Grief expert Marty Tousley, CNS-BC, FT, DCC recently listed the signs of what disbelief or denial looks like in individuals who have suffered the death of a loved one. She carefully outlines when such a state may become unhealthy to the point of interfering with normal, daily functioning.

She explains this state of denial from a neurological point of view:

“Understand that denial serves a normal function, especially in the beginning. It is your mind’s way of protecting you from more pain. Besides, your brain doesn’t “get it” because it is loaded with memories of your loved one. Although the person has died, the one you love continues to exist in your memory and in the memory of others.”

Marty Tousley instantly had my attention.  She talks about our brains  becoming “loaded with memories of [our] loved one. Of course. There is so much unloading of visual memory in the aftermath of grief that there is very little relief from these melancholic movies of happier days. They play endlessly in the heads of the bereaved. But it is the ban on off-loading these endless memories to family members and friends that becomes even more unbearable in the months to come.

Family and friends will gradually try and steer clear of the Death Conversation Loop — that is, the conversation with a grieving mother, let’s say, who feels compelled to bring up the subject of her deceased child while always referring to the child in present tense.

What actually is happening here? A mother is bravely, vainly trying to keep precious memories alive without going stark raving mad. If she stops talking about her child, their lifeblood will become erased from public memory. The idea of erasure is terrifying to her. She can feel a yawning gulf forming between herself and confidantes.  More and more often, they are putting  gentle pressure on her to clam up and “talk about something positive for a change.”  And these are the people who say they love her and would do anything for her!

Her best option is to see a therapist – and bravo if she does. Except when she returns home and wants to share insights from therapy, what happens? Those same confidantes will ask politely, cautiously, for her insights. When they ask for “a break,” this will tear her apart. Her mind will explode if she can’t talk about her dead child.

A place to “save” memories outside of our brains

This is where my healing work with personal photographs comes into play. If I can integrate this mother’s favorite memories of her deceased child — that is, all the visual memories overwhelming her mental circuitry because they are not being processed in conversations with the people who say they love her — this assuages her greatest fear. The fear of erasure.

The off-loading can now occur in the conversation between myself (the legacy artist) and the grieving mother. To create The Healing Dreamscape (a meaning-laden photomontage), we are likely to talk through each of the memories jostling for attention, and decide jointly which are iconic and which are less so. The memories we ultimately choose for the child’s legacy portrait are then integrated into a single picture; a royal portrait of sorts, which captures their essence at a glance.

Like a gentle fade to black at the end of a movie, the mother’s memories of her child now inhabit a remembrance portrait instead of her weary mind.  On display, the portrait itself begins to initiate conversations about the Child That Was. The mother’s eyes now exude dignity and nobility, not hysteria.The confidantes slowly build their courage; the legacy portrait helps them find the right words.

The end of a child’s life leads into the legacy of their life.

The art of doing no-thing with a needy patient is different from doing nothing for a needy patient. It’s an exercise in self-restraint for the doctor, and an exercise in self-discovery for the patient.

Dr. David F. Wehlage, a psychiatrist in Indiana published The Art of ‘Doing No-Thing in the Rhode Island Journal of Medicine back in 1986. It was a look at what may be the “most subversive activity, or inactivity, in modern medicine,” writes Abigail Zuger, MD.  (Zuger writes about Wehlage’s technique in her article “Don’t Do Something; Just Sit There.”) Wehlage advocated doing no-thing with particularly needy patients to activate their own natural problem solving capabilities.

Not unlike the art of parenting a bored child by telling them to try a little no-thing, Wehlage’s technique appears to be a form of reverse psychology, activating an individual’s instinct to rebel and go in the absolute opposite direction – which is brainstorming with oneself.

Namely, Wehlage says doctors occasionally need to write their own prescription which states in no uncertain terms that the patient should leave the office empty-handed (without yet another prescription, “weighty pronouncements,” or even placebos).

His philosophy of Doing-Nothing after periods of Doing Everything in Your Power include:

• Do not presupposed that people want something done
• Do not do something for people they can do themselves
• Do not presuppose there is something to offer

The question is, can this be applied not just to the relationship between doctor and patient or mother and child,  but also friend to friend? Does it work when there is no clear parental figure in the relationship?

Tugend also tracks down George Miles, curator of the Western Americana collection at Yale University. He’s drawn to the way photographic prints in an album convey narrative. “Someone made a story, ” says Miles, ” this image goes before that one and after this one… to tell a story that implies movement and sequencing and narrative.”

