Bereavement Care Training.

Day 1444.

Dr Joanne Cacciatore is passing her approach, her research, her experience in Compassionate Bereavement Care.

I am here in Sedona for the 4 day course.

In the room there are therapists, doctors, social workers, hospice workers, nurses …..and me.

Many of them are here on their own dime, some have suffered a great loss themselves, but all of them are here because they know the system and their formal training is failing those who have suffered as I have.

Science supports Dr Jo’s approach and it resonates with me fully.

You would think that it is common sense, but the examples show that many have been met with horrific re-traumatization by professionals that should know better.

Her care farm is unique. A heady mix of the healing power of rescued animals who are no stranger to trauma, nature with her velvety Sedona soil and rustling shade casting trees and a soothing river flowing through the hem of her land, and of course, Dr Jo, offers a safe place for those who find themselves here to explore their trauma. She doesn’t aim to help you feel better. She aims to help you feel. The healing comes not through the doing, but through the feeling. Before you can fix a problem , you must first feel it. The exit is through the wound.

In the past 4 years, I have seldom been awake before 8am, let alone showered and dressed and ready for an 8 hour lecture. But here I am, present and devouring the knowledge being shared.

The lectures mix science, research and case examples, deftly blended with film clips, art and poetry to illustrate the points.

I hear that what happens early on in traumatic grief affects the outcome dramatically and it strikes a chord deep within me.

Dr Jo shows a clip from a film where a military wife takes the dreaded telegram from the delivering cab driver and brings it herself to the widow to whom it was addressed. If you have to hear this news, how much better would it be to hear it from someone who understands?

Unlike a family in my grief group, whose son died out of state in a skiing accident, the police were not the ones to inform us about Luke’s death. There was no phone call, no kindly Californian cops at our door. This meant that deep in our shock, we had no information, no contact details, no map of procedure to follow, no guidance. We did not even know where Luke’s body was and had nobody to call to find out. The white noise of that trauma left me unable to even operate a cell phone let alone perform any research.

When I finally spoke to the State Trooper months later, he had no answers for me as to why they did not contact us or send a Californian envoy. Even he, a man whose job title includes the words ‘death and homicide’ gasped when he heard how it took 7 hours for us to hear the news and that our younger son, who had been contacted through facebook, whilst abroad, was left to tell us.

The horror that Luke could have ended up unclaimed and cremated as a John Doe, which almost happened to another Mother’s boy on GRASP, makes me shudder.

It was an early thought that maybe there should be a network of Mothers across America like me, who know this trauma, who can be called in when the police are too busy or whatever the fuck the reason was, to deliver this news with compassion and help them with all the shit that comes next, help them call someone or maybe just make tea like the cops of British TV dramas. And here, in Dr Jo’s lecture, is that concept right there on the screen.

“The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep”.

Henry Maudsley’s quote casts a silence across the room. These striking and poetic words, I know to be true, for me at least. And yet, the pathologization of the natural process of grief, and traumatic grief (they are not the same, despite what the DSM may say) and the dangerous seduction of suppression that fuels the widespread medicalization that often follows, despite the contradicting science regarding the path to a positive outcome, enrages me as the pharmaceutical industry continues to peddle it’s wares. Despite all my knowledge of this, the examples Dr Jo shares shock me to spontaneously let out a “FUCK!”, to the agreed amusement of the room and the other 20 or so on the zoom link.

As the lectures unfold I realize that my heart and brain has known all of this knowledge but here it is consolidated.

I have been deeply fortunate with my therapists, friends and family, where so many have not. But still it confirms the unfinished business with Luke in life and in my trauma of losing him. Not least of which is to spend some time with Adam to unpack the events of that first week when I was so frozen that I have no knowledge of all that he had to deal with alone.

Each element, each thought of how my experience could have been made less traumatic, is now listed. One by one, I will examine them all and take a deep dive to see what I can do to help those who come after me.

I took this course in the interest of doing no harm when I speak to other grieving Mothers who are part of this epidemic of drug deaths, but it has empowered me more than I can say and the training will place me on The MISS Foundation’s resource list of people who have completed the course, so that we can be sought out by those in need.

My path continues to amaze me.