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1
Meaning Making and the Art of
Grief Therapy
Robert A. Neimeyer & Barbara E. Thompson

Grief, understood in human terms, has existed as long as humanity itself, standing as it does
at the intersection of attachment and separation, of love and loss. And for nearly as long
the anguish and hope uniquely associated with the death of members of the community
have found expression in art, from Paleolithic cave paintings to ritual chants, music and
dances across cultures, and from religious art in innumerable spiritual traditions to secular
poetry and prose. Our intent in compiling this volume was to explore this conjunction in
the contemporary context of grief therapy, where a lively acquaintance with expressive arts
modalities can make a profound contribution.
Like the reader, we have often found ourselves standing with bereaved clients in or near
the existential void conjured by losses of many kinds, as they strive to symbolize a deeply
emotional experience, share it with others, affirm life-sustaining bonds and meanings, and
find orientation in a changed world. In this process of exploration, articulation, validation,
and transformation, the bereaved and those who walk with them naturally reach beyond
the constraints of public language, and into the figurative, musical, performative, and visual
vocabularies of the arts, even in the context of psychotherapy.

Changing Theories of Grief

Ironically, the timelessness and universality of grief are not matched by the theories with
which it has been understood by psychology and related professions. Indeed, contemporary
conceptualizations of grief are in a state of ferment, as fresh models and methods have been
promulgated by an interdisciplinary array of scholars, researchers and clinicians (Neimeyer,
Harris, Winokuer, & Thornton, 2011). Only yesterday, it seems, time honored conceptions of
grieving as a painful process of “letting go” predominated in the mental health professions,
often buttressed by the simplifying assumption that people grieve in “stages” ushered in by
some form of denial, shock, or numbness, which gradually yield to bargaining, anger, or
protest, before moving through a state of depressive resignation on the way to acceptance or
recovery. Now, however, buttressed by findings that cast considerable doubt on the cogency
of this model as an adequate description of the bereavement trajectory (Holland & Neimeyer,
2010), grief theorists and researchers are embracing a great range of models that better ac-
count for the variegated courses by which people adapt to loss. It is clear, for example, that
roughly one-third of mourners experience few of the turbulent feelings associated with the

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4 Robert A. Neimeyer & Barbara E. Thompson

classic stage model, instead responding with considerable resilience or even relief from the
earliest weeks of bereavement (Bonanno, 2004). In stark contrast, roughly 10–15% percent
struggle with intense, prolonged and complicated grief, characterized by extreme separation
distress, preoccupation with the loss, and inability to function in major life roles across a pe-
riod of many months or years (Prigerson et al., 2009). And between these extremes fall a large
number of adaptive grievers who come to terms with their losses after a period of upheaval,
often without the benefit of professional therapy (Currier, Neimeyer, & Berman, 2008). The
burgeoning of recent research and scholarship in the field of bereavement has arisen partly
to account for these dramatic differences in outcome, as well as to test new therapeutic inter-
ventions for those mourners who struggle with their loss when drawing only on their own
resources and those of their families and communities.

