Robert Neimeyer: Finding Meaning in Grief

About the event

Robert Neimeyer is the Director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. He’s published 30 books, including a series of volumes on Techniques of Grief Therapy and Grief and the Expressive Arts. He serves as Editor of the journal, Death Studies.

Robert joins Dr Lesel Dawson, a lecturer from the University of Bristol, to discuss finding meaning in grief.

Topics that Robert explores include how bereavement can bring about a crisis of meaning; how charity can be an important form of meaning making; and whether meaning making as a way to continue the bonds with the person who has died is always a positive activity. As a poet, Robert then shares some of his work and discusses creative expression at times of loss.

Robert delves into the topic of Covid-19, and how the pandemic has led to a difficulty in finding meaning in anything for many people. Robert’s new book is New Techniques of Grief Therapy: Bereavement and Beyond is coming in 2021.

Dr Lesel Dawson is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol, specialising in grief, Renaissance literature and the history of the emotions. She’s leading a research project on Creative Grieving and writing a book that explores how art and the imagination can enable the bereaved to express and process their loss.