Thesis
Altered books as a modality for processing cumulative grief in young adults
Master of Arts (M.A.), Drexel University
Jun 2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00001595
Abstract
This project emerged from the intersection of personal experience and professional development during my final year of graduate training. While interning at a high school, I worked closely with students who were navigating significant experiences of grief, often layered and unspoken. As I supported these young people, their stories began to resonate on a deeper, more personal level. My own unprocessed grief surfaces, grief I had long buried beneath the need to appear composed. This emotional undercurrent prompted curiosity around grief and what therapy looks like when loss is continuous. This project is further grounded in narrative therapy principles, which view storytelling as an act of reclamation and meaning-making (White & Epston, 1990). By integrating narrative therapy and art therapy, I aimed to create a multimodal intervention that could honor the complexity of cumulative grief while offering a sense of emotional agency. Through the altered book format, this project sought to contain grief, not in a way that silences it, but in a way that gives it shape, rhythm, and voice. Ultimately, this project represents more than academic inquiry; it is also a personal act of meaning-making. In exploring how altered books can support the processing of cumulative grief, I have engaged in my own process of remembrance, expression, and transformation. It is my hope that the insights offered here, rooted in theory, practice, and personal reflection, will contribute to more compassionate and creative responses to grief in therapeutic contexts, especially for young adults navigating the complex terrain of repeated loss.
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Details
- Title
- Altered books as a modality for processing cumulative grief in young adults
- Creators
- Kendra Bradley
- Contributors
- Denise R. Wolf (Advisor) - Drexel University, Creative Arts Therapies
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Arts (M.A.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- iii, 36 pages
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Creative Arts Therapies; College of Nursing and Health Professions; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991020536966704721