Grief and the Quest for Meaning

One recent model to attract growing attention views grieving as a process of reaffirming or re-
constructing a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss (Neimeyer, 2001; Neimeyer &
Sands, 2011). Viewed through this lens, the death of a loved one, or even “nonfinite” loss in the
form of relational betrayal, personal injury, loss of career, or relinquishment of life-defining
goals (Harris, 2011), can undermine the basic storyline of our lives, launching an anguished
attempt to make sense of what we have suffered and who we are in its wake. A great deal of
evidence now supports a link between a struggle to find meaning in loss and complicated, in-
tense, prolonged and preoccupying grief, whether encountered by bereaved parents (Keesee,
Currier, & Neimeyer, 2008), older widows and widowers (Coleman & Neimeyer, 2010) or
those who have lost loved ones by violent means such as fatal accident, suicide, or homicide
(Currier, Holland, & Neimeyer, 2006). Moreover, inability to make sense of the death may be
the critical link between the spiritual struggles many of the bereaved report and complicated
grief (Lichtenthal, Burke, & Neimeyer, 2011), contributing to a vicious cycle in which acute
separation distress arising from the death of the loved one erodes one’s sustaining religious or
spiritual beliefs, further challenging one’s ability to find orientation in the experience (Burke,
Neimeyer, McDevitt-Murphy, Ippolito, & Roberts, 2011).
Viewed as a coping resource, meaning making in its various forms also has been associ-
ated with more favorable bereavement outcomes in several populations (Holland, Currier, &
Neimeyer, 2006; Lichtenthal, Currier, Neimeyer, & Keesee, 2010). For example, older bereaved
spouses who are able to make sense of their loss in the early months of their bereavement report
higher levels of pride, satisfaction, and wellbeing 18 months and a full four years following the
death (Coleman & Neimeyer, 2010). Moreover, integration of the loss experience over time
into survivors’ meaning systems is associated with gradual reductions in levels of complicated
grief for bereaved people, and with gradual recovery from symptoms of general psychological
distress for people experiencing other forms of trauma and transition (Holland, Currier, Cole-
man, & Neimeyer, 2010). There is even evidence that therapeutic interventions such as directed
journaling that are designed to enhance sense making and benefit finding in the loss (Lichten-
thal & Neimeyer, 2012) can bring about significant and sustained reductions in prolonged grief
symptomatology (Lichtenthal & Cruess, 2010), providing encouragement for the use of other
creative practices for fostering meaning making with the bereaved.
But what does it mean to make meaning of the loss? In the context of bereavement, one
answer might be that it involves two overarching narrative processes: The ability to process

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Meaning Making and the Art of Grief Therapy 5

the event story of the death itself, and the ability to access the back story of the relationship
to the deceased in a healing fashion (Neimeyer & Sands, 2011). In the first instance, we
search for a way to make sense of the loss, perhaps by seeking to understand why it hap-
pened, what it means for us, and how it fits into the larger story of our lives or our existential
sense of how the world operates. Of course, some losses pose a more profound challenge
than others in this respect, as when we are confronted by the deaths of children or young
people, contend with the reality of senseless violence, grapple with the trauma of suicide,
or experience the sudden demise of a loved one without warning. In such cases, meaning
reconstruction can be deep going, in effect prompting us to “re-learn the self ” and “re-learn
the world” (Attig, 2001), as both may be changed fundamentally in light of the loss. In other
circumstances, as with the anticipated death of an older person after a long period of illness,
meaning reconstruction in grief may be more subtle, as this transition may largely reaffirm
our beliefs about how life “should” be. Even in this case, however, we may be faced with the
need to sort through with ourselves and others what the loss means to us emotionally, and
how it fits into the evolving narrative of who we are, who we love, and how we live. In the
terms of the Dual Process Model of coping with bereavement, stitching together a cherished
past with an altered future entails oscillating between orienting to the loss and orienting to
restoration of our daily lives, as we revise our roles and goals in light of our changed circum-
stances (Stoebe & Schut, 2001). Table 1.1 offers some of the typical questions that clients
and therapists engage as they work to make sense of the event story of the death in clients’
ongoing lives.
The second major narrative strand by which we knit together the torn fabric of our
lives involves re-accessing and reconstructing the “back story” of our relationship with the
deceased. Especially when the person lost was a trusted witness to our past (such as a par-
ent or grandparent), an intimate partner in our present (as with a soul mate or sibling), or
a projected companion in or extension of our future (such as a child or grandchild), the
death can rend the web of bonds and meanings that sustains our most fundamental sense
of ­being-with-others. Evidence suggests that mourners with a basic sense of insecure at-
tachment may be especially vulnerable to depression and complicated grief in the wake of

Table 1.1 Sample of implicit questions entailed in processing the “event story” of the death

• How do I make sense of what has happened, and what is the meaning of my life now in its wake?
• What do my bodily and emotional feelings tell me about what I now need?
• What is my role or my responsibility in what has come to pass?
• What part, if any, did human intention, inattention or wrongdoing have in the dying?
• How do my spiritual or philosophic beliefs help me accommodate this transition, and how are
they changed by it in consequence?
• How does this loss fit with my sense of justice, predictability, and compassion in the universe?
• With what cherished beliefs is this loss compatible? Incompatible?
• Who am I in light of this loss, now and in the future? How does this experience shape or reshape
the larger story of my life?
• Who in my life can grasp and accept what this loss means to me?
• Whose sense of the meaning of this loss is most and least like my own, and in the latter case, how
can we bridge our differences?

