The Spiritual Lives of Bereaved Parents

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 1999 - Family & Relationships - 229 pages

This book describes how parents lose, find, or relocate spiritual anchors after the death of their child. It describes how ordinary people reconstruct their lives after their foundations have shifted, and how they make sense of their world after one of their centers of meaning has been removed.

Klass grounds his descriptions of spirituality in his scholarly study of comparative religions, and in his two decades studying the lives of bereaved parents. He argues that continuing bonds with their dead children can give parents a new transcendent reality. Deceased children, like saints or bodhisattvas, can offer a bridge between the profane and sacred worlds, support parents as they find meaning in a world made forever poorer, and bind together a community adequate to parents' grief.

The book reports Klass's clinical practice and his work as advisor to a bereaved parents self-help support group.

From inside the book

Contents

of the ParentChild Bond
45
The Transforming Community
52
Conclusions
86
Comfort within Devastation
94
Finding Order in the Universe
126
Implications for Professionals Who Want
166
A Web of Bonds and Meanings
174
Healing is within Community
181
Optimism Pessimisim and the American
194
Conclusion
202
Understanding Bereaved Parents in a Counseling
208
The Ethnographic Tradition
214
Index
225
55
226
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases