Survivors of suicide must contend not only with traumatic grief but also with shame, stigma, and silence. Poetry therapy is a powerful tool for healing in this population. The utilization of preexisting poems, along with the expressive writing of poems, letters, and journals, contributes to the desensitization of traumatic memories and helps the bereaved move beyond formless anguish toward a capacity for the verbal representation of psychological pain. Further, creative expression serves as a means for rejecting the implicit message of destructiveness that characterizes suicide. The author describes a variety of techniques that can be used as part of self-directed efforts at psychological repair (i.e., “auto-poetic healing”), as well as with individuals or groups in the context of professionally facilitated treatment.
Grief refers to the intense emotional distress that typically follows the death of a loved one. Factors that can make a loss particularly difficult include suddenness, violence, and/or a perception that the death was preventable (Doka, 1996). The causes of such losses include medical conditions (e.g., heart attack), accidents, homicide, suicide, terrorism, and war. The term “traumatic grief” serves to capture the idea that these types of losses are often inherently traumatic, and when they occur, the bereaved may show signs of both trauma and grief.
In this article, I focus on one type of traumatic grief, namely, that which occurs in the aftermath of a suicide. Researchers, clinicians, and the bereaved themselves have observed that the suicide of a loved one is almost always exceedingly painful (Baugher and Jordan, 2002, Carlson, 2000 and Stillion, 1996). Unlike most other forms of death, in many cultures suicide has a long history of being viewed as sinful or dishonorable (Stillion, 1996). For example, suicide was criminalized in England in the 10th century, and remained on the criminal statutes throughout Europe until the Enlightenment (Jamison, 1999 and Lieberman, 2003). Medieval law supported such practices as abusing the suicide's corpse (including driving a stake through the heart), refusal to bury the deceased in consecrated ground, seizure of property, and punishment of the suicide's family. Suicide was decriminalized in the United States during the 19th century, but remained a crime in Britain until 1961 (Jamison, 1999 and Lieberman, 2003). Religious and moral condemnations of the deceased person have persisted in contemporary times (Robinson, 2001). The linguistic practice of using the verb “commit” just before the word “suicide” still leads many people to unconsciously associate suicide with crime (e.g., adultery, murder). Further, in the aftermath of suicide, it is common for acquaintances, relatives, neighbors and even strangers to blame the person's closest relatives and friends for the death (Ross, 1997). Thus, in addition to all of the factors that make any death painful, and that make traumatic losses especially excruciating, survivors of suicide must also contend with feelings of guilt, stigmatization, and shame.
Many survivors remain silent about their anguish for years, either because others have conveyed the message that they are not comfortable with the topic or because the survivor fears social disapproval and rejection of him/herself and/or the lost loved one (Lukas & Seiden, 1997). Yet in order for healing to occur, it is necessary for the bereaved to move from a state of formless anguish to one in which the pain can be symbolized or represented, either in words or in non-verbal media such as drawings, music, and dance. It is also necessary to move beyond self-imposed or socially enforced isolation into a state of meaningful contact with at least one other human being.
In addition, suicide is generally viewed as an act of destruction. Hence, recovery from suicide loss can be facilitated by an active, willful countering of destructive tendencies. Any form of creativity can serve this purpose, but engagement in the expressive arts may yield particular benefits. Maintaining silence about the experience of loss, and about the loved one's life and death, prevents survivors from experiencing the sense of solace and release that result from authentic self-expression.
In this movement from silence to speech, poetry therapy can be a particularly helpful tool. “Poetry therapy” refers to the utilization of poetry and related forms of literature and creative writing in order to improve psychological functioning (Mazza, 1999). This can take place in a solitary, spontaneous way or in a formal professional setting. Usually, it is most effective to engage in a combination of receptive and expressive approaches, either within each session or across a series of sessions.
