Grief Support Services Fall Conference

Essentia Health Grief Support Services

Fall Virtual Conference: The Art of Grieving

Sharon Strouse, MA, ATR-BC, LCPAT

Sarah Vollmann, MPS, ATR-BC, LICSW

December 6, 2024, 8:30-4:30

Collage: Reassembling Life After Traumatic Loss

Sharon Strouse, MA, ATR-BC, LCPAT

This didactic, experiential workshop introduces collage as a medium for reassembling life after traumatic loss. Collage is a therapy of the imagination, and of particular value in helping people transform and re-envision their lives. Visual artworks are created from a variety of art materials with a focus on magazine words, images and ephemera, which are cut, altered, arranged and attached to paper or cardboard. The unspeakable, fragmented elements of trauma are grounded in the experience of selecting, sorting, tearing, snipping, placing, taping and gluing imagery together. The transformation of bits and pieces into new forms is empowering and freeing and allows for new embodied discoveries.

Art therapy-based theory and practices are woven together with grief and bereavement theory. Evidence suggests that the difficult work of meaning reconstruction is a central part of the healing process for traumatic loss survivors, who experience a shattering of their assumptive world. The essential elements of the creative process, deconstruction and reconstruction in service to healing, lend themselves to Neimeyer’s model of Meaning Reconstruction, with an exploration of the event story, back story and personal story as well as the clinical tenants of bracing, facing and pacing. Worden’s Task Model of Bereavement and Rynearson’s Restorative Retelling Model are further explored through traumatic loss case studies which include collage images created over a 20-year period by the presenter in response to the suicide of her seventeen-year-old daughter.

Collage is a creative act of inquiry, a means to intertwine and layer knowledge. Constructing images promotes ways of knowing, shaping and storying grief so the experience does not remain senseless, silenced, unseen, immovable or untouchable. participants will create their own collages and explore an internal landscape non-verbally as a way to piece together personal and professional experiences of loss. We will leave with an experience of collage as a springboard to verbal inquiry, the place where abstract ideas come to life and yield sudden insights.

Learning Objectives:

1. Apply Worden’s Task Model to the collage process and discuss those tasks as evidenced in one of the
    case studies.

2. Analyze the collage process and product through a Meaning Reconstruction focus on the event, back
    and personal story narratives, as evidenced in one of the case studies.

3. Describe how the collage process facilitates engagement with the three focal questions implicit in
    traumatic bereavement and grounded in Rynearson’s Restorative Retelling: How did it happen, Who
    am I now, and What is my relationship to the deceased?

4. Summarize the tenants of art therapy collage with traumatic loss survivors, anchored in Neimeyer’s
    clinical framework of bracing, pacing and facing.

Transformed by Love

Sarah Vollmann, MPS, ATR-BC, LICSW

This presentation, grounded in Meaning Reconstruction theory, introduces the use of art therapy self-portraiture with clients who are grieving death and non-death losses. Most theories of grief highlight the effect of loss upon one’s identity, as any significant loss can cause a crisis of the self (Jakoby, 2015). The bereaved often need to construct a life narrative that is cohesive and inclusive of their pre-loss and post-loss identities as they strive to reconstruct meaning (Neimeyer, 2016). The presenter will share her experience as an art therapist of witnessing numerous spontaneous self-portraits created by clients facing loss. The creation of a self-portrait can be transformational, allowing the bereaved to explore a shifted sense of self while owning, expressing, and authoring a revised identity and life story. Art therapy case studies of a child, adolescent, and adult will be presented. Visually rich and deeply personal creations will highlight the expansive and varied potential therapeutic benefits of self-portraiture in the grieving process. Theoretical conceptions of the impact of loss upon one’s identity will be reviewed, and tenets of Meaning Reconstruction, including bracing, pacing, and facing, sense making, and benefit finding will be highlighted in the context of the case studies. This presentation will additionally examine the use of self-portraiture across clinical disciplines to assess self-image and further treatment, and review art history examples of self-portraits that were created to process loss. An experiential component, with no artistic skill required, will allow participants to engage as they choose in an exploration of the self through the creation of their own small self-portraits. Art therapy interventions present unique and transformative possibilities for the bereaved. The art therapy process and product encourage restorative retelling, continuing bonds, and meaning making while simultaneously providing opportunities for containment, soothing, and self-regulation. We will review art therapy bereavement case studies through the lens of meaning reconstruction, family systems, and continuing bonds. Each case study will highlight the use of art therapy memory boxes as a transformational and integral piece of treatment. We will conclude with a discussion of the therapeutic benefits of memory boxes for bereaved populations.

This Conference is possible thanks to the generous support of the Essentia Health -

Paul Antonich Memorial Fund.