Mourning a loved one can be overwhelming
CLARE HOWARD GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

PHOTO BY DAVID ZENTZ/GHNS Bradley University Associate Dean Lori Russell-Chapin talks with student Jim Pilkey as she leads a graduate level course in which students have developed curriculums for dealing with grief for various age groups, from elementary school through high school.

PEORIA, ILLINOIS - Bradley University graduate students in counseling are learning grief and loss are muscles. Grief can be harnessed for strength and understanding, or it can run amok, draining energy, resolve and spirit.

Grieving well is a way to honor a person who has died.

These are not abstract thoughts but transformative concepts that have engaged 25 graduate students meeting Monday nights this semester in Room 100 of Bradley Hall.

Teaching ELH 620: "Introduction to Human Development Counseling" is Bradley University Associate Dean Lori Russell-Chapin.

Grief, Russell-Chapin said, is part of living richly.

One of the books on the class reading list is "Writing Your Grief Story" by Russell- Chapin, about her personal struggle with the death of her mother.

"I learned so much from my mother's death by being an active participant in it. A powerful journey," she said. "Grief transforms us. I am proud of myself and honored to have taken this journey."

Her mother, Helen Lucille McKay Russell, died in Wyoming in 2004 at age 90.

Russell-Chapin has been a grief counselor for 25 years. Yet even as a professional, she writes about dreading her mother's death and trying for two decades to prepare for it. She worried about not being able to survive the loss.

Staying busy, focused on other issues, is a false assumption about effective grieving, she said. On the other extreme, getting stuck in the process of grief, what she calls "becoming seduced by grief," is another misstep in the process.

"If grief is a skill set, it can be applied to every avenue of life," she said.

"People are afraid. They are ill-equipped to deal with loss and grief, and our culture does not encourage us to learn. But rather than a dark and scary place, grief is part of a richly lived life."

Healthy grieving, she said, involves anamnesis, a Greek word for remembering the past in the present.

"Getting stuck in grief dishonors our loved ones. They would never want that," she said.

In the past, her graduate course in human development counseling was structured around homeless youth. Another year, the focus was depression and the Illinois Valley Mental Health Association.

This year, the class developed age-appropriate curriculums tailored for children from elementary grades to adolescents in high school.

Last week, students met in the Packard Room of the Cullom-Davis Library and reviewed how their class curriculums would be downloaded on Second Life, the virtual reality Web site (www.secondlife.com). Anyone worldwide can access the material and use it in classrooms.

"Chaos is part of grief. Some people are afraid of their emotions," she said, noting that facts without emotion deny truths arrived at through the mind-bodyspirit connection.

Our society values and rewards achievement, success, moving ahead. Yet grief is a reflective process not validated by those measures of success.

"We don't get reinforcement from society for reflection," she said. "But every crisis in life stems from loss. Crisis is loss. Learning to deal with loss is an essential skill for everyone to function in life."

Storytelling is a way to understand and contextualize events in a meaningful framework. Talking and writing about grief are coping tools, Russell-Chapin said.

"Storytelling is healing," she said.•

Clare Howard can be reached at choward@ pjstar.com.