Companioning the Bereaved

To "Companion" is to walk alongside as an equal, not to "treat" as an illness

Companioning is about honoring the spirit,
It is not about focusing on the intellect.

Companioning is about curiosity;
It is not about expertise.

Companioning is about learning from others;
It is not about teaching them.

Companioning is about walking alongside;
It is not about leading or being led.

Companioning is about being still;
It is not about frantic movement forward.

Companioning is about discovering the gifts of sacred silence;
It is not about filling every painful moment with talk.

Companioning is about listening with the heart;
It is not about analyzing with the head.

Companioning is about bearing witness to the struggles of others;
It is not about judging or directing those struggles.

Companioning is about being present to another person's pain;
It is not about taking away or relieving the pain.

Companioning is about respecting disorder or confusion;
It is not about imposing order and logic.

Companioning is about going to the wilderness of the soul with another human being;
It is not about thinking you are responsible for finding the way out.

© 1999 The Center for Loss and Life Transition

Companioning the Bereaved: An Introduction
Companioning is not about assessing, analyzing, fixing or resolving another's grief. Instead, it is about being totally present to the mourner, even being a temporary guardian of his soul. MORE

Tenet One
To be bereaved literally means to be "torn apart." When someone is torn apart, there is a natural need to embrace the heartfelt pain of the loss. There is no pill we can take to relieve the pain and suffering, and no surgery that can reassemble the pieces of a broken heart. MORE

Tenet Two
When someone we love dies and we feel suffering, it does not mean that something is wrong. Going into the wilderness of the soul with another human being is anchored in walking with them through spiritual distress without thinking we have to have them attain "resolution" or "recovery." MORE

The Awesome Power of "Telling The Story"
As my father lay in his hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery recently, it was my privilege to honor his life story. My wonderful father recognized in his head and heart that his days on this earth were limited. Rest did not come easy, but his need to "story" did. MORE

The Child's Bereavement Caregiver as Gardener
One spring morning a gardener noticed an unfamiliar seedling poking through the ground near the rocky, untended edge of his garden. He knelt to examine its first fragile leaves. Though he had cared for many others during his long life, the gardener was unsure what this new seedling was to become. MORE

Growing Through Grief: The Role Of Support Groups
Attending a support group facilitated by skilled leaders often brings comfort and understanding beyond many peoples' expectations. MORE

Companioning the Bereaved: An Introduction
By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.
(Editor's note: The following article is excerpted from Dr. Wolfelt's book Companioning the Bereaved: A Soulful Guide for Caregivers, which presents a model for grief counseling based on his "companioning" principles.)

Companioning is not about assessing, analyzing, fixing or resolving another's grief. Instead, it is about being totally present to the mourner, even being a temporary guardian of his soul.

At the very heart of grief lies an irreducible mystery. I have come to discover that grief is a dimension of life experience that cannot be approached through rational thought. Instead, it responds more appropriately to humbled souls. In this spirit, I invite you to open your heart to what follows.

My tenets of "companioning" the bereaved were written several years ago as I sat in a gazebo on the sacred grounds of the Center for Loss and Life Transition. Since that time of grace in my life, which encouraged me to try to express in words what I do when I "companion" people in grief, I've been honored that many people have encouraged me to teach more about these tenets. I've written the following words with a humbled heart and a desire to help people help others during time of grief and loss.

I am very honored that there is now an international network of thousands of people who have trained with me surrounding the companioning philosophy of caregiving to people in grief. Yet, there seems to be a place for this book in that many of my colleagues have either had to imagine, question, project, and, honestly, at times even judge what I do. In part this book is a "coming out of the closet" as a "responsible rebel."

A responsible rebel is one who questions assumptive models surrounding grief and loss and challenges those very models. Rebels are not afraid to question established structures and forms. At the same time, rebels respect the rights of others to use different models of understanding, and provide leadership in ways that empower people rather than diminish them.

Why A "Soulful" Guide?

When people have come to me for support in grief, the soul is present. When they try as best they can to wrap words around their grief, trusting me with their vulnerability, I know we are meeting at a soul level. To look into the eyes of someone mourning the death of someone precious is to look into the window of the soul.

Their willingness to allow me to walk with and learn from them has been an education of the heart and soul. "Soul" is discovered in the quality of what I'm experiencing when I'm honored to be present to them. If my intent is anchored in truth and integrity, if they are discovering a reason to go on living (redefining their worldview and searching for meaning), then they are rich in soul, and so am I. Therefore, for me, companioning another human being in grief means giving attention to those experiences that give my life, and the lives of those I attempt to help, a richness and depth of meaning.

Soul really has to do with a sense of the heart being touched by feelings. An open heart that is grieving is a "well of reception;" it is moved entirely by what it has perceived. Soul also has to do with the overall journey of life as a story, as a representation of deep inner meaning. Soul is not a thing, but a dimension of experiencing life and living. I see soul as the primary essence of our true nature, our spirit self, or our life force.

Being soulful as it relates to companioning people in grief is, in part, to acknowledge a need for people to have "safe places" to authentically mourn. Then, in order to respond to that need, it is to go within yourself and nurture and develop your soul in ways that give expression to your compassion. My hope is that this book helps you do just that!

