/explore

In our practice as creative arts therapists, the people we meet, no matter their age or background, will likely have encountered moments of deep joy as well as profound grief and loss in their lives. When people experience the death of someone in their life, it can feel like their world as has shattered into pieces, no matter whether they deeply loved that person or whether the relationship was more complicated, bringing forth tangled feelings and responses to the loss. Their whole (well)being is impacted in some way: Their emotions, thoughts, and spirituality, as well as their relationships with others and themselves. They are called to navigate and reconstruct the shatters of their life, (re)learning how to embrace life while beginning to hold the profoundness and complex ripples of the loss they have experienced. The overarching intention for the therapist here is to witness the loss rather than seeing it as something that needs to be solved or fixed; a being-with and a with-ness in the depth of grief.

In creative arts therapies, these experiences can be held within a therapeutic framework that offers both tangible and embodied ways of working with grief. Creative approaches can offer an entry way into grief. Somatic methods support with processing the experience of loss and connecting with one’s environment again by tapping into the healing qualities of the body. Alongside this, people can begin to experience a sense of communitas, weaving a community around them while redefining how bonds with the ones they have lost might continue. Here, rituals can offer containment, release, and restoration as well as capturing memories in tangible form. Further, creative arts therapies can help create a container to make the darkness more bearable, a sense of lightness to make it possible to explore that darkness, and an honouring of what was(n’t), what is(n’t), and what might (not) be.