From the very first page, Grief Doodling invites action. Topics range from the benefits of doodling, to why doodling is fun, to doodling tips, and responding to doodling prompts. The prompts, based on grief research, promote self-worth and healing. This is a hopeful book—something all grieving kids need.
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Here is a vitally important children’s title for social services workers, parents, grandparents … well, everyone, everywhere who suffered the loss of someone they love.
Grief Doodling: Bringing Back Your Smiles, written and illustrated by Harriet Hodgson offers a kind, gentle approach to the heavy subject of grief by using a physical process to express a feeling that is difficult for some learners to put into words.
This book is precisely what it says. It is a personal journey through pen and paper to understanding and accepting a recent life loss. Grief doodling, according to designer Steven Heller, is the art of thinking, which means that the practice of doodling helps a person’s mind calm down and allow tension to float away while they are drawing simple shapes and forms about whatever subject is on their mind at the time of creation.
Doodling stills the mind so that it can gather facts. Doodling transmits ideas as it allows the person doodling to express themselves; it helps the mind pay closer attention to the inner subject rolling around in a person’s head.
Hogson writes that additionally, doodling improves memory, releases feelings, is creative, and helps the doodler know him or herself. It can be spiritual but does not have to be. Doodling is whatever the doodler’s mind wants it to become.
And that is why doodling is the perfect application to present hands-on learners while processing the subject of grief. Because grief, Hogson says, is a journey and doodling offers beacons of light on that path.
This book is excellent. Among its contents are doodling technique tips, examples of an object that might represent sadness, stormy thoughts, or sunny days. There are no rules in this art title, which is the ultimate freedom for readers to work through their confusing, waves of feelings.
Grief Doodling: Bringing Back Your Smiles, is listed as a children’s title. But honestly, this one is perfect for my 57-year-old mind to use. I don’t know about anyone else, but in my case, when grief hits my heart and my breath catches in my throat, I feel very childlike; vulnerable, afraid, and unsure how to proceed. For my personality, processing confusing, sophisticated feelings with this approach is perfect.
Let’s take a quick look inside.
Hogson presents the process of grief in a visual way and its pages lead the doodler through the classic five-stage grief process; denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance.
Just reading this book’s intended message and thumbing through its pages, compels my mind to raise the subject of my latest grief process and challenge me to consider if I’ve made it through myself. This is the epitome of the word “workbook.”
Social workers, funeral homes, families, emergency staff, anyone who interacts with this inevitable, awkward, and emotional phase of life should at least have quick access to this 60-page title. Sometimes the best way we can help another person process their grief is by not saying anything at all. Instead, Grief Doodling: Bringing Back Your Smiles can do the talking for you.
Michelle Lovato of Michelle Lovato Book Reviews, https://michellelovatosbookreviews.wordpress.com