Grief is Not an Illness: Inappropriate Assumptions Surrounding Our Modern Understanding of Grief and Loss

As a teenager who had come to experience my own life losses, I set out to discover the principles that help bereaved people heal in grief. I hoped to communicate those principles to anyone interested in honoring my story. To my dismay, I discovered that the majority of caregiving models for grief counselors were intertwined with the medical model of mental health care.

For many caregivers, grief in contemporary society has been medicalized and perceived as if were an illness that with proper assessment, diagnosis, and treatment can be cured. This paradigm dictates that we as caregivers, having studied and absorbed a body of knowledge and become experts, are responsible for "curing" our patients. How arrogant!

The language we use to describe the practice of grief support exposes our attitudes and beliefs about counseling as well as determines our practices. Because numerous historical roots of psychotherapy are deeply grounded in a medical model, because the medical model appears more scientific than other alternatives, and because the economics of practice are interfaced in a healthcare delivery system, the natural tendency has been to adopt medical model language.

As I explored the words used in counseling the bereaved, I was taken aback: symptoms of pathology; disorders; diagnosis; and treatments. In my own search to learn so I could teach, I found that these more clinical, medical model approaches have limitations that are profound and far-reaching.

I discovered that our modern understanding of grief all too often projects that for "successful" mourning to take place, the person must "disengage from the deceased" and, by all means "let go." We even have all sorts of books full of techniques on how to help others "let go" or reach "closure."

At bottom, I discovered that our current models desperately needed what we could refer to as a "supplement of the soul." It seemed glaringly obvious to me that as fellow travelers in the journey into grief, we needed more life-giving, hope-filled models that incorporated not only the mind and body, but the soul and the spirit! I found myself resonating more with the writings of people like Ram Das, Stephen Levine, Victor Frankl, James Hillman, Thomas Moore and Carl Jung.

Actually it was Carl Jung's writing that helped me understand that every psychological struggle is ultimately a matter of spirituality. In the end, as we as human beings mourn, we must discover meaning to go on living our tomorrows without the physical presence of someone we have loved. Death and grief are spiritual journeys of the heart and soul.

Yet, our modern Western culture's understanding of grief often urges mourners to deny any form of continued relationship with the person who died. For many mental health caregivers, the hallmark of so-called "pathology" has been rooted in terms of sustaining a relationship to the dead. In reality, the mourner actively shifts the relationship from one of presence to one of memory. Or, as the playwright Robert Anderson wisely noted, "Death ends a life; it does not end a relationship." In contrast, many other cultures throughout history have encouraged ongoing, interdependent relationships in some form after death. Beyond this recognition of a continued relationship of memory, most cultures provide bereaved people with rituals to encourage an appropriate relationship of memory, such as Mexico's "Day of the Dead."

Our modern understanding of grief all to often conveys that the end result of bereavement is a series of completed tasks, extinguished pain, and the establishment of new relationships. I discovered that many mental health caregivers, in attempting to make a science of grief, had compartmentalized complex emotions with neat clinical labels.

Our modern understanding of grief all too often uses a "recovery" or "resolution" definition to suggest a return to "normalcy." Recovery, as understood by some mourners and caregivers alike, is erroneously seen as an absolute, a perfect state of reestablishment. We seem to want to go around any so-called "negative" moods and emotions quickly and efficiently. Yet, it occurred to me that if our role as caregivers is to first observe the soul as it is, then we need to abolish what I call the "resolution wish."

Our modern understanding of grief for some is based on the model of crisis theory that purports that a person's life is in a state of homeostatic balance, then something comes along (like the death of someone loved) and knocks the person out of balance. Caregivers are taught intervention goals to reestablish the prior state of homeostasis and a return to "normal" functioning. There is only one major problem with this theory: it doesn't work. Why? Because a person's life is changed forever by the death of someone loved. We are transformed by grief and do not return to prior states of "normal" based on interventions by outside forces.

Our modern understanding of grief all too often "pathologizes" normal experiences. Traditional psychology has focused the majority of attention on the diagnosis and treatment of pathologies and in the quest for "fixes," little attention has been paid to the nature of emotional or spiritual health. As one author observed, "The exclusive focus on pathology that has dominated so much of our discipline results in a model of the human being lacking the positive features that make life worth living."

Our modern understanding of grief all too often privatizes grief as an isolated, individual experience. Mourning, by nature of its definition-"a shared social response to loss"-must be viewed in the broader context of social and family perspectives. In fact, the person often perceived as "not doing well" in grief is usually the one who is trying to get help for the family system.

In sum, I discovered in my twelve years of university-based training and in reading the available literature on grief counseling that our modern understanding of grief all too often lacks any appreciation for and attention to the spiritual, soul-based nature of the grief journey. As authors such as Frankl, Fromm, and Jung noted years ago (and Hillman and Moore more recently), academic psychology has been too interfaced with the natural sciences and laboratory methods of working, counting and objective reporting.

Some of us, often through no fault of our own, but perhaps by the contamination of our formal training, have overlooked the journey into grief as a soul-based journey. We need to think and reflect about grief care differently than we now do. Because while its mission in our society is certainly important, our current misunderstanding of what its essence misinforms our capacity to reflect on it wisely.

