Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/death-conversations-and-grief-practices-with-children/5027428/
The beautiful thing about the human experience is that everyone is having one, including the children. Their hearts are also much more open than ours, and they each possess inherent wisdom that adds to any conversation, given the language and context are appropriate to their level of understanding. But what if no one ever taught us, as adults, how to express our emotions in a healthy way up until now? How do we even begin to have these big conversations with children? I have learned to start by turning my attention to my inner world, so I can process my own emotions about past experiences and join the conversation from the present.
Expressing and validating emotions that we have held within ourselves is how we can expand our capacity to have these conversations with children. Telling the truth is easy when we can tell the truth to ourselves and the truth is always bearable when told with compassion. I would like to offer an intuitive or automatic letter-writing practice that has held me in times of grief, transition, life, and death; a practice that has supported other loved ones in their own life experiences. All you will need is writing material, pen, ...