Writing in Bereavement

A Creative Handbook

Jane Moss

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857004505
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Writing in Bereavement is a practical creative handbook that will assist counsellors, volunteers and others in their work with bereaved adults. Writing is a powerful outlet for the emotions that accompany grief and it is therefore a valuable therapeutic tool to help those who are bereaved communicate their experiences and adjust to life after their loss.

Jane Moss provides imaginative creative writing exercises for groups and individuals, using a variety of genres and literary forms and techniques. She offers advice on how to plan and run successful workshops with the bereaved, and how to evaluate their effectiveness. Using the techniques in this book, counsellors can help grieving individuals find a voice to cope with profound changes in their life, complete unfinished conversations, write for remembrance, use creativity as a respite from sadness, and finally begin to move forward from grief and imagine the future.

CHAPTER 1

An Overview of Writing in Bereavement

Let me tell you a story. This is an anecdote of the sort often shared among writers who run workshops in care and therapeutic settings. I offer it because it illustrates how a guided writing exercise can enable a bereaved person to access and express thoughts and feelings which may surprise them and enable a shift to take place in their grief process.

In the summer of 2009 I facilitated a writing group with the Bereavement Counselling Service at Princess Alice Hospice (Moss 2010, p.24). I worked with Anne Rivers, the (then) Counselling Co-ordinator, and a group of five women who ranged in age from their early 30s to late 60s. Before coming to our group they had not met before, but had in common the experience of having had someone close to them die within the last two years; some at the hospice, others at home with hospice support or elsewhere. The women had subsequently sought either counselling or other kinds of support through the hospice’s counselling team. Some were receiving one to one counselling; others attended support groups in which they could meet and talk with others. The writing group had been set up to offer a supportive group with a creative focus. It met fortnightly on a weekday evening.

One evening one of the younger members of the group arrived late and flustered. She had had a bad day at work and was stressed. She had struggled through traffic to get to us and as she entered the hospice she spilled her bottle of water all over herself. By the time she had dried herself, the session had started (we had waited for her and had asked if it would be alright to begin without her). As she sat down she appeared a little tearful, but soon settled as the group got underway.

Our theme that evening was journeys. I guided the group through a structured exercise in which they wrote about a journey to their dream destination; perhaps somewhere they had visited in the past, or somewhere they had always wanted to visit. The exercise (which is provided in full in Chapter 5, p.111), began with five minutes of free writing. Each participant wrote a description of their destination using sensory detail: the scents, tastes, sounds, textures and sights of the place they were imagining. Then I gave them the good news that their tickets had arrived and they were about to set off.

First, they had to pack. They could take up to five items with them. I encouraged them to be imaginative in their choice: anything from sunglasses to their pet Labrador or a best friend; a positive outlook or a happy mood might be included in the packing. Once they had assembled their imaginary luggage in the form of a short list I told them that, because the baggage allowance had been reduced, they must choose just one item (there was laughter as they heard this). Once they had chosen what to take, I invited them to write an invitation.

In the second part of the exercise I asked the group to sit with eyes closed, picturing themselves arriving at their destination. I again invited them to experience the senses of scent, taste, touch, sight and sound; to savour the feeling of their feet on the ground, to sniff the air, taste the food and enjoy the look and feel of the place they were picturing for themselves. I invited them to open their eyes and write freely about the sensation of arriving, what it would mean to them and how they might feel having made the journey.

Finally, I asked them to write a postcard to whatever it was they had decided to leave behind. The exercise took 50 minutes, with further time for reading out, sharing and reflection on the writing that the group had produced. This was accomplished comfortably within a session lasting an hour and a half with some time at the start for welcomes and warm up, and time to wind down at the end.

This exercise can produce moving insights among bereaved people who are reshaping their lives following the death of someone close. This occasion was no exception. An hour after her late arrival, the young woman read out her account of a journey she had planned to take with her late husband; a trip of a lifetime which would have taken them to the Space Centre at NASA. She wrote about it as something that could happen in her future; a different future to the one she had imagined with her husband, but her future, nonetheless. She described what she would take with her – a camcorder to record the experience – and she imagined how she might feel having made that journey, whether on her own or with the support of family and friends.

As we listened, we recognised something in the writing which none of us had expected. Seeing her words on the page and hearing herself read them out to us, the young woman put it best herself when she said, ‘I didn’t expect to find myself writing about hope this evening, but that is what I feel.’

Writing can surprise us with its ability to uncover deep and unexpected feelings and realisations. The skill of the facilitator rests in how these moments of unexpected catharsis are contained and managed within the group or with individuals.

If you do search online for terms such as ‘poems about loss’ or ‘bereavement writing’, streams of titles appear. Websites and blogs are devoted to online memorials, whether offered as a service by charities or set up by families and individuals. One of the first in the UK, www.muchloved.com, is proving to be enduring. Facebook^© – also achieving longevity among social networking sites – has developed an unexpected role as a space in which people write their messages about and to the departed (the young media entrepreneurs who conceived Facebook probably did not think of that one in their early planning meetings).