This book seeks to undermine those practices that oppress grieving persons and families and provide interested people with food for reflective thought surrounding the importance of questioning the traditional medical model of mental health care. More important, the content presents an alternative model based on "companioning" versus "treating" one's fellow human beings in grief.

Critical self-observation would suggest that perhaps we rely too much on psychosocial, biological and psychodynamic constructs that we have been taught to "treat away," such as depression, anxiety, and loss of control. In our attempt to gain scientific credibility, we may have become our own worst enemies! In our attempt to be respected as part of established mental health care, we may be disrespecting the very people who need our compassionate care.

Without doubt, the grief journey requires contemplation and turning inward. In other words, it requires depression, anxiety and loss of control. It requires going to the wilderness. Quietness and emptiness invite the heart to observe signs of sacredness, to regain purpose, to rediscover love, to renew life! Searching for meaning, reasons to get one's feet out of bed, and understanding the pain of loss are not the domain of the medical model of bereavement care. Experience has taught me that it is the mysterious, spiritual dimension of grief that allows us to go on living until we, too, die.

An Invitation to "Read Between the Lines"

I once heard someone say, "The truth comes in the silence between the words. It is grasped and experienced with the heart." My hope is that you, as the reader of this book, will attempt to do just that-to listen with your heart to the silence between the words. Listen to your heart and reflect on what the tenets of companioning the bereaved bring up for you. Use this opportunity to explore your own personal relationship with grief and loss.

When I was a teenager I had a dream of having a healing center where bereavement caregivers could come together and explore how we could be empowered to be agents of wholeness in the lives of the bereaved. I have taken that dream, clung to it, nurtured it and never let it go. That dream, shaped by losses in my youth, ultimately transformed my life and brought me tremendous meaning and joy in my life.

I truly believe we are all here to, in part, contribute love and care to those our lives touch-each of us in his own way. Supporting my fellow human beings in grief nourishes my soul. If you are attempting to support people in grief from a place of open-heartedness and love, you are indeed nourishing your own soul and the souls of those you touch.

A very wise person once said, "I just try to tell my own truth and sing my own song coherently, hoping that good things will come out if it. I hope others will join in singing their own song, too." This book is one attempt to sing my song. Thanks for listening and I wish you well in singing yours.

Copyright 2007, Center for Loss and Life Transition

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Tenet One: Companioning is about being present to another person's pain; it is not about taking away the pain
By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.
(Editor's note: The following article is excerpted from Dr. Wolfelt's book Companioning the Bereaved: A Soulful Guide for Caregivers, which presents a model for grief counseling based on his "companioning" principles.)

To be bereaved literally means to be "torn apart." When someone is torn apart, there is a natural need to embrace the heartfelt pain of the loss. There is no pill we can take to relieve the pain and suffering, and no surgery that can reassemble the pieces of a broken heart. The way in which we care for fellow humans who are suffering the pain of loss has much to do with the ways in which we will be able to supportively companion others.

Sadly, current North American culture often makes the person in grief feel intense shame and embarrassment about feelings of pain and suffering. People who are perceived as "doing well" with their grief are considered "strong" and "under control." Society erroneously implies that if grieving people openly express feelings of pain and suffering, they are immature or overly emotional.

In contemporary North American culture, pain and feelings of loss are experiences most people try to avoid. Why? Because the role of suffering is misunderstood. Normal thoughts and feelings that result from loss are typically seen as unnecessary and inappropriate. Yet, only in gathering courage to move toward this hurt is anyone able to ultimately heal.

Grief Is Not Shameful

As the bereaved experience grief, they are often greeted with what I call "buck-up therapy"-message like "carry on," "keep your chin up," or "just keep busy." And combined with these messages is often another unstated but strong belief: "You have a right not to hurt-so do whatever is necessary to avoid it." In sum, the person in grief is often encouraged to deny, avoid, or numb themselves to the pain of the experience.

When personal feelings of grief are met with shame-based messages or silent indifference, discovering how to integrate the loss becomes all but impossible. If the bereaved person internalizes stated and unstated messages that encourage the repression, avoidance, or numbing of grief, they often become powerless to help themselves. I often say that finding the way into and through grief is often more difficult than finding a way beyond it. In fact, internalizing the belief that mourning is wrong or bad tempts many people to act as if they feel better than they really do. Ultimately, denying the grief denies one the essence of life and puts one at risk for living in the "shadow of the ghosts of grief."

When we as caregivers experience the pain and suffering of a fellow human being, we instinctively want to take the pain away. Yet, to truly companion another human being requires that we sit with the pain as we overcome the instinct to want to "fix." We may discover that we want to fix another's pain because it is hurting us too much.

Suffering doesn't mean something is wrong. It isn't happening because we made the wrong move or said the wrong thing. As Thomas Moore wisely noted, "The basic intention of any caring-physical or psychological-is to alleviate suffering. But in relation to the symptom itself, observance means first of all listening and looking carefully at what is being revealed in the suffering. An intent to heal can get in the way of seeing. By doing less, more is accomplished."

Ultimately, if we rush in to take away a person's grief pain, we also take away the opportunity for her to integrate the loss into her life. To be truly a healing presence, we must be able to share another person's pain while realizing there is nothing we can do to instantly relieve it and knowing that we are not responsible for it-all the while seeking to empathetically understand what the pain feels like. The paradox of entering into the pain lies in the truth that as you affirm someone's feelings of suffering, you are also affirming his eventual capacity to move beyond those feelings. As Helen Keller taught us years ago, "The only way to the other side is through."

