Mapping: Words and Art for Healing Therapy
As a bereaved parent myself, I have often heard and used the phrase "mapping your grief." But my view of that phrase is very different today than it was in the Spring of 1999 when my son first died.
Upon learning that my child was dead, the medical professionals involved with us tried very hard to get some tangible resources to us for our grief and healing process. One of the things we received in our little "grief packet" was a pamphlet from some organization or another. This pamphlet claimed that it had the mission of telling us what the stages of grief are. You know these stages, too, because we've all heard it a zillion times. First, denial. Then shock, anger, acceptance, and some other neatly mapped out stages. The pamphlet did say that the length of each stage would vary from person to person.
I will go a step further, and offer this:
If and when you do find a map for grief, then the stages, the length of time, the patterns and the healing path are completely and entirely different for each and every person on this planet. This is not to say that bereaved people don't all recognize something weary in each other. This isn't to say that we don't all know some measure of those familiar stages those pamphlets talk about. It's just to say that those pamphlet do not, will not, and cannot ever even begin to tell you the vastness of the unknown and unmapped regions of Grief. Grief is a HUGE country, no a continent-- no, no a solar system! And even at that, it's a solar system that changes each and every day depending on who we are, where we are, what kind of support we have-- it is as individual as we each are.
So how do we come to terms with this ever changing and evolving map that we are constantly trying to decipher?
Why, of course, my answer is Poetry Therapy! But more than that, it is an exercise in words and art. Try making a list of words that are involved in some way in your grief and healing process. Name of the loved one who died, names of emotions you've gone through,
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