Grief And The Healing Arts

For nearly three decades, Sandra Bertman has been exploring the power of the arts and belief--symbols, metaphors, stories--to alleviate psychological and spiritual pain not only of patients, grieving family members, and affected communities but also of the nurses, clergy and physicians who minister to them. Her training sessions and clinical interventions are based on the premise that bringing out the creative potential inherent in each of us is just as relevant-- perhaps more so--as psychiatric theory and treatment models since grief and loss are an integral part of life. Thus, this work was compiled to illuminate the many facets that link grief, counseling, and creativity. The multiple strategies suggested in these essays will help practitioners enlarge their repertoire of hands-on skills and foster introspection and empathy in readers.

Offers valuable insights and inspiration for any practioner working in a palliative care setting. Australian contributor.

Drawing on expertise in both expressive arts and grief counselling, this book highlights the use of expressive arts therapeutic methods in confronting and healing grief and bereavement. Establishing a link between these two approaches, it widens our understanding of loss and grief. With personal and professional insight, Renzenbrink illuminates the healing and restorative power of creative arts therapies, as well as addressing the impact of communion with others and the role that expressive arts can play in community change. Covering a broad understanding of grief, the discussion incorporates migration and losing one's home, chronic illness and natural disasters, highlighting the breadth of types of loss and widening our perceptions of this. Grief specialists are given imaginative and nourishing tools to incorporate into their practice and better support their clients. An invaluable resource to expand understanding of grief and explore the power of expressive arts to heal both communities and individuals.

Art and Mourning explores the relationship between creativity and the work of self-mourning in the lives of 20th century artists and thinkers. The role of artistic and creative endeavours is well-known within psychoanalytic circles in helping to heal in the face of personal loss, trauma, and mourning. In this book, Esther Dreifuss-Kattan, a psychoanalyst, art therapist and artist - analyses the work of major modernist and contemporary artists and thinkers through a psychoanalytic lens. In coming to terms with their own mortality, figures like Albert Einstein, Louise Bourgeois, Paul Klee, Eva Hesse and others were able to access previously unknown reserves of creative energy in their late works, as well as a new healing experience of time outside of the continuous temporality of everyday life. Dreifuss-Kattan explores what we can learn about using the creative process to face and work through traumatic and painful experiences of loss. Art and Mourning will inspire psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to understand the power of artistic expression in transforming loss and traumas into perseverance, survival and gain. Art and Mourning offers a new perspective on trauma and will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, psychologists, clinical social workers and mental health workers, as well as artists and art historians.

A compassionate guide to the experience of loss as an essential growth process • Explores the nature of loss as a profound mystery shared by all human beings • Offers sensitive and practical advice for experiencing grief and preparing for the healing journey that follows We grieve only for that which we have loved, and the transient nature of life makes love and loss intimate companions. In Good Grief professional grief educator Deborah Morris Coryell describes grief as the experience of not having anywhere to place our love, of losing a connection, an outlet for our emotion. To heal grief we have to learn how to continue to love in the face of loss. In this compassionate guide, Coryell gives inspiring examples of how embracing our losses allows us to awaken our most profound connections to other people. Though our society tends to rank losses in a “hierarchy of grief,” she reminds us that all losses must be grieved in their own right and on their own terms, and that we must honor the “small” losses as well as the “big” ones. Paying attention to even the most minute experiences of loss can help us to be more in tune with our responses to the greater ones, allowing us to once again become part of the rhythm of life from which we have become disconnected.

“Kevin Young has thoughtfully gathered many of these sorrowful perambulations and grievous plummets.” -Billy Collins The Art of Losing is the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. Editor Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections (Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption), with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, The Art of Losing is the ideal gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by therapists, ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss. Among the poets included: Elizabeth Alexander, W. H. Auden, Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and James Wright.

At least one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, yet pregnancy loss remains a taboo topic and effective aftercare is rarely available for those who have experienced it. Grief Unseen explains the different kinds of childbearing losses, such as failed fertility treatment, ectopic pregnancy, and stillbirth, and explores their emotional impact on women and their partners, and the process of healing. An established art therapist and mental health counselor, Laura Seftel shares her own experiences of miscarriage and recovery, and describes the use of art and ritual as a response to loss in traditional and modern cultures. She presents a rich variety of artists who have explored pregnancy loss in their work, including Frida Kahlo, Judy Chicago, and Tori Amos, and shows how people with no previous artistic experience can generate creative responses as part of the healing process. The book includes step-by-step exercises in guided imagery, poetry, visual art, journaling, and creating rituals. This accessible, positive resource will be useful to practitioners in the fields of medicine, mental health, art therapy, and counseling, as well as women and families who have suffered pregnancy loss.

Art and other expressive therapies are increasingly used in grief counseling, not only among children and adolescents, but throughout the developmental spectrum. Creative activities are commonly used in group and individual psychotherapy programs, but it is only relatively recently that these expressive modalities have been employed within the context of clinical grief work in structured settings. These forms of nonverbal communication are often more natural ways to express thoughts and feelings that are difficult to discuss, particularly when it comes to issues surrounding grief and loss. Packed with pictures and instructional detail, this book includes an eight-session curriculum for use with grief support groups as well as alternative modalities of grief art therapy.