The Wisdom of the Soul

Yes, sometimes it may seem as if you are "doing" very little as you open your heart to a fellow struggler. And yet this is an example of how companioning inspires an attribute of the soul: wisdom. Wisdom is the sense of recognizing that in your helplessness you ultimately become helpful. A wise caregiver will have the wisdom to know what she can do, accept what she can't do, and have the spirit of the heart engaged in ways that can and do make a difference.

In providing a soulful response to another person's pain, we must discover and nurture two qualities that are within us: humility and "unknowing." We must first be present with an open mind and an open heart. To be open in this way of being is not an absence of thought, however. In fact, it is a clear, focused attentiveness to the moment. It is about immediacy-being present in the here and now.

When we as caregivers focus the power of our attention on the suffering of another human being, the full measure of our soul becomes available to her. Releasing any preconceptions of the need to take away pain allows our hearts to open wide and be infinitely more present, loving and compassionate. Presence in the fullness of the moment is where the soul resides.
And being present to people in the pain of their grief is about being present to them in their "soul work." There is a lovely Jungian distinction between "soul work" and "spirit work."

Soul work: a downward movement in the psyche; a willingness to connect with what is dark, deep, and not necessarily pleasant.

Spirit work: a quality of moving toward the light; upward, ascending.

In part, being present to another person's pain of grief is about being willing to descend with them into their soul work-which precedes their spirit work. A large part of being present to someone in soul work is to bear witness to the pain and suffering and not to think of it as a door to someplace else. This can help keep you in the moment. Dark, deep and unpleasant emotions need to be held in the same way happiness and joy need to be held-with respect and humility.

Acknowledging Our Own Suffering

As our hearts begin to open to the presence of suffering, challenging thoughts may creep in. Can I really help this person? Is the pain of his loss touching my own losses? If I reach out to support, what will happen to me? In the push-pull this experience triggers, there is little wonder that being present to the suffering of others seems so difficult.

The capacity to acknowledge our own discomfort when confronted with suffering is usually less overwhelming when it is no longer minimized or denied. To give attention to our helplessness can free us to open more fully to another as well as to our own pain and suffering. We no longer find ourselves wanting to run away. We can slow down, be still and open to the presence of the pain. We can witness what is without feeling the need to fix it!

When we become conscious that any part of us wants to run away from the pain, we can gently embrace it; an entire new level of receptiveness becomes possible. As we become the companion, we begin to see what is being asked of us that is not so much about "doing" but instead about "being." We discover what anxieties and fears might be inhibiting our helping hearts, and come to trust the healing power of presence.

Finally, we can begin to listen-truly listen and give honor to the pain. Instead of pushing away suffering or merely releasing the need to "fix" it, we are able to enter into it. We are not indifferent or passive; we are fully available and open. We are truly being hospitable to the pain of another person.

In opening to our own suffering from life losses, we enhance our desire to be of service to those around us. We become truly available at deeper levels of our souls. We do not deny pain but open to it and learn what it is trying to teach us. In becoming more sensitive and responsive to one's own pain as well as the pain of others, we continue to see ourselves as students always learning to become more heartfelt companions to our fellow strugglers. What an honor!

Copyright 2007, Center for Loss and Life Transition

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Tenet Two: Companioning is about going to the wilderness of the soul with another human being; it is not about thinking you are responsible for finding the way out
By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.
When someone we love dies and we feel suffering, it does not mean that something is wrong. Going into the wilderness of the soul with another human being is anchored in walking with them through spiritual distress without thinking we have to have them attain "resolution" or "recovery."

Being in the wilderness relates to being in a liminal space. "Limina" is the Latin word for threshold, the space betwixt and between. Liminal space is that spiritual place where most people hate to be, but where the experience of grief leads them. This is often where the griever's worldview-the set of beliefs about how the world functions and what place they as individuals occupy therein-comes into question. Putting one's shattered worldview back together paradoxically requires companions that do not think their helping role is to fix or give answers or explanations. There is no technique, no formula, no prescription for the wilderness experience.

A critical part of being present to someone in the wilderness of the soul is to be open to states of not knowing the outcome or trying to force the outcome. Most North Americans have trouble trusting in this process and feel an instinctive need to get the mourner out of the wilderness, or, at the very least, to try to move them to the left or the right. We have become a people who demand answers, explanations and expect fast and efficient resolutions.

The Ambiguity of Loss

We don't like pain, sadness, anxiety, ambiguity, loss of control-all normal symptoms of the wilderness of grief. We want to experience light before we encounter darkness. If we as caregivers cannot be still in the presence of these care-eliciting symptoms, we will be tempted to explain or treat them away. After all, we falsely think that any explanation is better than being in liminal space. A sense of control is better than the terrible "cloud of unknowing." Yet, the opposite of control is actually participation-in this context, participation in the work of mourning while one is "under reconstruction."

The challenge for many caregivers is to stay on the threshold of the wilderness without consciously or unconsciously demanding or projecting a desire for resolution. In other words, there is a tendency to be attached to outcome, not open to outcome. Obviously, the instinct to move the mourner away from pain and suffering is rooted in the desire to stay distant from one's own pain.

