The Faraway-Nearby of Loss: How We Mourn

This workshop will explore how we mourn the loss of someone essential to our identity, whether it is a parent, child or partner. How do we find a bridge between the nearby of overwhelming grief and the dreaded faraway, of feeling our loved one is lost to us forever? I suggest a middle distance is necessary, a space that bridges the faraway and the nearby. A liminal space where a death can be slowly integrated, where the bereaved can shift between moments of excruciating pain, and moments of ordinary-living, arriving at a place where someone is remembered with love, but without the daily ache and pain of loss. In other words, how do we transform suffering and surviving into healthy thriving? Memoir excerpts (the source for my novel, Meet the Moon) will be shared to deepen our understanding of mourning at different developmental stages. Learning Objectives: After this workshop participants will be able to: Critique the evolution of our theories of grief and mourning. Identify the complex dynamics that arise when a child loses a parent. Use an understanding of identification, taking a loved one inside, as a way to mourn.