It can be hard to know what to talk about with a bereaved person over a period of time once you have offered your condolences. This book shows how, by using good active listening skills, empathic exploration and a willingness to talk about the hard issues, you can embark on a process of sensitive conversation that helps the bereaved person to come to terms with their grief.
Dodie Graves outlines a practical framework of six stages for conversing with bereaved people in a structured but flexible way that avoids prescriptive instructions. The stages include talking about the story of the deceased, their relationship with the person, celebrating their life, discussing their legacy, strategies for coping and thinking about the journey undertaken. She shows how to use the stages in conversations with individuals and groups, and for each element suggests creative activities and open questions that can be used, provides anecdotes and case vignettes, and givesa brief summary of the theory pertinent to each stage of the conversation.
Talking with Bereaved People is an approachable tool for anyone working with bereaved people, including counsellors, voluntary bereavement agencies, church pastoral teams, hospice and hospital staff, trainers and social workers.
Introduction.;
1. About this Approach.;
2. There is a Story.;
3. There is a Relationship.;
4. There is a Life to Celebrate.;
5. There is a Legacy Left Behind.;
6. There is a Strategy Used.;
7. There is a Journey Undertaken.;
8. There are Difficult Issues to Explore. Conclusion. References. Further Reading. Useful Resources. Index.
This book is like all the best things in life: Common sense mixed with insight and experience. It is backed with the theories necessary for every academic subject that in my opinion, in bereavement work should be read, ingested and put to the back of our minds to be drawn upon when needed, but not at the expense of experience.
Dodie Graves has made Talking with bereaved people look an easy work, but that is because she has the expertise needed to make it look that way. She has used her wide knowledge of the field, experience of bereaved people, excellent listening skills and sensitivity, along with the intelligence to know how much of each ingredient needs to go into the mix.
This book is suitable for people working in the bereavement support field on a good many levels. For new volunteers it is accessible, easy to understand and the use of case studies and personal anecdotes brings it to life. On the other hand, qualified counsellors with experience of general work, perhaps in doctors' surgeries or counselling agencies, would find so much to help them understand what makes bereaved people think and behave as they do. It will also reassure those who are unused to the vast differences in reactions to grief that there are very few occasions when a bereaved person's emotional or physical behaviour can seriously be called unusual or complicated. Given time, patience and a good listener, most people have the inbuilt resilience to work their way through their grief. Dodie encourages this and shows how, with her help, we could all walk beside bereaved people on their journey.
