Right off the top, on the table of contents, in large, bold, and italicized print, the article "Are you expecting too much from your comforters?" jumped off the page at me. A couple of pages later, there it was again. So, I jumped ahead to page 90, and the article about whether or not you are expecting too much from your comforters. The signs that your expectations are too much are that you are angry with your comforters, or that you are isolating yourself from your comforters, or that would-be comforters avoid you. This isn't terribly helpful. It's not exactly objective. Anger tends to be an aspect of grief in any case. Would-be comforters, and many long time friends, avoid you anyways, because in our society we are not allowed to talk about death, pain, or grief, and would-be comforters may be terrified that you will do so. The article then goes on to say not to expect perfection, not to expect mind reading, that your comforters have lives that they need to attend to, that your comforters won't grieve identically to you, that you can't expect comforters to place you at the center of attention at all times. Okay, this is all straw man argument stuff. Nobody expects all of their friends, and everyone they encounter, to fall all over themselves providing for you even if you are bereaved. The article is pointless. It is not helpful. Yes, it is quite possible that, as a mourner, you have unreasonable expectations. It is quite possible for anyone, in any situation, to have unreasonable expectations. But this article sounds very much like it is simply a "get out of jail free card" for those who expect to be accepted as comforters, but don't want to put an awful lot of effort into the task. In many ways this is a description of the program as a whole: this is a canned program for those who want their church to have a grief counselling offering, but don't actually want to put any work, caring, or effort into it.
With this kind of a beginning, I do not have high hopes for this program.
Even before I found the "expecting too much article," the relentless marketing of the parent organization of Grief Share, the advertising interspersed on various pages, the cards embedded in the back of the workbook that you are supposed to hand out to your friends promoting the organization and the program, and various other marketing aspects, was off-putting. The people who will be attending a grief share group are mourning, bereaved, grieving, and therefore damaged. To put such relentless marketing aimed at this particular group seems wildly unfair.
The introduction to the material starts out with a kind of a version of the four spiritual laws, and an invitation to turn your life over to Christ. While this may be admirable in terms of church recruitment, it seems a bit much to ask people to make this kind of commitment when you have not, in fact, done anything at all for them yet.
The individual sessions, and they are thirteen in all, are heavily larded with questions or notes, with space for those attending to make notes. However, the number of questions, and the number of topics covered in each session, make it highly unlikely that everyone in the group will have a chance to respond to all the questions. True, in a grief group one does not expect each attendee to respond to every activity. However it is extremely unlikely that a group of any size would be able to have every attendee in the group even attempt to respond to the questions listed in a given session. In keeping with the extensive inclusion of self-promotional materials, each session ends with an ad for the next. (Next time on "Grief Share": will Albert, faced with loneliness after the death of his wife, inappropriately marry that bimbo? Is Alex failing in his duty to love the Lord as much as his dead son? And what about ... Naomi?) (Well, no, not exactly, but it *feels* like that.)
The listed titles for the thirteen weekly "sessions" don't seem to make much difference to the content of any given session: the material seems to be generic, somewhat random (with a number of points being repeated during several different "sessions"), and sometimes heavily-handedly Christian. (Many times the material seems to be trying to "guilt" Christians into a specific type of response.) This program is definitely on the "intuitive" end of the scale, demanding emotional responses. While the material frequently notes that each person's grief process is unique, there is a very definite subtext of "but *you* are doing it wrong." There is little scope for a group leader to vary the material or discussion involved in the program, and little opportunity for attendees, even if Christian, to question the assertions made about the "proper" Christian response to grief. On the one hand this makes some sense, as the leaders are not trained professionals, and there is always a danger of allowing amateurs to manage something as important and complex as grief, but, on the other, the "one size fits all" approach does not allow for individual reactions to loss. (I have already heard, via other channels, of people who have abandoned the program for professional counselling, which is probably a good idea.)
Probably the best thing I can say about this program is that those who would be willing to attend it are unlikely to be harmed by it ...
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