Bereavement Support Groups: Breathing Life into Stories of the Dead

by Lorraine Hedtke

Overview

This book, BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT GROUPS: Breathing Life into Stories of the Dead, fills the gap between the challenges to conventional grief psychology and the practice of bereavement counseling. The deceased person has often been left behind in counseling conversations, requiring the bereaved to distance themselves from honoring memories that could soothe their heartache. Ironically, the stories about the dead person have not featured prominently in the grief experience.

This book offers a structured guide for facilitating bereavement support groups, but is intended as more than a simple “how to” book. It will also inspire readers with invigorating practice ideas. This new way of thinking includes the stories and love that remain after death. Here is a model for folding the deceased person’s values, legacies, meanings, and connections into the lives of the living. The book shows the reader how to utilize the metaphorical presence of the deceased, accessed through stories, actions and rituals, to affirm the relationship with the deceased as more than a lost memory to be shelved next to dusty old photo albums.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014503549
Publisher:	The Taos Institute
Publication date:	05/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	149
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Dr. Lorraine Hedtke teaches about death, dying and bereavement throughout the world. Her unique ideas and practices are drawn from narrative therapy and represent a departure from the conventional models of grief psychology. Her articles have appeared in numerous professional journals and magazines. With John Winslade, she has co-authored Remembering Lives: Conversations with the Dying and the Bereaved (Baywood, 2004). Her children’s book, My Grandmother is Always with Me (Xlibris 2005), is written with her daughter, Addie. For additional information about her innovative work or to contact her, go to www.rememberingpractices.com.

Editorial Reviews

One ironic legacy of 20th century bereavement counseling is that it often has compounded the very losses it has tried to heal, by promoting practices that encourage banishment of our deceased loved ones from our ongoing lives. In this compact and original book Lorraine Hedtke boldly challenges this prevailing wisdom, instead imagining into being a cornucopia of conversational and reflective resources that help conserve and extend the stories of our loved ones’ lives, braided together so

Robert Neimyer

Never having to say “Goodbye” is the thrilling message of this life-changing book.

Mary Gergen

Hedtke’s ground-breaking, refreshing approach to loss and grief gives
new life and hope for those who have lost loved ones and for the professionals
who help them. “Remembering” becomes the key to peace in the
present and the future.

Harlene Anderson

Lorraine Hedtke challenges the counseling profession to avoid pathologizing
grief. Using a narrative approach, this new model finds ways in
which the deceased person’s stories can be kept alive and made a part
of the lives of the living. The theoretical perspectives form the basis of
activities in a group setting. The book critiques conventional grief psychology
and makes it clear that when a person dies the relationship does
not have to die. There are many concept

Marianne Schneider Corey

This book is a “must read” for all professionals who provide bereavement
support and grief counseling. Lorraine Hedtke beautifully illustrates
a powerful alternative to traditional grief counseling. Instead of
saying goodbye to loved ones Lorraine shows us how to maintain and
enhance the meaning of those relationships and to incorporate them productively
into our living far beyond the time of the loved one’s death.
The narrative approach creates a gen

Bob Cotter, MD