078 - Here's the grief research initiative I'm working on.

And I'd love to have your support.

Welcome back (or welcome!)

Last week, I talked about being open to questions about being helpful in loss. And I talked about starting a research center. (Read 077 - Simply getting started (substack.com))

A friend put those two ideas together and said, “Who will benefit from this research?”

It’s a wonderful question.

I decided to write a more thorough explanation.

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I’d love to know that after people have stood in line for a couple minutes, they would say to our kids, “Your dad said this about grief, and I found it helpful. I hope you will, too. And I’ll check in with you in a month, and a year, and a decade.” And our kids would say, “Thank you.” And be helped.

But what also comes to mind is the family on the hill that I wrote about a couple months ago. I told about watching a family talking outside the hospital after they’d been inside bearing witness to the death of a family member. I wondered what kind of support they would get after they left the hospital grounds. And I wrote about building grief literacy in communities and families and organizations and countries.

Grief literacy, I would suggest, is having words, concepts, skills, processes, and resources as a person, family, and community to be helpful to people in time of loss, particularly death.

I think the deepest question, the deepest issue, personally, is knowing what to say to or do with grieving people that will actually be helpful. Knowing that there isn’t anything to fix, but giving understanding and permission for the feelings that we have at individual and familial and organizational and cultural levels.

When we tell someone in the first weeks of their loss how someone else is living four years later, we can create such a tremendous sense of obligation and failure in addition to the loss. My book, This is Hard: What I Say When Loved Ones Die, has resonated with people because it acknowledges words that have caused pain and suggests alternatives. I want to help us all to be more helpful.

The research initiative overview: Being helpful in loss.

In that post in June, I offered an executive summary of a multi-year, multi-study, research initiative that I’d call “Being helpful in loss”.

Humans struggle in the aftermath of death. Bereavement researchers are concerned about the public health cost of grieving. Friends want to know what to say when their buddy’s child dies. Researchers have identified what supportive communities would look like. And have identified broadly who needs what kind of support. And have recommended improving grief literacy. This proposal reviews those concepts and then recommends three initial research projects based on those concepts: a community-level bereavement capacity study, and a study of organizational bereavement cultures, and a “what might your friend need from you” study.

The goal in all of the work is to offer evidence-based practical tools and resources and stories to help people be helpful to others in the open-ended experience of bereavement.

Who will benefit from this research?

I will. Because I’ll know better what to say to people that might be actually helpful.

• All of us who want to be more helpful to grieving people will be able go beyond “here’s what I found helpful” to “here’s what many people like this found helpful (and not helpful) in losses like that.” And will have permission to be sad.

• Funeral directors will have access to understanding that goes beyond, “were you satisfied by our service” to “what do you wish we could say to the people standing in the line at the visitation.”

• Organizations that want to know how leaders and coworkers can be supportive will have stories and samples and suggestions.

• Communities will have a roadmap of what one community can do to grow grief literacy. The outline I shared last week was one approach to the community-level study. (Read that part of 077 - Simply getting started (substack.com) for that five-step project.)

This is a non-institutional initiative.

I’m making this up. And I’m working independently.

Though this research is informed by my work as a hospital chaplain, it’s not part of that work. Though this research informs my teaching of college pastoral care and preaching courses, it’s not part of my academic responsibility. I’m creating resources and writing ideas and having conversations because people like you have questions.

This research initiative is currently mostly self-funded, with the encouragement and support of several people who regularly and generously buy me coffee. And at the moment, there isn’t much cost other than time.

However, as an independent researcher who is part of Arbor Research Group, I have access to really good survey tools. And we’ve done large projects which have included surveys and focus groups and interviews. We review the existing literature, we do the conversation work, we think and analyze really hard, and then we provide better understanding of what is going on, and we provide recommendations for what could be more helpful.

So there is capacity to do more.

So, as you think about grief support, what are the questions and projects that matter to you?

If you are part of a community or an organization that wants to know more about what works in bereavement support, or what doesn’t work, or wants a plan to be more helpful in the work that you are doing, I would love to talk more.

I think there would be value in a project where a funeral home reached out to people a year after a death and said, “can a team that wants to help people talk with you, confidentially, about your experience with us; and how it may or may not have helped you during the last year?” Funeral directors would have access to understanding that goes beyond, “were you satisfied by our service?” to “what do you wish we could say to the people standing in the line at the visitation?”

I think there would be value in a project that surveyed helpful people (like GriefShare leaders, pastors, and others) to find out how many of them still think that “stages of grief” is the most helpful model to explain grief (I’d ask about other concepts, too.). And we could build training and tools to shape the grief support they are already giving.

I think there would be value in a project like I outlined last week that worked with one community to assess grief literacy and explored a public health model of bereavement support. Communities will have a roadmap of what one community can do to grow grief literacy.

I think there would be value in a study of grief memoirs, looking for threads and themes. As Nancy said the other day, grief is popular right now. People are willing to write about their own loss. And I’d love to examine all those books and blogs and podcast for the common threads and disparate themes.

I think there would be value in series of podcast episodes around themes or audiences, underwritten by an appropriate sponsor.

And those are just some of the projects that I imagine as part of this research initiative.

So what? Now what?

Moving forward, I’ll keep building the literature review, offering the underpinnings for the research. And I’ll keep talking to people in times of loss. And starting into some of these projects.

The reason I’m talking about this as a multiyear, multiphase project is that I want to keep building our grief literacy. And like any educational process, that takes time.

1. If you think this research initiative makes sense and is really exciting, let me know.

2. If you want to commission one of those studies (or another one), let me know.

3. If you have a research question that fits with these, let me know.

4. If you want to support this research one-time or monthly, please do.

Thanks for the questions and support.

See you next week.

Jon