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6 Robert A. Neimeyer & Barbara E. Thompson

such losses (Meier, Carr, Currier, & Neimeyer, in press), perhaps because they struggle to
reorganize their continuing bond to the deceased in a way that is sustainable in their physi-
cal absence (Field, Gao, & Paderna, 2005). This effort to reconstruct rather than relinquish
a connection to the deceased is recognized in contemporary theories such as the Two-Track
Model of Bereavement (Rubin, 1999), which accords equal importance to the conservation
of the relationship through memory, ritual, and emotional and spiritual bonds as it does to
biopsychosocial symptomatology. It is also consonant with a narrative therapy emphasis on
“introducing the deceased” to one’s social world through continued storytelling and preser-
vation of legacy, thereby “re-membering” them in the sense of reclaiming their membership
in the club of significant figures in our life (Hedtke, 2012). Table 1.2 offers some representa-
tive questions that clients and therapists address when they strive to access and accommodate
the continuing bond with the loved one in light of the death.
As many of the implicit questions entailed in processing the event story of the loss and
accessing the back story of the relationship suggest, engagement with meaning making in
bereavement can function as more than a “coping strategy” for “reframing” the loss in a
more positive fashion. Instead, a quest for meaning may yield a more ambivalent, ironic, or
philosophic recognition of the frailty of life, and move survivors toward greater humility, ap-
preciation, compassion, presence or spirituality as a result (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2006). And
indeed, research documents the common emergence of such posttraumatic growth in the
wake of loss, particularly when grief is substantial enough to foster profound processing of
the experience, but not so overwhelming as to make review and revision of one’s life premises
impossible (Currier, Holland, & Neimeyer, 2012).

Table 1.2 Sample of implicit questions entailed in accessing the “backstory” of the relationship to the
deceased

• How can I recover or reconstruct a sustaining connection to my loved one that survives his or
her physical death?
• Where and how do I hold my grief for my loved one in my body or my emotions, and how might
this evolve into an inner bond of a healing kind?
• What memories of our relationship bring pain, guilt or sadness, and require some form of
redress or reprieve now? How might this forgiveness be sought or given?
• What memories of our relationship bring joy, security or pride, and invite celebration and
commemoration now? How can I review and relish these memories more often?
• What were my loved one’s moments of greatness in life, and what do they say about his or her
signature strengths or cherished qualities?
• What lessons about living or loving have I learned in the course of our shared lives? In the course
of my bereavement?
• What would my loved one see in me that would give her or him confidence in my ability to
survive this difficult period?
• What advice would my loved one have for me now, and how can I draw on his or her voice and
wisdom in the future?
• Who in my life is most and least threatened by my ongoing bond with my loved one, and how
can we make a safe space for this in our shared world?
• Who can help me keep my loved one’s stories alive?

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Meaning Making and the Art of Grief Therapy 7

The Art of Therapy

What role might expressive arts modalities have in grief therapy, as viewed through the lens
of meaning reconstruction and related contemporary models of mourning? In a sense, the re-
mainder of this book represents an extended answer to this question. But here we will offer
some personal and provisional answers, in the form of representative clinical vignettes of thera-
peutic moments with two clients contending with losses both literal and symbolic. In each,
improvisational interventions drawing on the arts melded naturally with meaning-focused
therapeutic practice, suggesting that methods like those presented later in this book can greatly
extend and deepen the great range of creative practices that constitute our interdisciplinary
field (Neimeyer, 2012b). We will begin with a case that features bereavement following the
sudden death of a mother, and conclude with another that included losses of a broader and less
defined kind.