The lost art of storytelling begins with beautiful textured pages, captions, marginalia and the reassuring weight of an album spread open across our lap ……

Anita Wills, host of “Anita Talks Genealogy” on Blog Talk Radio interviewed me about my Ancestor Dreamscape work on April 11, 2011 from her California studio. Wills, the author of two books Pieces of the Quilt: The Mosaic of An African-American Family, and Notes and Documents of Free Persons of Color is a specialist in African-American and Native American genealogy research. 

“Putting the memories from past and present together, a step I never thought about – – this was an eye-opener for me. I never thought about taking a picture of myself and super-imposing it on a photograph of my ancestors. I have pictures from the past, but this would be just like being there. I often go to Chestnut County, Pennsylvania where my great grandfather Samuel Ruth and his mother Leah Warner lived, and I can see doing an Ancestor Dreamscape where I stand there, with them. The Ancestor Dreamscape then becomes ”the” picture I have of Samuel and his mother and me! I can already see them there in my mind with me. My people, who walked here and lived here.  My great grandfather was a white man who descended from a German father and an African mother. That father had a farm and two or three slaves. But Samuel chose to carry the Ruth name. I have pictures they took in the area back then in the 1800s. It’s a rural area, full of Dutch farms and part of the Underground Railroad. Never thought of putting myself in the picture before. But when somebody says, you look a lot like your grandmother – it would be amazing to see my great great grandmother’s picture and my picture together. It would really show how we do look alike. It would be spiritual for me.” 

Heritage or “Roots” travel

Anita acknowledged that she was looking recently for a travel agent who could take her back to Guinea where her great great grandmother lived. She found out what tribe Leah was from –part of the Keita and Camray tribe that came in from Mali to Guinea, around the 1300s. Here are some suggestions I gave Anita for fulfilling her dream.

Before you go on a heritage vacation, think about setting up a variety of shots:

1. Pose in the exact spot depicted in your family’s archival photos
2. Wear authentic clothing from that time period
3. Hold meaningful objects passed down to you from these very distant ancestors
4. Pose in front of your ancestral home, or even on the street outside where your ancestors once lived
5. Pose with living relatives residing in or near your ancestral home
6. When you return from your trip, tell me your vision for an Ancestral Dreamscape and I will work with scanned versions of your vintage photos and the heritage vacation photos I collect from you digitally.

Be sure to tune into the next segment of Anita Will’s Blog Talk Radio show “Anita Talks Genealogy” Wednesdays 7:00- 7:45 pm, and Fridays, 7:00-7:45 pm PST.

Linda Coffin knows one thing, and that is that narrative and design “simply must go hand-in-hand if we want to do justice to the story.” In a recent thread on The Association of Personal Historians listserv, Linda (founder of the full service company HistoryCrafters) articulates what many people in the life story industry feel about the relationship between good information design, rich imagery, good story-telling and emotion.

Linda writes:

“A case in point: my client’s family was unhappy with his narrative, telling him that he hadn’t put enough emotion into it and that it was boring to read. But now that I’ve redesigned the layout and given them a sample of the first chapter, the narrative flows in a clearly readable form. The photos are now sharp and crisp and sitting next to the text they illustrate. The chapter and topic divisions make sense. The headers and footers are correct and help guide you through the story. Guess what? Suddenly his family is thrilled. “Wow, Dad, this is great stuff,” said the same son who earlier had complained that there was no emotion in his story. Same client, same material, same story, but much better design and production.”

High production values and original cover go hand-in-hand

What we’re talking about is professional production values:

• Chapters laid out like a good film, whether it runs linearly, in flashbacks or uses some other dramatic device
• Clear headers and footers; the equivalent of website “breadcrumbs” which show the reader where they came from and where they’re headed
• High resolution images (e.g. photographs and documents)with captions that correlate with the text and serve as self-guided tours, pointing out extraordinary visual details and back stories otherwise missed

But there is yet another significant metamorphosis that professionally conceived life stories should undergo – a vital step that can make all the difference in the world. It is adding the line-item of original artwork for the cover of your legacy work (and, if budget allows, chapter art as well). Why artwork for the cover, versus just selecting one compelling photograph from your archives? Because art sends out the single most important message about our hero/heroine: it encapsulates the point-of-it-all. It communicates the meaning of the subject’s life and the point of the narrative directly into our right brains. And it accomplishes this complex story-telling, among many other things, with the medium’s sensual expression of feeling, and the artist’s intentional use of atmosphere, subject matter and props.

What kind of artwork is right for the cover of your legacy book, CD or DVD?

When it comes to recommending what imagery should become the “face” of your legacy project, your best bet is to defer to the project’s Creative Point Person. They may be, as in Linda Coffin’s case, wearing multiple hats (as graphic designer and book editor, for example.) Their talent is knowing the importance of future generations seeing a “likeness” in the face or landscape on the cover. So they will be on the lookout from the beginning for visual imagery that subconsciously telegraphs the kind of people portrayed in your legacy work.  Whether it should be a digitally-enhanced photograph, a photo-realistic painting, a mixed media photo collage or even a surrealistic photomontage with whimsical objects will come down, in the end, to what best communicates the psychological “point-of-it-all.”

