Some of our public lectures are available to watch on Youtube:
Jody Day
Thursday 4th March, 2021
'The Disenfranchised Grief of Involuntary Childlessness: A Living Loss that Society Dismisses'
On average, one in five women in the developed world is reaching midlife without children, 90 per cent of those not by choice, with the greater part of them childless by ‘circumstance’ rather than infertility. There are similar, if not greater numbers of childless men too. Yet despite these figures (which often come as a surprise to many), the experience of involuntary childlessness is a silent one and the non-death grief of childlessness is often missed or dismissed by grievers themselves, their families and communities, and often, sadly, by the helping professionals around them too. The grief of involuntary childlessness is a form of what Doka (1989) termed ‘disenfranchised grief’ – a grief which is not socially recognised or acceptable. In this talk, psychotherapist, author and childless campaigner Jody Day, who has worked individually and online with thousands of childless women over the last decade through her organisation ‘Gateway Women’, will share what she has learned about how to understand, support and advocate for those grieving this ‘living loss’.
Edith Steffen
Thursday 6th May, 2021
'Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: Insights from Research and Grief Therapy Practice'
Over the past 25 years, something of a revolution has taken place in the world of bereavement research and practice, as maintaining bonds with the deceased has become not only an accepted aspect of bereavement but is increasingly seen as a potentially desirable accompaniment or outcome of grief. Drawing on the presenter’s research and clinical experience in the field of continuing bonds and grief therapy, this talk will introduce the continuing bonds perspective, describe how continuing bonds can manifest in practice and what meanings they may entail for the bereaved. It will focus particularly on how continuing bonds may become the focus of grief therapy and counselling, for example when the goal is to help people access and deepen continuing bonds as a helpful resource, and also where continuing bonds are difficult or hampered, showing how therapeutic interventions may help facilitate, renew and reconstruct bonds in helpful and meaningful ways.
Dennis Klass
Thursday 20th May, 2021
'Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: Insights from Dennis Klass'
This lecture is an introduction to the Continuing Bonds model of grief. We will review the history of the model in an ethnographic study of bereaved parents in a self-help group. In the group parents interweave their bonds with their deceased children with their bonds to the other parents in the group. This dynamic opens us to understanding grief in a larger cross-cultural and historic context. We will briefly look at Japanese ancestor rituals that serve as a lens to better understand Western bereavement narratives. We will structure our brief look at some of the implications of the continuing bonds model by thinking about the themes Edith Marie Steffen and Dennis Klass found in their anthology of developments in the model since it was introduced twenty-five years ago.
Rupert Read
Thursday 21 October 2021
'How Eco-Grief Will Help Us Save Ourselves'
Climate-grief and grief over the degradation of our natural world, unlike ‘ordinary’ grief over the loss of a loved one, never lessens. Because these emergencies will define our entire lifetime, and at present are still getting worse. Thus, while a healthy reaction to grief over a lost loved one is to grieve deeply and then gradually to recover, there is no 'recovery' from ecological grief. The only recovery from it that is possible at all is for us to change the world such that it no longer keeps deteriorating. This is how eco-grief, grief at the tearing from us of what we love and are not willing to do without, leads into radical eco-action. When we finally allow ourselves to face the full terrible reality of what our species is doing to our home, our kin and our very future, then, to avoid getting stuck in depression or despair, there is no alternative but to struggle. This is how grief expresses and powers the love that is the one thing that might yet save our future from being - to vary Orwell - a boot stamping on the faces of all beings (humans included) forever.
There is a vast 'mental-health crisis' coming. Those suffering from eco-grief are in the vanguard of it. This crisis — a pandemic of grief, depression and plain terror that will rise in intensity as the world’s citizens wake up to the slow death-march that their ‘leaders’ and the world’s rich and powerful are laying on for them — may yet, however, be the making of us. For what powers rebellion is facing the terrible truth of the decaying future we/they have manufactured; what enables us to face up to that truth, after we work through denial and depression, is our grief. Because grief is an expression, above all, of a profound love.
Katherine Shear
Thursday 28th October, 2021
'Introduction To Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy'
Grief is the natural response to loss. Although it’s complex, time-varying, and multifaceted and everyone grieves in their own way, there are commonalities. Most people adapt to the loss of a loved one by accepting their new reality and restoring the capacity for wellbeing. However, for some bereaved people, early defensive responses to the loss become persistent and overly influential. When this occurs the process of adapting to the loss can be impeded, resulting in prolonged grief disorder (PGD; formerly known as complicated grief). PGD is characterized by persistent pervasive yearning, longing, or preoccupation with the loss lasting far beyond the period of time expected by the person’s social, cultural, or religious group. Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy (PGDT; previously called complicated grief therapy: CGT) is a short-term therapy designed to address impediments and facilitate adaptation to loss. This presentation will introduce our model of grief and adaptation to loss and walk through seven "Healing Milestones" that promote adaptation to loss.
Karen West and Eve Wilson
Thursday 18th November, 2021
'Supporting Bereaved Older People: Evaluation of the Bereavement Supporter Project'
Cruse Bereavement Support and The ExtraCare Charitable Trust have been working together, to improve bereavement support for over 4,000 older people living in ExtraCare retirement villages and housing schemes.
Older people experience loss and bereavement as a more frequent occurrence, often at a time when they have fewer support networks, and are therefore disproportionately affected by grief. The Bereavement Supporter project has helped bereaved people get the right help at the right time, through a community based approach.
This presentation will focus on the evaluation findings, from the project’s peer support approach. The evaluation is based on data collected from ExtraCare residents, staff, Bereavement Supporter volunteers and diaries kept during the pandemic. www.cruse.org.uk/bereavement-supporter-project
Tasia Scrutton
9th December 2021
'How C.S. Lewis’ Theology Affected His Experience of Grief'
A Grief Observed is an edited version of a journal the Christian writer C.S. Lewis kept following the death of his wife. In addition to experiences familiar to many, arguably the most prominent themes of the journal are striking, distinctive, and by no means commonly shared. These themes relate to fears, early in the journal, regarding the construction of mental images of his wife, accompanied by a sense of God’s absence, and, later in the journal, to the resolution of these fears and sense of God’s returning presence. In this talk Tasia will draw attention to these distinctive features of Lewis’ grief, and consider them through the lens of aspects of Lewis’ theology. In so doing she will draw attention to the way in which interpretation – here, theological interpretation – can shape experience, including experiences of grief.