The Case of Delayed Kvelling

When I [BET] first met Esther, her mother was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and was living
in Florida. Though they had lived at a distance for many years, Esther and her mother spoke daily on
the phone.With a worsening of her mother’s condition, Esther made plans for a visit. Shortly thereaf-
ter, she learned that her mother had fallen at home, sustained a head injury, and was in intensive care.
Esther flew to Florida to be at her mother’s bedside, but her mother never regained consciousness
and died a week later. After sitting shiva with her family, Esther returned home.
In our next session, Esther tells the story of her mother’s death and says, “I’m through the trau-
matic phase and now it feels like I’m just grieving.” She describes “an absence of guilt”, which surprises
her, and a sense of “gratitude” coupled with “relief” that she attributes to the time spent preparing
for her mother’s death. “Living a good life and being well is what my mother would want for me, so
I’m going to allow myself to experience this”, she says.
Several weeks later, Esther begins our session by saying, “I feel like scrambled eggs . . . I feel stuck.”
I ask her if she would be willing to try something different, and introduce the possibility of drawing.
Esther responds, “I’ve been thinking about how blocked I am creatively. I want to do some storytell-
ing about my family because I come from a family of storytellers, but I don’t know how to do it . . .
I want to tell some new stories in a new way.” She continues to speak for some time about “trying
something new” and says, “I used to write a lot of poems in my youth, and would give books of my
poems to people I loved, but I stopped writing when I married [her husband].” Journaling is now one
of Esther’s primary forms of expression and she usually brings journal excerpts to therapy sessions,
often composed in the form of a letter to me. Esther plays the piano well, but has not played it much
in recent years or at all since her mother’s death. Elaborating, she says, “It doesn’t feel right to play
right now . . . I’ve draped the piano with a black cloth, and have placed a picture of my mother on it
and a candle that I burn daily.” Returning to the invitation to draw, Esther comments, “I can’t draw,
though I loved to draw with my son when he was a child . . . I’m willing to try.” As we further explore
the possibility of drawing, Esther says, “I don’t want to lose my connection to the gift that my mother
wanted to give me at the time of her death”, though she isn’t able to put this into words.
In the next session, Esther opens with an “intense dream” from two nights earlier. In the dream,
Esther is on the phone with her mother, who is giving her a recipe and telling her to add “a little bit
of this and a little bit of that” to make it just right. In the dream, Esther is aware that her mother is
“about to die,” but her mother doesn’t seem to be aware of this and Esther doesn’t know how to
let her know. Her mother is “carrying on a conversation just as she always had.” Esther looks fearful
and flustered, but is unable to elaborate in words. I ask her if she would like to draw, and she says

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8 Robert A. Neimeyer & Barbara E. Thompson