Sadly, many people, caregivers and lay public alike, have come to regard grief as an enemy. Brokenness is not something we choose to invite in. Instead of honoring the wise words of Joseph Addison, who once said "I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair," our contemporary mantra seems to be more aligned with the words of the Bobby McFerrin song: "Don't Worry, Be Happy!"

The No Place That Is Grief

In contrast, ancient cultures seemed to understand the value of being in the wilderness as a part of any kind of major transition in life's journey. They often invited themselves into the wilderness through experiences such as spending 40 days in the desert, climbing to the mountaintops, and taking solo journeys into the ocean. Whatever the underlying set of beliefs, to get where he was eventually going the journeyer first had to experience going to nowhere, to release himself from who and what he had been. In the "no place" of the wilderness he could begin building a new person and place again.

This resonates with my experience of companioning people in life transitions. It seems we cannot integrate loss into our lives until we embrace the fear and sometimes raw terror of going to this "no place" wilderness and descending into it on our way through it. Then and only then do we begin to notice that something begins to slowly shift as we open our hearts to the pain of grief.

Of course, there are powerful forces that invite mourners to do otherwise. We are told to "keep busy," "carry on" and "find someone to meet." Following these mourning-avoidant scripts, the griever may try to retrace her steps back to a time or place that feels familiar, a place to find one's "old self" -- but that old self is gone forever. Now, being temporarily lost in the wilderness of grief is that familiar place. Slowly, over time and with gentle companions, the mourner can search for renewed meaning and discover a new self.

But through this time of turmoil, the discomfort and mystery of being in the wilderness is meant to be. In reality, it is actually a kind of "purification phase" -- it is just one phase of the journey that will very slowly change into something else. The important thing is to learn to honor and respect this process and to lean into it despite the instinct to do otherwise.

No, it is not comfortable to be betwixt and between-to be helpless, out of control, depressed, anxious, and to not know. Again, if we look to other cultures we discover that in parts of Africa, a person who is in a place of not knowing is considered to be in a place of "walking the land of gray clouds." During times of uncertainty and not knowing, it is considered inappropriate, even foolish, to take action. In fact, it is considered an act of wisdom to wait and trust the process. The opposite of trusting the process is trying to control the uncontrollable-obviously an impossible task when it involves experiences of grief and mourning.

Detachment and Grief

Central to not being attached to outcome is the concept of detachment. The majority of Westerners think of "detachment" as a lack of warmth and caring. Yet, linguistically, the word detachment is often defined as "the capacity to come deeply from an objective place." Considered from this perspective, detachment can be seen as not trying to control what you can't control. In part, it is "going with the symptom." It is observing what the soul is teaching about the depth of feeling and not trying to change it. You stay present to what is without thinking you need to change it or take it away. You observe the soul; you don't mask or try to do away with symptoms of soul work. All this time, you stay patient and recognize that going through grief is more necessary than going around it or moving beyond it.

When you are detached, you are still very much present to the deep soul work that is taking place. This is about not getting pulled in to feeling responsible for taking away the pain of the loss. Actually, you care deeply in a way that allows you to be totally present to what is there rather than what you wish was there. You could consider this a homeopathic response of going with what is presented as opposed to against it. You are open to outcome, not attached to outcome! Or, as the Zen statement observes in a lovely way, "Spring comes, and the grass grows all by itself." The companion is able to acknowledge that less effort is sometimes better.

New Models of Grief Care

This orientation to caring is in contrast to modern psychological approaches that tend toward a more rational and logical understanding of matters of the heart. Modern psychology invites people to identify a problem and fix it. "Managed care" is just that-managed care. Very few models exist wherein we see the value of soul and symptoms of distress that need to be reflected on, observed, and respected.

We need soul-based models of caring that demonstrate the sensitivity of the heart. We need models that allow mourners to stay open to the mystery as they encounter the wilderness of their grief. We need models that respect that we don't have to understand and control everything that surrounds us. In fact, perhaps it is in "standing under" the mysterious experience of death that provides us with a unique perspective. We are not above or bigger than death. Maybe only after discovering the liminal space of the wilderness, in which we do not "understand," can we patiently discover renewed meaning and purpose in our continued living.

Surrendering To Grief

In my experience, "understanding" comes when we as companions help the grievers surrender: surrender any need to compare their grief (it's not a competition); surrender any self-critical judgments (self-compassion is a critical ingredient to integrating loss into life); and surrender any need to completely understand (we never do because mystery is something to be pondered, not explained).

The grief that touches our souls has its own voice and should not be compromised by a need for comparison, judgment, or even complete understanding. Actually, surrendering to the unknowable wilderness of grief is a courageous choice, an act of faith, a trust in God and in oneself. The grieving person can only hold this mystery in her heart and surround herself with compassionate, non-judgmental companions. My hope is that that is YOU-the reader of this book.

For transformation of grief to unfold, you have to surrender to the experience. Trying to stay in control by denying, inhibiting or converting grief can result in what Kierkegaard termed "unconscious despair." Doing the soul work of grief demands going into and through suffering and integrating it in ways that help unite you with your fellow strugglers and the greater community of people.

