Victim Needs From a Faith-Based Perspective

The Victim Experience of Trauma and Bereavement

It is important that clergy and spiritual leaders understand how victimization-related injuries differ qualitatively from those related to illness and natural or accidental death. The search for meaning and coherence after a violent death, for example, can be exhausting and may leave survivors feeling empty.

This relationship between trauma and grief is a complex one, but it is certainly not beyond the scope of religious communities. Edward K. Rynearson, author of Retelling Violent Death,⁸ established the Violent Death Support Service Program in Seattle in 1990 to help survivors cope with trauma. His therapeutic technique, restorative retelling, helps survivors and victims reframe the traumatic incident so they become active participants in the story—working through various scenarios—rather than helpless onlookers. Restorative retelling also helps reconnect the teller with the living memories of the deceased that had been displaced by the traumatic incident.

Although faith communities may not see themselves as trauma centers, they are certainly resources for the bereaved and places where people go to mourn, to remember, and to memorialize their loved ones. Rituals of lament, such as the Hebrew mourner's Kaddish, and public lament and mourning, offer profound ways to help survivors experience grief.

Specific research on trauma and traumatic grief.

OVC Home | About OVC | OVC Publications | Web Site Links Disclaimer