“yes”. Provisioned with high quality oil pastels and 14- × 17-inch white drawing paper, I say to Esther,
“Choose whatever colors you are drawn to and see what comes to mind without censoring.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Esther is immersed in drawing. She begins by drawing her mother
in the upper right hand corner of the paper. Her mother is smiling and holding an old fashioned
telephone with a cord. Then, Esther draws herself in the lower left hand corner. She too is holding
an old fashioned telephone. Bi-directional red arrows connect the two. I ask Esther to draw what
she would like her mother to know. In red pastel, she writes, “Please know how much I value you.”
I speak in the role of her mother and ask, “What do you mean?” Esther writes in green, “I realize
you’ve had guilt over my issues, but I truly want you to be aware of how much I know you loved me
and have taught me in ways you will never know.” I ask Esther, “What is your mother’s response?”
Esther smiles broadly and writes, “AH! . . . “ in big blue letters above the image of her mother. Then,
Esther draws a green butterfly beside her mother and says, “My mother loved butterflies.” Beneath
her mother, she draws a bright red heart with “peace” written inside, and then another heart with
“joy” placed inside. I ask, “How does your mother respond?” Esther draws a blue wavy line around
her own image, encircles this with a jagged orange line and says, “The blue is safety and the jagged
orange is lightening. It is protecting me, my mother is sending me protection.” “What else?” I ask.
Esther laughs and draws a big blue “OK!” in the center of the page. She then looks up and says, “My
mother wants me to know that I’m OK. She didn’t let me know that often in life, though at the end
of her life she wanted to let me know this and said it often. She worried about me, and thought I
was fragile. My mother had a lot of resilience; she went through so much. She has taught me this. I
have been through a lot as well. I’m also resilient.” Esther draws two red hearts underneath her own
image, with “peace” and “joy” written inside, then adds red lines connecting her hearts with those
of her mother. I ask Esther, “What name would you give your picture?” and she replies, “A conversa-
tion with mom. No, it was deeper than that.” In red, at the top of the page, she writes, “Coming to
peace with each other.”
After drawing, Esther says, “this was relaxing.” She then shows me a photograph that she received
recently from her brother. “Just over from Poland,” she says. “There must have been 50 of them and
my mother was a little girl. I don’t know how they all came together, but there they were. They made
it over from Poland, just before the War, 50 of them.There were others that didn’t leave and they per-
ished, but 50 of them made it to Ellis Island and I’ve had that photograph since I was a child.” Esther
continues with lively stories of her favorite photographs. Toward the end of the session, she says, “I
want to continue my conversation with mom . . . She was resilient. I’ve been thinking a lot about this
word recently. My mother taught me a lot.”
In the next session, Esther lets me know what she is doing to take care of herself, and notes that
she has gained weight, which is a health goal. Then, she says, “I was thinking about the drawing from
last week. I used to copy drawings with my son when he was little.” After a pause, Esther continues,
“A few days ago, I was looking at some books and there was this one image that I couldn’t stop
looking at.” She presents me with a nearly completed pen drawing of the cartoon characters Calvin
and Hobbes. In the image, Hobbes (a sardonic stuffed tiger who comes to life with Calvin) wraps his
arms around Calvin (a rambunctious and precocious six year old) in a loving embrace.The drawing of
Hobbes is complete, but only Calvin’s head is drawn. Esther remarks that she stopped drawing Calvin
because she felt her drawing was too amateurish. We look at the drawing together and she reflects,
“I realize how much I wanted to be held by my mother, but my mother wasn’t very touchy feely . . .
There was a lot of death in my family, one of my relatives died right in front of me and my grandfather
died in the house.” Esther remembers her mother’s words in response to her inquiries about death,
“You die and that’s it.” After pausing, Esther says, “I don’t remember being held by my mother or any
other adult and this would have helped . . . I did feel seen by my Uncle Paischee . . . I did feel seen by
my mother at the end of her life.” I invite Esther to draw. She draws an image of her mother with a
big smile and remarks, “My mother had blue eyes.” Then, she draws herself off to the side. Gazing at
the images, Esther says, “I’m not looking at my mother but she is looking at me.” She draws a red line

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Meaning Making and the Art of Grief Therapy 9

connecting the two images and elaborates, “In the picture, my mother is just looking at me, without
talking or being dramatic, and I am involved in whatever I’m doing just knowing that she is there with
me. We are both smiling. I feel seen.” I ask Esther to draw what her mother is seeing and she draws
a big red heart between the images of her mother and herself, with the words “love” and “pride”
written inside. Esther smiles and says, “My mother is looking at me and kvelling. She is kvelling, which
means she is happy and very proud.” Esther closes the session by telling me that she wants to take
home the drawing of her mother and herself and “make it bigger,” and she wants to “finish Calvin and
color in both Calvin and Hobbes”, as reminder of being held and seen.