John Keats observed in Shakespeare what he called a "negative capability," "the capacity to be in mystery and doubt without any irritable searching after fact and reason." I have discovered that one way to survive the wilderness experience is to remember that you are doing the hard work of mourning even when you may seem to be doing nothing. And even when the mourner feels like he is making the slowest of progress and edging out of the deep wilderness, there will be times when he will feel like he is backtracking and being ravaged by the forces around him. This, too, is the nature of grief. Complete mastery of a wilderness experience is not possible. Just as we cannot control the winds and storms and the beasts in nature, we can never have total dominion over our grief. However, as the griever experiences the wilderness, he both needs and deserves caring companions along the way.

Copyright 2007, Center for Loss and Life Transition

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The Awesome Power of "Telling The Story": Why I'm Proud to be a Grief Counselor
By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.
As my father lay in his hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery recently, it was my privilege to honor his life story. My wonderful father recognized in his head and heart that his days on this earth were limited. Rest did not come easy, but his need to "story" did.

His love of family flowed out of stories from his childhood. He told me how his mother inspired his love for baseball. He told me how his father wasn't very emotionally or physically available to him as he grew from childhood to adolescence. He told me of his deep love for his older brothers and sisters.

In the midst of my awareness that I would soon not have my father in my life, I listened and I learned. I affirmed that his love for me was true and abiding. I learned of his fears about my mother, who will survive him. I learned what I already knew-my father is a great man, a loving husband and a wonderful father.

I also learned about the awesome power of "telling the story." As he shifted from topic to topic, he didn't need me to get in the way. As he at times struggled with a specific detail of a long-ago memory, he didn't need me to get in the way. As he was brought to tears by his love-filled memories of life and living, he didn't need me to get in the way.

I'm writing these words on the airplane as I leave him for what may be one of the last times. As I reflect on my all-night vigil of honoring his story, I'm once again humbled by the remarkable importance of how "storying" brings meaning and purpose to our life and death experiences.
For you see, I'm a grief counselor and I commit much of my life's vocation to honoring stories. Stories of love and loss. Stories of pain and joy. Stories of hopes fulfilled and dreams lost.

My heightened awareness of story's power comes to be at a moment of need. I recently was called upon to do a series of media interviews ranging from daily newspapers to TIME magazine. Surprisingly, I was put in the position of defending my chosen profession. You see, following the highly publicized Columbine High School tragedy, the media had many leads to pursue. Yet, when the flawed analysis of the causes, the emotional interviews with those most impacted, and the coverage of the funerals was over, the media felt the urge to find more story lines. After all, anything connected to Columbine seemed to capture readers.

So, in the frenzy to search out and create more stories they found me-a grief counselor; a person who founded a Center for Loss & Life Transition years ago in an effort to help people devastated by loss; a person who loves to educate and train others about the importance and value of companioning each other in times of grief.

It didn't take me long in talking to the media to understand that the stories would not be friendly. All I had to do was ponder the nature of the questions: "Don't you think these kids would be better off just putting this tragedy behind them?" "Why do all these grief counselors think they have to rush to the scene?" "What is the value of what you do?" "Aren't you just listening and getting paid for it?"

Re-Affirming Our Value

Thanks to my loving father and his need to "tell the story," I've given more thought to the many reasons why I'm proud to be a grief educator and counselor. Among the many benefits of "honoring the stories" of our fellow human beings are the following:

• We can search for wholeness among our fractured parts.
• We can come to know who we are in new and unexpected ways.
• We can explore our past, and come to a more profound understanding of our origins and our future directions.
• We can tentatively explain our view of the world and come to understand who we are.
• We can explore how love experienced and how love lost have influenced our time on this earth.
• We can discover how a life without "story" is like a book without pages-nice to see, but lacking in substance.
• We can seek forgiveness and be humbled by our mortality.
• We can determine how adversity has enriched our meaning and purpose of life.
• We can journey inward and discover connections previously not understood or acknowledged.
• We can create an awareness of how the past interfaces with the present, and how the present ebbs back into the past.
• We can discover that the route to healing lies not only in the physical realm, but in the emotional and spiritual realms.
• We can find that the fulfillment of a life well lived is bestowed through the translation of our past into experiences that are expressed through the oral or written word.
• We can come to understand that in our pain and suffering lies the awareness of the preciousness of each day on this earth.
• We can discover our truth in this present moment of time and space.

In part, we heal ourselves as we tell the tale. And this is the awesome power of the story.

Yet, in our fast-paced, efficiency-based culture, which lacks an understanding of the role of hurt in healing, many people do not understand the value of "telling the story." Honoring stories would require that we slow down, turn inward and embrace our own and others' pain. Listening to stories filled with sadness and grief are intolerable in a culture that collectively avoids these emotions whenever possible.

So, a number of media-types recently tried to suggest that grief counselors are unnecessary, perhaps even damaging. They might have you believe that those most impacted by the Columbine tragedy would be better off if they bucked-up, carried on and kept their chins up. One of my interviewers even asked, "Don't you think traumatic pain like this is better off denied?" In an effort to create a story, the media tried to become "story-killers."

