Death Matters by Sally Petch This is a wonderful little book that you can read in an hour. The author’s non-threatening approach makes it thought-provoking and more of a prompt for a journal article, to be considered over time. It is certainly not an in-depth academic study of the subject of death, but encourages us to consider attitudes and beliefs about death – especially our own. Worth a short read to increase your knowlege. Review by Tina Hughes. If interested…
BY ALEX BAIRD Superstition I have to admit that I was rather surprised … the lady had glanced at my business card and then with a visible shudder, insisted that I take it back. She wouldn’t even touch it. “I’m very superstitious,” she explained. It was not a reaction that I had come across before. Of course, Wills and estate planning were not ideal topics for a chance meeting, but to be fair, she had asked me what I did…
CEDAR has been very busy teaching professionals around the county how to talk about death, dying and loss to their students, clients, family & friends. Here are some new recruits who completed the Level I: Death Education for Health & Wellbeing. They include Diane Drummond, Severn Hospice; Nick Herbert, Energize; Jenny England, Derwen College; Amanda Crane, Shropshire Youth Association; our own CEDAR volunteer – Tina Hughes; and Lindsay Barton of Partners in Social Enterprise. They are keen to take our…
Whether or not you follow a particular belief or have no belief, moral values in an age of anxiety will always be of benefit if you want your community to thrive. At CEDAR we strive to remain neutral in our teaching and understanding of death, dying and loss. This becomes particularly important in light of the 22 May 2017 bombing at the end of the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. Below is a special message from Pope Francis as he addresses…
The Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Edited by Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpentier (2014) Palgrave Macmillian Thanatological research in the social sciences and the humanities acknowledges that death is culturally and socially embedded. The idea of the social construction of death has been taken on board, albeit slowly, by the social and cultural study of death, but explicit reflections on the underlying ontologies and epistemologies of this paradigm remain scarce. This edited volume aims to strengthen the…
The novel is particularly poignant in its portrayal of the often isolating feeling of loss, alongside the crucial role that communities, friends and family can play in overcoming this.
The CEDAR CIC held another of its now popular ‘Life Lessons’ workshop, this time at the Grange Youth Centre, Shrewsbury. The participants were from the Young Health Champions NHS programme. There were 6 young participants from the programme and a volunteer who attended a previous session and wanted to get more involved in helping out. This Life Lessons workshop had the youngest participants to date, ranging from age 10 up to 24. The Life Lessons this time round involved…
Pictures of My Father – 21st March to 4th April Surface Gallery, 16 Southwell Road, Nottingham NG1 1DL CEDAR CIC is very pleased to be supporting this wonderful exhibition at the Surface Gallery in Nottingham. This exhibition came about as a means to explore personal grief and bereavement. Dr Day, a professional photographer and lecturer, chose his lens to help him explore what loss is, what it is not, and what is imagined in ‘nothingness’. Well worth seeing. Here is…
Having just won the coveted 2014 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, we thought we should feature Helen MacDonald’s book ‘H is for Hawk’ here. It tells the story of how her father’s death prompted Helen to follow a childhood dream and become a falconer. She discusses how the experience of working with a bird of prey, being in natural surroundings and feeling her soul sore with the bird helped her to gain a new insight into death, grief and loss.…
Cedar held the second day of ‘Life Lessons’ and all the Youth Health Champions turned up, including one more! This was not a surprise as it had been a captivating lesson that was held the day before, and so the participants seemed eager to learn more. On this day, we were introduced to the ‘Day of the Dead’, which sounds as if it is going to be about something morbid and yet on the contrary was full of colour, brightness,…
Focus Group – Death Education in Schools