Lessons From the Field. Family Grief Care and Bibliotherapy: A Call for Models and Studies

• Published date: 01 April 2021
• Author: Ted Bowman
• Date: 01 April 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12539

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Lessons From the Field.

Family Grief Care and Bibliotherapy: A Call

for Models and Studies

Objective: For this Lesson From the Field

report, I write as a family and grief educator to

advocate for greater attention to bibliotherapy

by family scientists, therapists, and educators.

Bibliotherapy (also referred to as poetry ther-

apy or therapeutic storytelling) is the use of

literary resources, storytelling, or writing with

the purpose of healing.

Background: Disruptive changes can result

in altered personal or family stories. Grief

educator Tom Attig (1996) reported that after

signicant changes, such as bereavement, many

persons describe a process of relearning their

world. Family therapist Karl Tomm (1990)

asserted that a human task throughout life is to

story and re-story. Earlier and current models

of family development include milestones of

changing family stories (see Duvall, 1962;

McGoldrick et al., 2011). A current collective

example is personal and family disruptions in

response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite

many accounts, journals like Family Relations

have rarely explored the intersection of family

changes (for this article, the focus is family

changes that result in loss and grief) using the

perspectives and tools of bibliotherapy.

Method: Disruptive changes and the resulting

grief and loss for individuals and families were

Grief and Family Educator, 2265 Luther Place #318,

Saint Paul, MN 55108 tedbowman71@gmail.com; www

.bowmanted.com.

Key Words: bibliotherapy, grief, hope, loss, narratives,

stories, thresholds.

used as an example of a subject matter worthy of

family scientists’ attention.

Conclusion and Implications:Family grief

care includes attention to changing family

stories. Enhanced studies of bibliotherapy by

family scientists can inform and enrich support

for families through times of grief.

Family grief care often includes attention to

stories—changing stories. When our baby was

born, we lost something we were already in love

with: our idea of what she would be (Gill, 1997).

This mother of a child with a disabling condition

references a conceptual system, developed over

time, that provides us with expectations about

the course of life (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). Grief

scholar Colin Parkes (1996) used the phrase

assumptive world to refer to people’s view of

their world:

All of us from the moment of our birth, have been

building inside ourselves a model of the world, a

set of assumptions on the basis of which we recog-

nize the world that we meet and plan our behaviour

accordingly. Because this model is based on real-

ity it is, most of the time, a valid and useful basis

for thought and behaviour.We rely on the accuracy

of these assumptions to maintain our orientation in

the world and to control our lives. Anythingwhich

challenges this model incapacitates us. (pp. 91–92)

There is an abundant literature related to bib-

liotherapy, both descriptive and evaluative.

The literature includes both applied and

research-based publications. Although the

volume is high, the populations served and

402Family Relations 70 (April 2021): 402–407

DOI:10.1111/fare.12539