But the need to "tell the story" and have it heard prevails. The need to have safe places to acknowledge the reality of loss, embrace pain, secure memories, search for meaning, and have ongoing support is more powerful than the media, which has been contaminated by a culture that has lost its sense of community.

I hope you are as proud as I am to be a grief counselor. Though some may question the need for what you and I do to help people in grief, I suggest we stand tall and proud. Of course, you and I understand that grief counseling and therapy is much more complex than honoring mourners' stories. Still, it is primarily through having places to "story" that people have the opportunity to try to make sense of the senseless, to embrace what needs to be embraced, and to reveal that the human spirit prevails.

A Sacred Moment

Honoring my father's story also blessed me with a sacred moment. As I was helping him prepare to leave the hospital, he gave me a "high five," and with a glint in his eye he said, "Thanks for listening. Thanks for helping me make a plan to go home." Oh, yes, the awesome power of the story.

Thanks Dad for reminding me not only of your love for me and our family, but of how all of us need to stop-to listen-and to honor stories about life and death. Thanks for making me proud to be a grief counselor and companion to my fellow human beings. But most of all, thanks for making me proud to be your son.

Copyright 2007, Center for Loss and Life Transition

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The Child's Bereavement Caregiver as Gardener: A Parable
By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.
One spring morning a gardener noticed an unfamiliar seedling poking through the ground near the rocky, untended edge of his garden. He knelt to examine its first fragile leaves. Though he had cared for many others during his long life, the gardener was unsure what this new seedling was to become. Still, it looked forlorn and in need of his encouragement, so the gardener removed the largest stones near the seedling's tender stalk and bathed it in rainwater from his worn tin watering can.

In the coming days the gardener watched the seedling struggle to live and grow in its new, sometimes hostile home. When weeds threatened to choke the seedling, he dug them out, careful not to disturb the seedling's delicate roots. He spooned dark, rich compost around its base. One cold April night he even fashioned a special cover for the seedling from an old canning jar so that it would not freeze.

But the gardener also believed in the seedling's natural capacity to adapt and survive. He did not water it too frequently. He did not stimulate its growth with chemicals. Nor did he succumb to the urge to lift the seedling from its unfriendly setting and transplant it in the rich, sheltered center of the garden. Instead the gardener watched and waited.

Day by day the seedling grew taller, stronger. Its slender yet sturdy stalk reached for the heavens and its blue-green leaves stretched to either side as if to welcome the gardener as he arrived each morning.

Soon a flower bud appeared atop the young plant's stem. Then one warm June afternoon the tightly wrapped, purple-blue petals unfurled, revealing a paler blue ring of petals inside and a tiny bouquet of yellow stamens at its center.

A columbine-the gentle wildflower whose name means "dovelike." A single, perfect columbine.

The gardener smiled. He knew then that the columbine would continue to grow and flourish, still needing his presence but no longer requiring the daily companionship it had during its tenuous early days.

The gardener crouched next to the lovely blossom and cupped its head in his rough palm. "Congratulations," he whispered to the columbine. "You have not only survived, you have grown beautiful and strong."

The gardener stood and turned to walk back to his gardening shed. Suddenly a gust of wind lifted his straw hat and as he bent to retrieve it, a small voice whispered back, "Without your help I could not have. Thank you."

The gardener looked up but no one was there. Just the blue columbine nodding happily in the breeze. . .

The more bereaved children I have the privilege to work with, the more I see myself not as a counselor but as a gardener.

Too often, counselors are taught (and subsequently internalize) the medical model of bereavement care, which suggests that bereaved children are "sick" and need to be "cured." This same mindset implies that the goal in bereavement caregiving is to help the child "resolve" or "recover from" the illness that is grief.

The medical model of understanding human behavior actually damages bereaved families because it takes responsibility for healing away from the bereaved person (child, adolescent or adult) and puts it in the hands of the doctor or caregiver who "treats" the "patient." Look up the word "treat" in the dictionary and you'll find it derives from the Latin tractare, which means, interestingly enough, to drag. The word patient, defined as a noun, refers to a sick person who is being cured by a professional. As compassionate caregivers, we cannot (and should not try to) "drag" our "patients" into being "cured."

Grief gardeners, on the other hand, believe that grief is organic. That grief is as natural as the setting of the sun and as elemental as gravity. To us, grief is a complex but perfectly natural-and necessary-mixture of human emotions. Grief gardeners do not cure the grieving child; instead we create conditions that allow the bereaved child to mourn. Our work is more art than science, more heart than head. The bereaved child is not our patient but instead our companion.

The seedling in this parable represents, of course, the bereaved child. The seedling is struggling to live in its new, hostile environment much as a bereaved child struggles to cope with her new, scary world. A world without someone she loved very much. A world that does not understand the need to mourn. A world that does not compassionately support its bereaved.

This child needs the love and attention of caring adults if she is to heal and grow. It is the bereavement caregiver's role to create conditions that allow for such healing and growth. In the parable, the gardener removes stones near the seedling's tender stalk and offers it life-sustaining water. In the real world, the grief gardener might simply listen as the child talks or acts out her feelings of pain or sadness, in effect removing a heavy weight from her small shoulders. Instead of water, the grief gardener offers his empathy, helping quench the child's thirst for companionship.

