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Poetry as Therapy
The Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas Photo CBCST
The Healing Aspects of Poetry & Arts

Poetry and Art as Therapy

The Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas
Staff CBCST

The Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas (CBCST) is so much more than a place where grieving children come to heal. As the sole provider of grief support programs for children age three through young adulthood in South Texas, we wholeheartedly devote ourselves to addressing the grief and loss needs of children from every culture and social circumstance to help them heal and move forward.

    Our philosophy for providing grief support services stems from our belief that each person’s journey through grief is unique and therefore, deserving of a distinctive approach. Our primary goal is to help the individual and family define, express, and process grief.

    We offer a diverse range of peer support programs with a therapeutic focus. Each one of our support programs is dedicated to the type of death loss experienced, such as a chronic illness, sudden death of a parent, sibling, grandparent, or extended family member, as well as homicide and/or suicide. Each program group meets twice per month in our beautiful, homelike setting, which offers a safe, nurturing environment conducive to healing, and offers various modalities to include: play therapy, creative writing (bibliotherapy), game play, dance, music, drama, and art. These programs are supervised by a Program Director (Licensed Professional Counselor), administered by Program Coordinators, and are staffed by trained volunteers. Details about each group can be found on our website: www.cbst.org.
 
Spin Art Grief Circle in the Bereavement Center
Patricia L. McNaught LPC-S  RPT-S

As the Clinical Director of the CBCST, I create expressive art interventions for grieving families. I began this therapeutic work in 2001, and created the Spin Art Grief Circle technique© in 2005. This process gives grieving children and families new visual and tactile stimuli to help accept and embrace the pain of loss.
    Clients of the Bereavement Center range from ages 3 up to 24, and are introduced to a series of expressive art interventions that they are encouraged to use as mediums to understand and define their emotional pain. Because it is often difficult to express feelings of grief and loss, powerful sensations often overwhelm clients and cause them to defensively retract inward where they struggle to regain feelings of safety and emotional balance.  However, at the Bereavement Center, we explore these deep emotions and seek ways to reorder clients’ lives in positive ways.
    The Spin Art Grief Circle technique© is both simple and powerful. Through the process, the client objectifies their emotions, pours out pain as color, and creates a tangible product they can hold in hand to visualize what is happening inside. The process helps clients embrace the beauty and pain of love as they begin the healing process. 
    The process begins by asking clients to draw a large circle on a 36 inch by 36 inch, white piece of paper. They are then asked to write the word “grief” above the circle (for younger clients, we spell this out), and to think of words that define their grief. Then, they write their selected words within the circle and thus establish a visual range of individual perceptions and sensations that their personal grief brings to mind, heart and body.
  The next step in this process asks that clients select colors that relate to the feelings they have written down (feelings and colors are correlated). Clients then move to a spin art machine, a device that spins quickly and is used to disburse the series of selected colors onto a sheet of paper within the machine. In pouring the paints into the machine, the client representatively pours painful feelings of loss into the spin art machine, which then releases the colors/emotions onto the paper in vivid displays of representative emotional pain.




    Significantly, the individuals tacitly measure the weight of their pain as they handle the paint containers, squeeze various amounts of color into the machine, and experience the turbulence of grief as the paint spins in a circular pattern. Manipulating the paints, adjusting the process of releasing their pain through paint colors onto the paper, and watching this unfold in front of them allows clients to externalize their emotions into products of beauty that they can see and touch. Clients are able to see and experience in a tactile way, the release of emotions spinning out from their internal processes as they witness their chosen colors spin out from the machine. Clients continue introducing more colors, representative of the emotions they are therapeutically processing, until they accept what they see as an accurate reflection of their personal, internal loss and pain.
    It is possible for a bereaved person to reflect, embrace, and adjust to tremendous life-altering experiences; however it is very important to remember that one must not reject or minimize the varied emotions of grief. Because grief is often experienced as pain when someone dies, healing requires an expression of that specific and very personal pain. Through processes such as Spin Art Grief Circle technique©, clients learn to see their feelings in a new way and accept them. Spin Art encourages clients to process their pain both physically and emotionally through the creation of visual and tactile artwork, and thus offers clients a process they are able to use to regain the necessary balance needed to heal—the ultimate goal of therapy.
     The Spin Art Grief Circle technique© is only one of the many therapeutic interventions we have developed at the Center for children and families to begin the healing process.
Patricia L McNaught LPC-S  RPT-S
Clinical Director CBCST
Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor
Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor
Spin Art CBCST
Spin Art CBCST

Therapeutic Work from the Bereavement Center

The Joy In My Heart
Shanique Martinez
(Highland Forest Elementary)

Joy is a feeling of love, happiness, and safety
all bundled up in a ball.

Joy is what you feel in your heart...
You can feel it
when you are around family,
friends, or relatives.

You can feel it
when you are all by yourself,
this joy in your heart.

Joy is a warm glow deep down in your soul
that surrounds you with beauty and hope.

Joy does not happen overnight,
you have to look deeply with all your might.

I found my joy when I moved in with my mommy.

Each day she filled my heart with warmth, love, and
understanding.

No matter how hard things get in life...
Each day she filled my heart with warmth and love.
You too, can find joy like mine.
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