The Case of the Pulsating Core

By his own admission, Grant had been “crippled by depression” for the majority of his 29 years. Al-
though much about this experience remained mysterious to him, he recognized the basic source of
his grief clearly enough, tracing it to the many losses that followed from the sexual abuse by a man
in his neighborhood that began in his late childhood, and that continued until he finally had the cour-
age to report the cause of his growing distress to his parents at the age of 12. As legal action ensued
and his abuse was made public, Grant moved into an adolescence marked by a recurring pattern of
substance abuse and hospitalization when the pain became so intense that he was moved to the brink
of suicide. Somehow he had survived and “outgrew” the drugs, “using school to give [his] life mean-
ing,” until his graduation from college deprived him of that means of coping. Sitting in my office at the
outset of our first session, Grant acknowledged candidly that “there was so much [he] tried to hide
from, couldn’t look at.” His pursuit of therapy with me [RAN] was his admission that despite his effort
to “put up a representation of [himself] as polished and confident to be accepted by others,” in fact,
“inside, [he] was coming undone.” Sketching the outline of his story, he concluded that he “wanted to
be free, and not dance around the problem, not run from it anymore.”
Alerted to Grant’s readiness to “be honest with [himself] and others, as the only way to move
forward,” I focused his attention on his then dominant feeling—his “fear of being around people,”
something that he noted was “almost physically painful.” “Where,” I asked him, “did [he] feel that pain
now?” Grant replied without hesitation, “In the pit of my stomach, almost like a physical cramp.” I
therefore used analogical listening (Neimeyer, 2012a), an experiential therapy method related to fo-
cusing (Gendlin, 1996), to help him further symbolize the felt sense of emotion in his body. Nodding
my head and slowing my voice, I continued:

Bob: I wonder if you could just close your eyes (closing my own to give him “permission” to
do so) . . . and just allow your attention to shift to that painful space . . . just standing off to one
side of it slightly. What do you sense, as you observe it closely, without being swallowed by it?
Grant: (5 second pause) . . . Um, it’s almost like a throbbing, wavy, like a mirage . . . a distant pain,
not very formed . . . like an outline. It’s not formed, clear, recognizable.
Bob: Mmm . . . Can you just take one step closer to it? [Grant nods slowly.] Does the form
change in any way?
Grant: No, I don’t see any change; it’s still like an outline.
Bob: Okay . . . Does it have any shape or color to it?
Grant:Yeah, it’s like a purple color in the center, and the edges are outlined, by, by like a yellow
ring, and then it’s dark on the outside.
Bob:Ah. Is there any movement associated with it? Does it seem to want to move in any direction?
Grant:Yeah, it’s like it’s pulsating . . . and it feels like it wants to move down, intuitively.

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10 Robert A. Neimeyer & Barbara E. Thompson

Bob: Uh huh . . . Can you just let it shift in that direction, a little bit? [Grant nods, smiles slightly.]
What’s the feeling?
Grant: It’s funny, like it’s a little lighter. It makes me hopeful, if I could just release it, let it go.
Bob: Um hmm. Try saying to it, “I’m willing to release you.”
Grant: (hesitantly) I’m willing to release you . . . Hmm [furrows brow].
Bob: Is it like a part of you is not so sure?
Grant:Yeah. It’s like part of me isn’t ready, and knows it would come back.
Bob: Ah. Try saying, “You can stay.”
Grant:You can stay . . . But it’s not like it’s a friend. It’s just familiar . . . It’s like I’m afraid to let it go.
Bob: Tell it, “I’m afraid to let you go.”
Grant: I’m afraid to let you go . . . I wouldn’t know how to live without you [beginning to weep
silently].You’ve been there so long.You’re a part of me, are me.
Bob: With these loyal words, does it change in any way?
Grant: It’s not quite so dark purple, more yellow. It’s like the yellow has drifted down, blended
in. It’s lighter.
Bob: Does this shape have a name?
Grant: . . .Yes. “Core.”

