This practical book fills the gap between the challenges to conventional grief psychology and the new practices needed for bereavement counseling and group facilitation.
While it offers readers a structured guide for facilitating bereavement support groups, it is intended as more than a simple how-to book. It is also designed to inspire readers with an invigorating theory and practice. The ideas presented here engender a new way of thinking, one that include the stories, emotions, and memories that remain after death. This book offers a model that readers can use to find ways in which the deceased person’s stories, values, meanings, and connections to those they loved, can be folded into the lives of the living. The book also illustrates how the living can utilize the metaphorical presence of the deceased through stories, actions, and rituals to affirm the connection as more than a passing memory to be shelved next to dusty old photo albums.
This text is a must-have for counselors who are interested in grief counseling that creatively supports clients finding meaning and purpose in the incorporation of stories of the dead. Whether being used as a resource for running bereavement groups, teaching about bereavement counseling, or simply speaking with individual or bereaved families, it will open to vistas where love and stories inform a life-affirming worldview.