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Posts from the ‘Young Adult Bereavement Art Group’ Category

Nov 7

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Good News: Art Therapy and Healthcare just published!

Holding up my copy of Art Therapy and Healthcare for close inspection!

Lately, my mind has been wandering; wondering what it would be like to attend my 40th high school reunion, and whether it would be fun or feel like torture. Meanwhile our fall Young Adult Bereavement Art Group (YABAG) was advancing in fits and starts and now has finally fallen into a rhythm, much as leaves progress into their rich autumn colors.

Sometimes it takes a while for a group to coalesce, like the leaves of particular trees turning at different times. In a group where participants have suffered devastating loss (all loss is devastating, but some circumstances can bring additional trauma to the bereaved), people need time to make sense of their lives going forward.

My colleague and I wondered what was going on; perhaps it was how we were leading the group, but we reminded ourselves we’d done this many times before with the same curriculum and it had worked.

As if to remind us of this, two thick cardboard envelopes arrived in the campus mail, one addressed to me and the other to my colleague. I can’t tell you if he ripped his envelope open, but had I been there when they arrived, I would have!

Checking out our chapter on “YABAG.”

Inside the brown husk of wrapper lay the fruit of our labors for the last year; a copy of Cathy Malchiodi’s edited and recently published book: Art Therapy and Healthcare, containing our chapter on the young adult bereavement art group. When I saw the cover, a richly colored oil pastel nautilus drawn by Cathy, I felt such a swelling of pride; as if some unspoken, barely imagined dream had come to pass.

I’ve had a chance to cozy up with it and I’m looking forward to reading through the many chapters written by art therapists across the country and world. I’m reminded of a colored construction paper banner that hung in my public library as a child. The letters read: “Come, journey with a book.” I know I will.

Dec 7

9 Comments

My 7 Links

Marriage Circa 2011, ©2011, H.Hunter, Collage: paper and acrylic paint

I recently accepted Donna Iona Drozda’s invitation to participate in a project: My 7 Links Project. For this project, each blogger chooses 7 different posts to fit seven unique categories and then invites up to 5 more bloggers to do the same, and so on, as a way of uniting “bloggers from all sectors in an endeavor to share lessons learned and…to… create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts…”

A timely invitation and one that I thought about because it seemed to me a perfect chance to look over the year’s post, to form in my mind a gestalt of what I’d written, a means of seeing the road I’d traveled and perhaps the road I might choose to take in the year ahead.

Like the doors on an advent calendar, I invite you to open up one or more of these links and see what you discover.

Most helpful: Young Adult Bereavement Art Group/Art Therapy in Action: This post proved to be helpful in two ways; one for me, because the post reflects how much I learned about the grief process of young adults, but also because this information is useful to those people who wish to start an art therapy based bereavement support group in their own community.

Where I Live, ©2000, H. Hunter, 15″ x 18″, Acrylic & Caran d’ache

Most popular: Finding Sanctuary: addresses our universal need to find a safe and sacred space. Nature + art = one of the most effective ways to find it.

Didn’t quite get the attention it deserved: Timing is Everything: There’s a lot packed into this little post with M.S. Merwin’s poem. Spring opens our eyes with its fleeting beauty and we’re reminded, once again, of the transience and beauty of life.

Most proud of: Art Therapy 101: No questions here. Art Therapy 101, about my daughter who was my first teacher in art therapy, wrote itself.

Peonies at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art

Most beautiful: Accidental Journey: Places of the soul–all of us have them and I accidentally traveled back to mine in this trip to Maine. Here I share images and thoughts of this magical journey, especially one gorgeous blush colored peony.

Surprising Success: A Different Kind of Summer: I had no idea when I wrote about spending the summer in the studio that it would elicit so many responses. At the hospital, when I’m asked what I did on the weekend, my answer is always the same: “I was in my studio.” (And it’s always a pleasure.)

Most controversial: New Beginnings: The controversy here is subjective within the quilting world–I suddenly felt confronted by an entirely different way of seeing the quilting process, one I hadn’t considered and which challenged me to re-examine my approach to the aesthestics of art quilts.

And now some nominations–4 blogs with entirely different focuses–something to satisfy different parts of my personality.

From the Scattergood Farm: written by two teachers at Scattergood Friends School (my daughter’s high school alma mater) where students both study and work a living farm. In this new blog, they present some radical new ideas for school lunch. Check this out!

Patricia Scarborough: I love Patty’s posts–witty and wry and half a continent away, I love to read her observations and see her plein air plainscapes. 