Concluding this analogical exploration of a complex felt meaning, I invited Grant to take a few
cleansing breaths with me, then open his eyes and process the experience. Drying his eyes, he noted
that the visualization had been “very helpful,” as it allowed him to “have a parameter, something that
helps me identify it, that makes it tangible.” Wondering if his richly embodied visualization struck him
as different in any way from the “rational ways of knowing” associated with his work as a financial
consultant, I suggested that it seemed like a yin-yang relationship, the complementarity of shadow
and light. Grant readily agreed, and added that it was in the former, shadow knowledge that he oc-
casionally “found peace and freedom,” as when he would sit in meditation. I concluded the session
naturally by suggesting that he might find it valuable to revisit the image in his meditation during the
following week, and perhaps even try to capture it in oil pastels on a large sheet of paper. Intrigued,
Grant accepted the assignment.
Grant returned for our second session with an artist’s notebook under his arm, and at my invita-
tion opened our conversation with his drawing (see Figure 1.1).
I began by asking him how he felt as he produced it. His response—“more real, authentic, like a
kind of easing or release”—suggested the value of the art in consolidating the felt shift he had experi-
enced in an incipient way in the session. As I expressed interest in how he had begun the drawing, and
how it progressed, he explained that he had begun as in the visualization with an outer ring of yellow,
then proceeded to the purple interior and finally to the darkness surrounding it. Spontaneously, Grant
recalled that when we had invited him to take a step toward releasing it, he “hadn’t been ready,” but
gradually had thickened the outer ring of the image into the middle, mirroring his visualization, diffus-
ing “particles of yellow in the purple,” as he pointed to them with his finger. I inquired whether the
different colors reflected different emotions. Grant replied that “the blackness was anger or fear . . .
the two are closely related,” and that the yellow was “joy or bliss.” As to the purple inside, he added,
he “wasn’t sure what to make of it . . . It’s like what I feel, like the bliss is protective of something.”
Probing further, I asked “whether there had been times that [he] had felt protective bliss even in the
midst of anger and fear,” gesturing toward the surrounding blackness. This gave rise to a strong and
immediate memory, nearly forgotten, of how he had felt as a child going to court to testify against his
abuser, awash in fear, but also with a deep sense of conviction that ultimately eclipsed the fear, and left
him feeling “free.” The session then moved forward, tacking between his concrete experiences in the
past and present, and his more intangible experiences of fear and hope. As we concluded, I invited him

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Meaning Making and the Art of Grief Therapy 11

Figure 1.1 Grant’s initial image of the “pulsating core.”

to revisit the evolving image of the pulsating core in his meditation, and if he felt moved to do so, to
again render the result in pastels. Nodding knowingly, Grant agreed.
The following week Grant again returned with an image, more variegated and colorful than the
last (see Figure 1.2).
As he meditated, he explained, he “saw patterns, but couldn’t hold them for long,” as they seemed
to be changing much more quickly than before. He had begun the subsequent drawing with the
diamond in the middle, the purple “less amorphous” than previously, and the yellow layers again rep-
resenting bliss, adding that he hoped the two would continue to merge. He then drew attention to
the ornate irregular shapes surrounding the diamond, each of which corresponded to an experience
with suicide in his life. Pointing first to the black shape to the upper left, he described the death of an
uncle by suicide when he was young. The blue form on the upper right represented the suicide of a
boy he had known in high school. The green shape in the lower right referred to the drug overdose
of a friend five years before, after Grant himself had begun to pull his life together. And the final gray
area on the lower left symbolized the serious suicide attempt made by an uncle who remained a
major support figure in Grant’s life.The red outline around each of the figures, he said, was fear, which
continued to “swim” around each of these tragedies as Grant himself had repeatedly been drawn to
a similar brink. Finally, the “arrows in the corners, pointing out,” represented “how their lives might
have developed . . . if they had not short-circuited their possibilities.” Clearly, Grant was committed
to freeing himself from the threat of similarly tragic foreclosure. Woven seamlessly with experiential
work in our therapeutic sessions, artistic expression helped Grant find meaning in a complex history
of loss and grief, while also symbolizing and cultivating the prospect of peace and freedom that he
began to sense as our work moved forward.

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12 Robert A. Neimeyer & Barbara E. Thompson

Figure 1.2 Grant’s evolving image of the variegated “diamond” of fear and hope.

Concluding Thoughts
As bereavement theory has evolved beyond formulaic depictions of stage-like movement
through a sequence of painful emotion (Neimeyer et al., 2011), grief therapy has similarly
evolved to include a great range of creative procedures to help people find new meaning and
orientation in a turbulent experience (Neimeyer, 2012b). We compiled the present volume to
extend this work, inviting many of the leading practitioners of expressive arts therapies to de-
scribe and illustrate their favorite methods across a range of modalities and to offer glimpses
of the research that informs (and is informed by) their practice. We trust that readers will
join us in being instructed and inspired by their contributions, so that we might collectively
respond more artfully as grief therapists working alongside clients negotiating difficult life
transitions.

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