Living in the Village of Grief E-Book

Axel Schwaigert

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 75

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Going through grief and mourning is a profound human experience. It is highly individual, but also communal. As we do not live for ourselves and alone, we do not mourn for ourselves and isolated, but together in many different systems of families, friends and strangers. Everybody experiences his/her grief differently and expresses her/his mourning in different ways. "Living in the Village of Grief" is designed to help to navigate this difficult time. It can serve as a tool for self-help. And it is a suggestion to understand and live with the expression of grief of those around us. The book offers a narrative approach to grief, the theoretical background to understanding grief and a practical approach to deal with grief in groups.

Leseprobe

In Memory

Rev. Elder Jean White

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

A special thank you

Introduction

Living in the Village of grief

The Dream

The Central Square

The Town Hall

The Pub

The Smith-Shop

The Sacred Space

The Hospital

The Shop

The Cemetery

The Oracle

Ways leading out of the village….

The Theory

The Theory: The dream

The Theory: The Central space

The Theory: The Town Hall

The Theory: The Pub

The Theory: The Smith Shop

The Theory: The Sacred Space

The Theory: The Hospital

The Theory: The Shop

The Theory: The cemetery

The Theory: The Oracle

The Theory: The Way leading out of the Village

How to use this model in a Group setting

An Embodied Visit to The Village in a group setting

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

The original version of this book was written as part of my final thesis for my Doctor in Ministry at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge/MA/USA. My thesis was on “Communual Grief in Relationship to HIV/AIDS”. For that I had to write about the grief theory I was using for the thesis.

I want to thank the EDS community for three incredible years of learning and growth. EDS made me feel welcome as an international student and many people helped me on my way. I learned a new way of doing theology, reconnected to my own academic roots and was able to find creative ways to express my thoughts.

I want to say thanks to the staff and faculty of EDS: Your support made my learning possible and a joy.

Thanks to my fellow students, who freely shared their thoughts, about their own work as well as mine.

Thanks to my Professors, teachers, mentors: Joan M. Martin, guide through the first year; Angela Bauer-Levesque, a German voice in a foreign academic land; Gale Yee, for stopping me on campus to tell my about grief in the Hebrew Bible; Suzanne Ehly, for an incredible course on voice and power; Fredrica Harris Thompsett, and Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, for so much wisdom. Thanks to Prof. Kwok Pui-lan, my teacher in Spirituality. She was the one who encouraged me to do something creative! She convinced me that everybody can write boring theoretical texts and that I should find my own way.

A very special thanks goes to Prof. William Kondrath, my Doctor-father. He helped me with great patience, wisdom and guidance through my final thesis. Thank you for a door that was always open, many conversations and even more emails!

Thanks also to my colleagues at Bestattungshaus Haller in Stuttgart for providing the work space and the environment I work in. Much of my experience I have made there. Thanks to Christian and Andrea Haller for giving me time of to work on this book, and my colleagues for doing my part of the work in that time. This book would not have been possible without them. Thank you, Aaron, for proofreading.

Thank you to Jochen Gewecke for being a friend over many, many years and for his wonderful artwork for the cover of this book.

Thank you to my friends, who again and again asked about the manuscript, and encouraged me to finish it. Thank you, Arno, for all your comments. A special thanks goes to my brother Lutz who kept nagging me and to my whole family.

A special thank you

It is one thing to write a text and then file it, hide it securely in some folder, somewhere in a computer. It is another thing altogether to publish it, to put it out there for others to read. I have to thank an incredible, wonderful person who not only gave me the courage to publish this text, but to remind me, pressure me, writing little notes to ask when I would finally work on the manuscript… In short, she is the Godmother of this book. Thank you Mary Smail for being such a friend and persistent voice!

And Mary is more. As a Drama-Therapist she saw the potential in this approach, tried it in group settings, helped me and encouraged me to try it out myself. She is also the Co-author of a part of this: The Oracle is her idea. This important part of the narrative would not be there if it would not be for Marys insight and wisdom.

Thank you Mary: This book is yours as it is mine!

Introduction

Going through grief and mourning is a profound human experience. It is highly individual, but also communal. As we do not live for ourselves and alone, we do not mourn for ourselves and isolated, but together in many different systems of families, friends and strangers. Everybody experiences his/her grief differently and expresses her/his mourning in different ways. Some understand it as a path they have to go down, some as different stages they have to go through. Some see mourning as a list of tasks that have to be worked through; some just see an overwhelming single task in front of them that with time becomes less overwhelming. Grief and mourning can be understood in different ways. It can be seen as a psychological problem that needs therapeutical help. It can be also understood as a human problem, that best is addressed with the methods of self-help. Or it can be understood as a spiritual experience that needs guidance and/or counselling.

The following model can be understood as both self-help and a proposal for counselling. The story, the explanations and the guiding questions can be read to understand one’s own grief and mourning better. It can also help to gain an understanding of the grief and mourning of others, which might be so totally different from our own. In this sense it can be understood as a method of self-help. It also could be used in a one-to-one counselling situation or a counselling group. Here it could serve as a method to facilitate communication about grief and mourning, hopefully leading to a deeper understanding.

The story was purposely not designed in a particular religious or Christian framework. It is not an attempt to explain life and death spiritually. It is an attempt to help people to understand their own grief and the experience of grief of others.

The narrative can be read and used by itself, without the need of further theoretical explanations. For many people, especially when this model is used in a group, this might be enough. People connect to the different places and buildings in the narrative intuitively and fill those places with their own experiences and meaning. Others might want to reflect on the different situations in a more theoretical way. The second part of this book offers some reflections on the different places. This might be helpful for some but can be especially important for those leading this model in a group setting.

The questions after each part of the narrative are an invitation to start to think about those places. Some of them might help; some might not be important at a specific moment at all. They can be used for personal reflection or starting points for a conversation.

Living in the Village of grief

THE DREAM

After many weeks I finally could sleep again and woke up in a dream. I found myself in a deep forest, surrounded by darkness. Tall trees stood around me, blocking out the sky and sun. I did not know, if it was day or night, I was caught in the grey of dusk or dawn. There was no path, no way around me, no way to go, but I started to walk, wandering aimlessly in the forest of my grief and loss. I was alone, had no place to go, no reason to walk. My bare feet felt the stones and the rough ground, every step hurt. My hands, my face, my body felt the thorns and the hard twigs and the burning leaves. No part of my self was whole, everything hurt. So I walked for a long, endless time, in loss and grief, in sorrow and loneliness.

Then the forest thinned, and I stepped out into open space. Soft grass led me down towards a little village of small houses nestled in a valley around a central square. Slowly I walked towards the houses. I could see the light in the windows, smell the smoke from the chimneys, could feel the peace. As I approached, I saw people coming towards me, smiling, greeting me.

“Welcome,” they said. “Welcome in your place of grief. Here you can be, you can grieve, here you can stay and be.” I did not understand what they meant. Had I not already walked a long way in sorrow and