open groupFocused on social reintegration3 events weekly

Men and womenNo commitment—come and go as one feels readySafe company of those who have similar experienceEver changing group

How do you graduate?Can be challenging for introverts who are overwhelmed by large groupsEver changing group

Meditation group Open group-no commitmentTwice monthlySize varies 6-12

Can carryover to individual practice at home.

Need volunteer with skills and also sensitivity to bereavement needs

Peer run groups(Compassionate Friends, Survivors of Suicide Loss)

monthly Authority from experience

Consistent leadersBurn out

Invitation/ Trust

• Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places…Yet despite its toughness, the soul is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush, especially when other people are around. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently at the base of a tree, breathe with the earth, and fade into our surroundings, the wild creature we seek might put in an appearance. (A Hidden Wholeness p58-59Parker Palmer)

Our Resources

In pairs (5 minutes each)1) Is there anything that resonates between this piece and your own experience with bereavement?2) Share an experience when you were able to make space for the “wild animal” of the soul in another.

Encouraging Grief Work

• Spiral image

Mobius strip exercise

Resource List

• Contact: Allison DeLaney» 757-206-1177» bereavement@williamsburghospice.org

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