Dwelling Here Now: One of the first blogs I discovered, Anthony Lawlor takes a spiritual approach to architecture and the architecture of thought. 

Blue Sky Dreaming: Blue Sky’s open minded approach to her subject matter and materials intrigues and inspires lots of us in the mixed media world.

Nov 5

5 Comments

Sitting on My Hands

©2011, Hannah Klaus Hunter, Ceramic Cat Grief Mask

I like to imagine that there are as many ways to say good bye as stars in the sky. Like stars, each goodbye is unique, with its own distinct light. This was the last week in our bi-annual Young Adult Bereavement Art Group that we affectionately call “YABAG.” Perhaps its me, perhaps it’s time passing, but it seems that each group gets better and better.

In the first week we ask what brings each person to the group. One young woman’s response, “Art, Bereavement, Support,” formed the personality of our present group. That’s what we did.

Aside from piloting my way through my own childrens’ teenage years, facilitating through the 8 weeks is one of the most difficult things I do, and, at the same time, the most subtle. The knowledge of when to speak and when to refrain from speaking, when to lean on someone just a bit so that they’ll speak even without feeling pressured is as delicate a process as inserting an IV needle.

For 8 weeks these young adults came week after week to sit with us and wind their way through their dark tunnels of grief. Each week, after the evening was over, my co-facilitator and I told each other that we wanted to adopt each one of them. Certainly, I wanted to rescue them from their pain. And, since that wasn’t possible, I spent a lot of time figuratively sitting on my hands.

During the last two weeks, group members paint clay masks that they’ve made several weeks earlier and construct a memory box containing images and symbols that speak to their memories of the person who died. Often these are not literal pictures of the person, but images they’ve found in magazines or pictures they’ve painted inside and outside of the box.

I think of this box as a tool kit. Alongside the memories residing invisibly inside the box, there is also the knowledge of the coping tools they’ve learned in the group; how to address the non-grievers, how to approach a holiday without feeling you’re about to fall off a cliff and how there are others like you with whom you can travel. Going it alone becomes an option rather than a necessity.

As the group ended that night we sat quietly. My co-facilitator and I had said our goodbyes. Group members expressed their wishes that the sessions could continue longer (“I could paint for hours”), but I thought that as usual, they would take off quickly, disappearing into the darkness of night. But they sat. And sat.

I’m one of those people who have to take it on faith that sometimes the most important thing I can do as a therapist is to listen and be present. An old mentor used to caution me over and over: “Don’t rush the river.” But I’ve always found so much comfort in doing.  It makes me feel better. But as I pondered these young people the next morning, I realized why they continued to sit for so long. There was  comfort in simply being together. No words, not even images were necessary. They and their memories could dwell comfortably in the half-light.

Feb 25

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Young Adult Bereavement Art Group / Art Therapy in Action

Ceramic Grief Mask, Hannah Hunter ©2009

It’s February and that means time for the winter session of YABAG–or “The Young Adult Bereavement Art Group”. It began in 2009 as a collaboration across disciplines to serve young adults ages 17-24, who have lost a loved one. It has grown from an isolated observation into a dedicated vision of how to best serve this population niche, sponsored by UC Davis Children’s Hospital and UC Davis Hospice.

The group started when someone in our Children’s Bereavement Committee commented that there were no art therapy bereavement support groups for people this age. The heads at the long conference table all turned toward me. Me? Didn’t I have enough going on? However the prospect of beginning a program is something I find irresistible and I was soon on board.

A neonatal nurse, pediatric social worker, hospice bereavement coordinator (tongue twisting titles-good peeps) and I began to meet and over a period of several months and planned the group structure, curriculum and found funding. Our first group met in February of 2009 and my world cracked open.

I and my co-facilitator, a man of great humor and compassion, found ourselves in the presence of persons who were grieving losses by more causes than we could have imagined. We discovered that what often gets individuals of this age to a support group is the confluence of tragic circumstances.

What we also discovered was the openness of these young people show toward one another. Once these young people show up, what follows is honest and inevitable. Our program takes them and us through an 8 week journey of art and talking and listening, all designed to parallel the grief process.

We’ve worked hard to spread the word about this program; seeding the local universities, community colleges and high schools with fliers and reaching out to police departments, therapists and social workers.

It takes time for word to take hold and grow roots. YABAG is offered free of charge and meets from from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m., beginning Monday, February 28th and concluding Monday, April 11th.

If you know of anyone in the Sacramento area who might benefit from this work, please contact us for more information at 916-734-1139.