Therapist plans book for young people dealing with grief

A Swindon therapist is fundraising to help her publish an interactive grief guide for children and young adults who have lost a loved one.

Kathleen Whelan runs Inukshuk Therapy - named for an Indigenous American word relating to hope and survival - in Redhouse.
Realising that there was a relative lack of resources for young people dealing with grief, she decided to put together what she describes as a self-help holistic journal.
Its aim is to help young people process their experiences by working through the journal, adding their own thoughts and images.
She has launched a GoFundMe appeal to raise the £5,000 needed to make copies available to individuals and charities in Swindon, across Wiltshire and nationally.
Kathleen said: "The content is approximately 100 double-sided pages, and has a significant amount of information, words and images to enable and promote the fluid stages of healing for a young person in their grieving stage."
In her work, Kathleen has seen at first hand the corrosive effect of grief on many young people.
She said: "What they do is close down because they can't understand the feelings or emotions that they are presented with - it's too complex.
"There are no words to describe what that feels like. That's one of the issues and another is, 'Who do I turn to?'
"If it's a family member, are their family going to understand? Are they going through their own grieving process?
"Young people can become isolated because they shut down from contact with society and in their community."
The National Counselling Society has voiced an interest in Kathleen's work, and her plan is to make the journal available during National Grief Awareness Week - December 2-8.
Donations can be made at https://www.gofundme.com/manage/grief-episode-guide-for-teens--young-people  
Further information about Kathleen's work can be found at https://www.facebook.com/inukshuktherapy/