The journey exercise described above demonstrates, for me, that while emotions such as sadness and anger are bound to be expressed in bereavement writing, so too are hopefulness and the ability to look to the future. Good humour, kindness, positive memories and the ability to experience gentle enjoyment of small pleasures, both past and present, can also arise, often to the surprise and unexpected pleasure of the writer. Writing in a group enables people to explore and contain their experience within a place of safety. In this sense, bereavement writing groups have much in common with the writing that takes place in other areas of palliative care and counselling. By sharing their writing and comparing responses to writing exercises with others, participants can feel less isolated. In bereavement this has special value in terms of the sense of release people can feel and the pleasure of creativity. Two examples occur to me to illustrate this: a participant in a Princess Alice Hospice group in 2010 described the benefit of writing for her as, ‘feeling I can lay my thoughts to rest.’ For Teresa, in the same group, it felt ‘so good to create something new.’

The experience of bereavement

When we are bereaved we go inside ourselves. We go to a place which no one but the grieving can imagine; a place without present, past or future, in which the possibility of feeling different or better seems remote. Grief pitches us into unknown territory where nothing is as it was. No wonder some feel unnerved.

The experience of loss through the death of someone close to us is, sadly, inevitable. We all experience it; no one can avoid it. Those who go through it several times, and at different times of life, through the death of parents, partners, children, friends and even pets, come to understand that it takes many forms. Any loss, whether expected or sudden, can leave the griever bereft and distraught. The experience is both intensely personal and universal.

The shock of a sudden death is different from the sense of release and completion that can be experienced with the peaceful death of an elderly person; yet even those deaths that are expected and prepared for can weigh heavy in their finality for those who are left. The loss of a young person or a child through ill health or accident, or an untimely death at any age through suicide, murder or violence, leaves complex grieving to be done. If the relationship with the person who has died was fraught, the process of grieving for them can be especially difficult, regardless of the manner of the death. Anger, guilt and feelings of profound devastation may linger for years; an emotional roadblock impeding progress into future life.

Everyone’s experience is unique to them, yet in the aftermath of a death, all bereavements have features in common. These can include the need to understand and accept the loss, to adapt to it in continuing daily life, and to move on into a different future in which the person who has died is remembered but is no longer physically present. There is a deep need to be understood, to be listened to and supported while the work of grief is carried out. Grief is a lonely place, no matter how many well-meaning and supportive people surround the bereaved person.

The process (if it can be called that) of grieving takes time. If you are skilled in bereavement theory you will understand that there are no hard and fast rules to determine how long it should take to feel better or how to go about grieving. For some it is a linear process, for some a process of one step forward, two steps back. Some get stuck and find it hard if not impossible to make a new life without the person who has died. Adjustment may not be easy and many seek help through counselling in the months and years – sometimes many years – after a death. The feeling of ‘I ought to be over it by now’ can be strong. Unfortunately, some find themselves feeling judged by others who imply that they should be ‘over it’. Who can ever know how it feels until they are in that place themselves? Grief, like love, is not a tap to be turned on and off.

Models of grief work

Those engaged in bereavement support are familiar with the theories of grief work. I recommend that others, such as writers entering this field, familiarise themselves with the most widely accepted models.

Here are some I have found helpful in approaching writing in bereavement (in no particular order).

Kübler-Ross

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was the first to identify five stages (Kübler-Ross 2009 [1970]):

1. shock and denial

2. anger

3. bargaining

4. depression and

5. acceptance.

In this model, the focus is on the one who is preparing to die. It is helpful in understanding the thoughts and feelings of the one who is faced with terminal illness, and can also be applied to the responses of those who are bereaved.

Bowlby

John Bowlby describes four stages (Bowlby 1998):

1. numbing

2. yearning and searching

3. disorganisation and despair and

4. reorganisation.

Bowlby’s model focuses on the early stages of numb shock or disbelief (the ‘I just can’t believe he’s gone’ feeling), the sense of longing which Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘The Voice’ (Hardy 1994 [1914]), captures so heartrendingly, and the chaotic sense of life turned upside down before a semblance of order is restored. Bowlby’s work on attachment is also important to an understanding of grief work.

Murray Parkes

Colin Murray Parkes describes the stages of shock, separation and pain, despair, acceptance, resolution and reorganisation (Murray Parkes 1987). As Parkes observes, acceptance can be experienced intellectually before it is fully experienced emotionally. The bereaved person may swing back and forth between acceptance and feeling as bereft as ever (see Stroebe and Schut, below). ‘I’m having good days and bad days’ sums this up in terms with which we can all identify.

Worden

J. William Worden defines ‘four tasks of mourning’ (Worden 2004):

1. to accept the reality of the loss

2....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. An Overview of Writing in Bereavement
• 2. Starting to Write
• 3. Keeping a Journal
• 4. Working with Form
• 5. Writing through Grief
• 6. Life Writing in Bereavement
• 7. Reflecting on Change
• 8. Writing for Memorial
• 9. Endings
• 10. Reflection and Feedback
• 11. A Facilitator’s Journal
• 12. Resources for Establishing a Writing Group
• 13. Useful Terms
• 14. Sample Writing Sessions for Groups
• Postscript
• Writing Exercises and Prompts
• References
• Further Reading
• About The Author