Narrating Your Grief

A workbook designed to guide the bereaved through grief using a clinically-informed, structured storytelling method, this book gives readers the ability to disclose their suffering and work toward healing and reconcile with their loss using narrative writing. Based upon her research and the ‘expressive storytelling’ method she created, Linita Eapen Mathew calls upon her own experiences losing her father along with carefully structured narrative exercises to teach readers how they can write, re-examine, revise, and re-write their grief story to work towards a point of clarity and release. Leaning into grief theory and trauma-informed and therapeutic writing research, Writing Through Grief allows readers to create a complete and consistent account of their experiences to help them process events that unfolded, release trauma, and relieve the intense reactions and responses to the loss of both the living and the deceased. With each chapter combining Eapen’s personal narrative with expressive storytelling exercises alongside discussion of the research behind them for context, this book offers readers a creative, productive but emotionally sensitive approach to handling grief. Whether guided by a trained psychologist, a workshop instructor or writing in the comfort of a personal space, writers can disclose their suffering and work toward healing and reflection through creative writing.