Grief Literacy™.
By: Rachelle Bensoussan
Tags: Death, Education, Grief, Mental Health, Grief And Loss

lit·er·a·cy

/ˈlidərəsē,ˈlitrəsē/

· competence or knowledge in a specified area

What does it mean to offer support, counsel and guidance without literacy? Can we skillfully assist someone in learning a language we ourselves do not speak? Can we teach someone the skills required to play an instrument, if we ourselves have never played?

These are the questions I often find myself asking to, and with, the brave and broken-hearted bereaved people who fill my life both personally and professionally.

We have an inherent assumption in this culture that professionals and specialists are almost always the answer, and that the professionals we therefore turn to in times of loss, are literate in our experiences. We assume they have had the necessary training and education to lead and guide us through the foreign, and often unpredictable, terrain we find ourselves in. We turn to them, as we would a field guide, saying I’m here; lost, yet open and willing. Please teach me. Please help me. And then, like all good students, we listen and take in what they are saying, with the trust that they will show us the way.

What would it be like to pay for a music lesson only to arrive and find out that your teacher has never learned to read music? Or to have paid for a French tutor only to arrive and find out that your teacher does not speak French? Would you continue to heed their advice? Would you trust them?

This is what I have borne witness to for the last eleven years as a bereavement clinician. I have met countless, beautiful humans who have been unintentionally, and inadvertently, harmed by physicians, nurses, social workers and mental health clinicians who see, treat and counsel people for grief while having absolutely zero formal education and/or training in the experience of grief itself.

As a bereaved person myself, I could share with you an exhaustive list of well meaning, well intended professionals who in their own lack of literacy pathologized my grief and claimed to know my own experience better than I did. A long list of friends and loved ones, who although never having lived through loss themselves, were all too eager to tell me the singular solution to my grief, as though it were a problem to be fixed, like a car that had simply run out of gas. They lectured me as though my grief were not the prudent, appropriate response to what had been lost, but rather some atypical over reaction that could be set straight if I’d just attend the right Zumba class or take a walk through the woods. My grief, that which is non-optional and deeply human, was diagnosed and rejected.

At the time I was in graduate school, there was not a single graduate level program in Canada for physicians, nurses, social workers or psychotherapists that offered a mandatory, full credit course in grief and loss. Some programs had optional electives, and some offered nothing at all. Most nursing schools in Canada today are still teaching Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ Five Stages of Grief, despite it being a theory that has long been refuted by modern day grief theorists. See article here.

What this means, is that those who are on the front lines of grief and loss in our communities, those that we are told to turn to in times of loss, death and crisis, do not necessarily have any more expertise, education or specialized training than any other layperson. It means that if professionals want to become more literate in grief, they often need to do so on their own time, and their own dime, as it is not a mandatory component of their training. This pervasive lack of grief literacy amongst professionals results in countless misdiagnoses each year, and prevents bereaved people from accessing the support and information that could actually assist them in building their own capacity and skill as a bereaved person.

Author, and bereaved daughter, Cheryl Strayed said:

“If as a culture we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease”.

And so I birthed the idea, and the term, Grief Literacy™.

Grief Literacy™ is rooted in the belief that bereaved people do not require intervention, professional interference or uninformed and unsubstantiated advice and opinions. What they need, both for themselves, and from those who are supporting them, is competence and knowledge in the very thing they are experiencing, i.e. literacy. Grief Literacy™. This includes current, evidence-based grief theory, a comprehensive understanding of grief responses, diversity in coping strategies, the dismantling of our most commonly held myths and misconceptions, as well as accurate definitions of grief-related concepts such as: acts of mourning, anticipatory grief, disenfranchised grief, and the difference between intuitive and instrumental grief styles.

Two years ago, I made a decision. I decided to give up my counselling license and registration to become a full-time grief educator. I did so because I could no longer hold the deep belief that grief was normal, our birthright as humans, while simultaneously offering counselling/therapy rooted in a pathology-based model. The incongruence and dissonance were too great, and so I committed myself to offering those who are living with loss support via education and literacy. I’ve held onto the belief that if all people, both the bereaved and the non-bereaved, simply had true competency and knowledge in the area of grief and loss, our need for therapy, intervention and counselling would decrease profoundly. If bereaved people were free to claim the legitimacy of their experiences, while being surrounded by communities of people who also understood the complexities and magnitude of those experiences, we would be free to get about the business of metabolizing our losses without harmful, unfounded advice, interference, and the deep sense of isolation that often accompanies those who are grieving.

Grief Literacy™ does not make anything better. It does not fix grief, or take it away. It does not help or ask a bereaved person to move on, or let go, or get over it. On the contrary, it is in the absence of Grief Literacy™ that we cause harm by asking such things of one another to begin with. Grief Literacy™ teaches us what is to be here, human.