COMMUNITY GRIEF COUNSELING

I traveled to Raton on a Sunday and I “Degriefed” the community for that entire week, concluding with a candle lit memorial ceremony at the hospital Friday as the sun was setting over the ridges or rock, I named the deceased over the last decade of the town’s deceased memorial held outside the hospital, a sad town wedged into the high craggy desert of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Northern New Mexico. Black lung disease, alcoholism, attrition, road rage fatalities teen pregnancies, and domestic violence, encouraged restless teens to join the Iraqi war as away out.

Too many suicides imposed a growing shroud of grief suffocating the life out the surviving members of this community. I’d been to Raton 3 years earlier to present two back to back Degriefing seminars the pastoral and healthcare professionals in the craggy region.

HOW TO ADMINISTER HEALING MODELS GLOBALLY IS TO DESIGN town size ways to serve humanity by meeting the needs of an individual community. Raton was grieving its health, its children, jobs, economy it’s sobriety and hope.

I spent 5 Days teaching, training, counseling and normalizing and ritualizing loss; meeting individuals exactly where they were at in public and professional seminars, the hospital, the high school, guidance counselors and bereaved families, patients, physicians and administrators and individuals and in ceremony honoring the lost loved ones from the last 10 years.. with a step by step proposal participants will be introduced to the ways to approach a bereft.

The crisp November sky foretold snow. We wrapped ourselves in ponchos and fleece and stood warmhearted in the twilight to be together to honor Raton’s deceased. From stillbirths to hangings this town mourned the devastating effect of sharing a long intimate history of unresolved, unmentioned losses.

Grief scatters and shatters linear thinking; affecting both individual and
community. Unresolved loss was left to fester in the bodies and minds of the ancestors of the original pioneering settlers. Many were related, others merely familiar.

Generations of social stigmas, fear, shame and blame eroded trust and
producing anxiety promoting community agitation.

We concluded a week of community Degriefing by naming, out loud and outside the community members that had died within the last 10 years. The candlelight ritual that included clear jars of colored sand holding steady, candles blowing in the high desert wind, that were placed each time the Tibetan bowl gonged and a name was heard.

Thriving mining industry once inhabited Raton and housed an ethnic population of Anglo and Mexican. Now facing abject economic despair, wedged into the craggy Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Raton was the last town on Rt. 25 in Northern New Mexico. The Miner’s–Colfax Medical Center sat above the town.

The mountains gave a sense of forever as the light continually changed and the sky darkened to reveal a crescent moon.

Too many suicides imposed a shroud of grief; heartbreak suffocating the
lifeforce out the surviving members of this community. Black lung disease,
alcoholism, attrition, road rage fatalities, teen pregnancies, and domestic
violence encouraged restless teens to join the Iraqi war hoping for a better
option.

Four years earlier, I presented two Degriefing seminars to pastoral and
healthcare professionals at the Miner’s Colfax hospital. This time I collaborated with a woman named Melody. During that entire work week this time I was invited to Degrief all willing community residents, from the high school, to the first responders.

Raton now harbored a new organic fuel, it’s reservoir of human grief. They
needed instruction about how to work with embodied grief. Their grief would be used harnessed creatively and compassionately to power the healing of hearts.

Raton was now in severe bereavement overload; suffering from the exponential effects of shared primary losses producing a multitude of secondary losses.

Fresh grief exacerbates prior losses. When losses combine they don’t add up numerically. They exponentially accumulate Each aspect of loss has it’s story; somatically resonating throughout this pueblo. Grieving its health, its children, jobs, economy it’s sobriety and hope.

Degriefing Raton was a five day publicized event. I held space for healing to
happen, for grief to transform. I actively participated teaching by education and normalizing, loss and grief specifically to what ever my audience was. Bereaved parents, battered wives, single moms, physicians, public administrators Guidance counselors, teachers, police and pastors requested and had private time with me.

I offered consultations, privates sessions and seminars, integrative therapies, and written resources. I made recommendations to the Public Library to acquire books and to the physical education teacher how to use the physical activity for releasing pent up somatic grief.

Whether in empathic communion with hospitalized oxygen–masked men, in the lounge with their wives, or four assemblies at the high school, Degriefing counseling meets individuals or groups exactly where they were at emotionally.

Questions, questions, questions. All populations had been asked to identify
their questions about loss and grief. Their questions were forwarded to me, and answered anonymously. Their questions were encouraged, respected, compassionately heard and responded to. They were asking for recognition of their wounds and some skills and tools they might use to engage in Healing Hearts in their community; thus honoring themselves with healthy shared experience.

With the use of narrative and a photojournalistic, step by step proposal
participants will be introduced to the ways Degriefing can approach and
embrace a bereft community.