Most likely the Point Person will have touched every archival photograph in the possession of the family from the very beginning of the project. They will have been in the client’s home, and seen photographic portraits or paintings on the wall. They will have been the first to learn whether the subject had artistic proclivities in the “early years” (i.e. watercolors made in high school or a sketch on a napkin), or if the subject is still making art, they may be the very person to urge the subject to create a self-portrait for the cover. If a talented family member volunteers to create original artwork for the project, they will know right away whether this is a brilliant idea, or not.

As a curator and full service graphic designer, professionals like Linda Coffin have an excellent sense of what kind of imagery belongs on the cover, because they have been living and breathing the “point-of-it-all” for months. They have edited the text and laid out the content in the most logical and entertaining manner possible. If it’s fitting, they may recommend that haunting photograph of the subject before (or after) a catastrophic event. If no truly striking photographs exist, they may recommend a mixed media piece that transforms a so-so photograph into a Renaissance portrait, complete with meaningful objects set in a backdrop that divulges the subject’s status, profession and even cause célèbre.

Ultimately, what you are paying for is your Point Person’s heightened sense of objectivity. That “distance” from the project is precious because it enables them to pick up on the big patterns or themes behind a life review and bring the best one front and center.

So what are the proven winners in terms of cover art?

From the family:

• Self-portraits: in any medium, executed at any age, by the subject (or) a family member
• Mixed media or photo collage work, combining multiple still photographs and artwork, by hand

From a professional artist, commissioned work, such as:

• Portrait of the subject, at any age, in any medium (even a sculpture can be photographed and used as an image)

Fig.1. The Journey of Henry Kagan. Artist: Lisa Kagan

• Photo collage or mixed media combining archival photographs, stills from archival film/video, with or without artwork (Fig. 2. Mixed media with one photo by Lisa Kagan of Family Heirloom Arts)

Fig. 2. Tolya Serving His Country Artist: Nancy Gershman

• Digital fine art photomontage, seamlessly combining imagery from multiple archival or heritage vacation photographs together into a single scene, augmented by meaningful objects, clothing and accessories or landscapes researched and supplied by the digital artist (Fig. 2. Photomontage created from four photos by digital artist Nancy Gershman of Art For Your Sake)

The effect is pure theatre, not just for the first generation of readers, but generations to come.  And that’s why who you choose to package your legacy makes all the difference in the world.

Nancy Gershman of Art For Your Sake is a digital artist specializing in fine art legacy portraiture for gifts and personal histories. As a post-therapy resource, Gershman also creates prescriptive photomontages for healing (bereavement, acceptance, relationship rifts and addictive behaviors) to counter loss and regrets.

Nancy’s warring mother and grandmother

Psychologist Elizabeth Lombardo, author of the happiness guidebook, “A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness” tells us “…the proverbial ‘hit the pillow to get aggression out against your spouse’ has actually been shown to increase anger and resentment.”

I remember stomping off to the Reichians for bioenergetic therapy after college, in the hopes that I could avenge a controlling childhood through “expressive exercises” like pillow-beating. I beat the pillow alright, but the more the counselor encouraged man-on-pillow violence, the more I couldn’t stop my nervous laughter.

Basically, I discovered you can’t blame an Obsessive Compulsive mother for being mentally ill any more than you can believe a pillow is a stand-in for your dysfunctional parent.

In the end, I found cutting and pasting (what today has become my digital photomontage work) much more therapeutic. Perhaps it’s something about all the time us digital artists spend studying a face or a body, zooming in, carefully cutting out a figure rather than coloring inside the lines. And that’s just the half of it. There’s also the magic that occurs when you slide two combatants side by side, engaging them in imaginary conversation. Stare at the two of them long enough, and you’ll swear they’re getting along.

So cut and paste your mom on Mother’s Day … or leave it to the experts.

http://www.onlineprnews.com/rss/pr/?cid=33988

Can a healing photo montage – not just metaphorically but literally – commingle our public and private selves?

Wrestling with the death of her grandchild, a professional grief counselor was completely thrown off balance by her own grief. She writes of the who, when, why and what of her grief:

•  searching her memory for home movies of who was lost
•  withdrawing from social interactions to remember when all was lost
•  trying to identify a specific moment or event that explains why it happened, and finally
•  making peace with what happened, gradually, over time

Yes, ever so gradually, this grandmother came to the realization that she was separating two paths – grief and life – when she spoke to strangers. Not until she could explain to people outside her inner circle that she was a different person now as a result of her granddaughter’s death was she able to find her equilibrium again. What begins as a feeling of “embarrassment at the collision of private and public selves,” (Meghan O’Rourke, Why We Write About Grief, The New York Times, February 27, 2011) eventually matures into gravitas. (Wikipedia defines gravitas variously as “weight, seriousness, dignity, or importance, and connotes a certain substance or depth of personality.”)