The gardener in the parable also dug out weeds that threatened to choke the young seedling; the grief gardener might attempt to squelch those who threaten the child's healing, such as a dysfunctional or grief-avoiding family member. The grief gardener's compost is the nourishment of play-that necessary work that feeds the souls of all children.

But notice, too, that the gardener in the parable does not take complete control of the seedling's existence, but rather trusts in the seedling's inner capacity to heal and grow. The gardener does not water the seedling too frequently; the grief gardener does not offer companionship to the point of codependency. The gardener does not use chemical fertilizers; the grief gardener does not advocate the use of pharmaceuticals (unless made necessary by a medical condition, of course) or other inorganic therapies for bereaved children. The gardener does not transplant the seedling but instead allows it to struggle where it has landed; the grief gardener does not seek to rescue the bereaved child from her pain.

Largely as a result of its own arduous work, the seedling in the parable grows into a beautiful columbine. Bereaved children, with time and the loving care of adults, also have inside themselves the potential for this same kind of transformation. The greatest joy of grief gardening, in fact, is witnessing this growth and new beauty in bereaved children who have learned to reconcile their grief.

What an honor to garden in such rich soil.

Copyright 2007, Center for Loss and Life Transition

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Growing Through Grief: The Role Of Support Groups
By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

We need not walk alone...
We reach out to each other with love and
understanding and with hope...
We come together from all walks of life,
from many different circumstances...
We need not walk alone

Credo, The Compassionate Friends

(Editor's note: The following article is excerpted from Dr. Wolfelt's book How to Start and Lead a Bereavement Support Group, available from Companion Press.)
There is a growing realization among those who care for the bereaved that support groups are an appropriate and effective way to help bereaved people heal. Because they offer a safe place for people to do the work of mourning, support groups encourage members to reconcile their losses and go on to find continued meaning in life and living. Attending a support group facilitated by skilled leaders often brings comfort and understanding beyond many peoples' expectations.

Support groups help bereaved people by:

• countering the sense of isolation that many experience in our shame-based, mourning-avoiding culture.
• providing emotional, physical, and spiritual support in a safe, nonjudgmental environment.
• allowing them to explore their many thoughts and feelings about grief in a way that helps them be compassionate with themselves.
• encouraging members to not only receive support and understanding for themselves but also to provide the same to others.
• offering opportunities to learn new ways of approaching problems (e.g. the friend or in-law who lacks an understanding of the need to mourn and pushes you to "return to normal").
• helping them trust their fellow human beings again in what for many in grief feels like an unsafe, uncaring world.
• providing a supportive environment that can reawaken their zest for life.

In short, as group members give and receive help, they feel less helpless and are able to discover continued meaning in life. Feeling understood by others brings down barriers between the bereaved person and the world outside. This process of being understood is central to being compassionate with oneself as a bereaved person. The more people are compassionate to the bereaved from the outside in, the more the bereaved are capable of being self-compassionate from the inside out.

Our mourning-avoiding culture often forces bereaved people to withdraw from insensitive friends and family or to adopt ways of avoiding the painful, but necessary work of mourning; support groups, which instead foster the experience of trusting and being trusted, can do wonders in meeting the needs of bereaved people. In an effective bereavement support group, members can achieve a balance between giving and receiving, between independence and an appropriate, self-sustaining dependence. The group provides a safe harbor where hurting people can pull in, anchor while the wind still blows them around, and search for safe ground on which to go on living. As a potential leader of such a group, you have the honor of accompanying people during this time.

Before we go on to explore the specifics of running a bereavement support group, though, I would like to further define what I mean by growing through grief.

Growth means encountering pain

The death of someone loved naturally brings about emotional, physical, and spiritual pain for us as human beings. Forums such as support groups provide us with a safe place where we can embrace our pain in "doses." Encountering the pain of the loss all at once would overwhelm us and leave us defenseless. Sometimes bereaved people need to distract themselves from the pain of the loss, while at other times they need a "safe harbor" to pull into and embrace the depth of the loss.

Growth means change

My experience has taught me that we as human beings are forever changed by the death of someone in our lives. To "resolve" your own or someone else's grief often denotes a return to a homeostasis (inner balance) that was present prior to the death. I believe this model of care is inadequate and often damaging to bereaved people of all ages.

A "return to inner balance" doesn't reflect how I, or the people who have taught me about their grief journeys, are forever changed by the experience of bereavement. In using the word growth, I acknowledge the changes that mourning brings about.

Growth means a new inner balance with no end points

While the bereaved person may do the work of mourning to recapture in part some sense of inner balance, it is a new inner balance. My hope is that the term growth reflects the active, ongoing process of mourning.

Growth means exploring our assumptions about life

The encounter with grief reawakens us to the importance of utilizing our potentials. The concept of potential in this context could be defined as our capacity to mourn our losses openly and without shame, to be interpersonally effective in our relationships with others, and to continue to discover fulfillment in life, living and loving. Loss often serves as a catalyst to becoming more of what we can be instead of staying exactly what and where we are. Loss seems to educate the potential within. Then, it becomes up to us as human beings to embrace and creatively express this potential. Growth is about not settling for homeostasis, but looking for and seeking out how we are changed by this death. Growth means discovering our gifts, our potentials, and using them to bring meaning to the lives of others.

Copyright 2007, Center for Loss and Life Transition 

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