Chaplain as Story Catcher II

by Sergio Pino Cordova, Msc, MA, BCC/PC, PhD Candidate

Paradoxically, in grief you have to go backward before you can go forward. Our
cultural misconception about moving forward in grief stems in part from the
concept of the “stages of grief,” popularized in 1969 by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s
landmark text, On Death and Dying. In this important book, Dr. Kubler-Ross lists
the five stages of grief that she saw terminally ill patients experience in the face of
their own impending deaths: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance.
However, she never intended for her five stages to be interpreted as a rigid, linear
sequence to be followed by all mourners.
Grief is not a train track toward acceptance. Grief is not even two steps forward,
one step backward kind of journey it is often a one step forward, two steps in a
circle, one step backward process. It takes time, patience, and, yes, lots of backward
motion before forward motion predominates.  [CITATION Jef11 \l 1033]
In my experience, remembering the past is the very thing that eventually makes
hoping for the future possible.  Your life will open to renewed hope, love, and joy
only to the extent that you first embrace the past. Those who fail to go backward
before marching forward after a loss often find themselves stuck in the morass of
carried grief.
The person you are today is the sum total of all the experiences that have touched
your life. While your genetics also come into play, all the things that happen to you
and all the people you interact with shape you. And because time is linear, your
core is shaped in your earliest years in childhood.
Reflect on the past. The word “reflect” comes from the Latin words re, meaning
“back,” and flectere, meaning “to bend.” When someone reflect on the past, is
bend backward. They turn their gaze to that which is behind because it is not
actually behind them, it is still a part of them.

Carl Jung in Freud Letter Vol 2 The reason for evil in the world is that people are
not able to tell their stories.

Sublime importance of Grief and Mourning

Grief is what we think and feel on the inside when we lose some or something
important.[CITATION Ros96 \l 1033] When someone we love is diagnosed with a
life- threatening illness, we experience shock, anger guilt, sadness, and other
emotions. We think many dark and difficult thoughts and feelings go into a pot
called grief. Mourning is the word for grief expressed. While grief is what’s bottled
up inside you, mourning is the opening up, the letting out, and the sharing.
[CITATION Wol03 \l 1033]
Without mourning, grief festers. Contrary to the cliché “time heals all wounds”
grief does not magically dissipate through the passage of time alone. If it is not
expressed fully and honestly, it tends t result in ongoing problems such as
depression, intimacy troubles, chronic anxiety, substance abuse, and others.
[CITATION Mor18 \l 1033]
But with mourning or with mourning, what amazing rewards await us on the far
side of grief. When genuinely expressed grief has the potential to open us to a
richer and deeper experience of life.
A vital part of mourning is often “telling the story” over and over again. [CITATION
Wol03 \l 1033]
You might find yourself telling the story of the loss. You might find yourself
telling the story of the relationship. You might find yourself wanting to talk about
parts of the story more than others. Do you keep thinking about a certain moment
or period? If so, this means you should share this part of the story with others.
Find people who are willing to listen to you tell your story, over and over again if
necessary, without judgment. These are often “fellow strugglers” who have had
similar losses. Look for listeners who can be present to your pain without trying to
diminish it, “solve” it, or take it away. [CITATION Wol03 \l 1033]
The raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very
nature of culture and possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is
the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrativity could appear
problematical only in a culture in which it was absent- absent or, as in some
domains of contemporary Western intellectual and artistic culture,
programmatically refused. As a pan-global fact of culture, narrative and narration
are less problems than simply data.
Roland Barthes remarked, narrative is simply there like life itself… international,
transhistorical, transcultural.[CITATION Bar66 \l 1033]
Far from being a problem, then narrative1 might well be considered a solution to a
problem of general human concern, namely the problem of how to translate
knowing into telling, the problem of fashioning human experience into a form
assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-
specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of
another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming
from another culture.

Bibliography
Barthes, R. (1966). Structural analysis of narratives. Image, music, text.
Hodge, & al., e. (2002). Utilizing Traditional Storytelling to Promote Wellness in
American Indian events within any given narrative.
Jeffreys, J. S. (2011). Helping grieving people–When tears are not enough: A
handbook for care providers. . Routledge.
Morris, S. (2018). Overcoming Grief 2nd Edition: A Self-Help Guide Using
Cognitive Behavioural Techniques. . Hachette UK.

1
A narrative, story or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether
nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy
tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc.). Narratives can be presented through a sequence of
written or spoken words, still or moving images, or any combination of these. The word derives
from the Latin verb narrate (to tell), which is derived from the adjective gnarus (knowing or
skilled). Along with argumentation, description, and exposition, narration, broadly defined, is
one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, it is the fiction-writing mode
in which the narrator communicates directly to the reader.
Oral storytelling is the earliest method for sharing narratives. [CITATION The \l 1033] During most
people's childhoods, narratives are used to guide them on proper behavior, cultural history,
formation of a communal identity and values, as especially studied in anthropology today among
traditional indigenous peoples. [CITATION Hod02 \l 1033]
Narrative is found in all forms of human creativity, art, and entertainment, including speech,
literature, theater, music and song, comics, journalism, film, television and video, video games,
radio, game-play, unstructured recreation and performance in general, as well as some painting,
sculpture, drawing, photography and other visual arts, as long as a sequence of events is
presented. Several art movements, such as modern art, refuse the narrative in favor of the
abstract and conceptual.
Rosenblatt, P. C. (1996). Grief that does not end. Continuing bonds: New
understandings of grief, . 45-58.
The Power of Storytelling: How Oral Narrative Influences Children's Relationships
in Classrooms. (n.d.). International Journal of Education and the Arts.
Wolfelt, A. D. (2003). The journey through grief: Reflections on healing. .
Companion Press

Story teller image:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photomozaic/4333968001/in/photostream/