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(2016) Poststructural and narrative thinking in family therapy, Dordrecht, Springer.
People often search for meaning to soothe the pain of grief. Some turn to religious doctrine or secular rituals, others toward counseling. Some may connect to ancestral stories to find genealogical meaning for their own lives. Each of these quests may be aided by counseling conversations. Death particularly challenges the meanings of a relationship. This chapter will showcase the use of "remembering conversations' with a woman whose mother had recently died. Rather than finding personal meaning in her own individuality, she is comforted by finding it in a renewed sense of lineage, connecting meaning to her mother, grandmother, and her daughter. By crafting questions that focus on what remains following the death of a loved one, a counselor can assist the bereaved to connect multigenerational meaning with narrative legacies. These stories can infuse the relationship between the living and the dead, often affirming familial connections, with strength and vitality. The transcript of a narrative counseling session will be featured along with contextualization of the practices.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-31490-7_4
Full citation:
Hedtke, L. (2016)., Constructing matrilineal connections in a remembering conversation, in V. Dickerson (ed.), Poststructural and narrative thinking in family therapy, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 45-60.
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