Thirty years ago, Kenneth J. Doka coined the term “disenfranchised grief” to refer to losses people experience that are not socially sanctioned, openly acknowledged, or publicly mourned. The concept of disenfranchised grief is now widely recognized and used in the health professions and social sciences. Unfortunately, the same attention to the issue is less true of clergy training, ministry practice, and many caregiving circles.
Yet, this lack of awareness and training of clergy and congregational caregivers to attend to disenfranchised grief critically hampers their vital roles in validating and empowering grieving individuals, educating parishioners, and creating rituals that offer comfort and support to disenfranchised grievers. Disenfranchised Grief: Breaking the Silence helps clergy and ministry caregivers understand current grief theory and acknowledge a variety of situations in their congregations where grief might be overlooked or even discouraged. This book offers much-needed tools to help a variety of caregiving practitioners gain skills and strategies to enhance their ministries to an often-neglected population.