This makes sense in my work as a prescriptive artist. The photomontages I create from repurposed photos of the loved one and the bereaved are designed to celebrate a life while never shying away from the WHO-WHEN-WHY and WHAT of the death. The imagery is meant to convey this new and richer inner life of the bereaved as they dream about their loved one. Like in a healing dream, it’s a scene made splendid with humor, irony and symbolism …  their kind of humor, irony and symbolism. And by envisioning a future colored by their spirit, these “healing dreamscapes” produce courage during one of the shakiest periods of our lives.  In the words of the writer Joyce Carol Oates:

It’s a historian’s professional obligation to dispel myths and legends writes Gordon Wood (No Thanks for the Memories, The New York Review of Books, Jan. 13, 2011, ). But sometimes the last thing we want are revisionist and historically accurate portraits of a public figure. We want the symbol over scholarship: a belief in destiny and a purposeful life because these things resonate with us emotionally. We want George Washington’s Cherry Tree.

The English historian J.H. Plumb found that it was the “created ideology” and “mythical, religious and political interpretations” with which humans sanctify their societies. In the same vein, family members need to harness their collective memories to remember a loved one. For legacy projects, we need to explore what was so compelling about this relative’s drive (or lack thereof); what were their peculiar hobbies, passions and eccentricities when they were 9, or 90? What made them so ahead of their time? Or conversely, so at odds with their time?

Instead of performing a critical dissection of a loved one’s accomplishments along a timeline, I say define the man with myths and legends handed down from generation to generation. Listen to the lore and to the memories and anecdotes which evoke the greatest laughter or tears: pay these things the closest attention.

 > Read the backstory of Vitaly G’s Legacy Dreamscape by artist Nancy Gershman

Prescriptive photomontage for Shirley H

Retelling the story of loss hurts. A normal component of grief recovery, it is often as painful as the loss itself. I remember one widow’s words which always stuck with me – perhaps because she was so uninformed of other more art-centered options besides interpersonal psychotherapy, bereavement support groups and anti-depressants.  Sixty-six years of age, this woman had begun treatment 20 years after the death of her husband for complicated grief. In The New York Times article (“After a Death, the Pain That Doesn’t Go Away,” Sept. 9, 2009), she tells journalist Fran Schumer about her experience of recounting loss: “That was just brutal and I had to relive it. I nearly dropped out, but I knew this was my last hope of getting any kind of functional life back.”

However, times appear to be changing. In Ruth Davis Konigsberg’s recent article in Time Magazine (“Good News About Grief,” Jan 24, 2011), there is a new movement underfoot, re-examining Kübler-Ross’s “American Way of Grief,” namely:

• expressing your grief by telling your story often and in detail
• grieving in stages, from shock to acceptance, in that order
• accepting mandatory “aftercare services” (a.k.a. bereavement counseling)

I am a strong believer in resilience, but also in a griever’s ability to dream and hope. Imagine if this same client – in addition to exploring counseling – might also have generated a preferred story in creative play with a prescriptive artist?  Prescriptive photomontage – the work I do as a creative practitioner – frequently follows participation in support groups or therapy.  The epiphanies borne in these environments are then used by the prescriptive artist to focus the client on a new, more hopeful narrative for the future. One could say that it makes hope tangible. For Shirley who lived through her son’s murder only to suffer her third mental breakdown, prescriptive photomontage concretized hope in the form of a meaning-laden portrait of her son.

> Read more about Shirley H’s story

Receiving custom artwork under any circumstance is a treat. Positive visualizations of the future by a prescriptive artist, for example, are even more of a treat. Why? Because personal photos previously steeped in sadness are given an entirely different spin, so that they can tell a story of redemption that stars the griever in an epic role – a role where they are no longer The Griever. By “treat,” I am talking about both a process and product that refreshingly doesn’t look or feel like therapy because it is art fashioned by an artist and not the client. It is art conceived to make the griever feel more whole and less raw in their grief … without hurting them further.

Konigsberg sums up the “New Pessimism” towards grief counseling when she concludes with these words:

“It certainly seems time to move beyond our current habit of using untested theories to create unnecessarily lengthy – and agonizing – models for coping with grief that have created more anxiety about the experience instead of alleviating it.”

I couldn’t agree more. Bring all options to the table. Then reach underneath and pull out that drawer of treats.