Memory stones
Al-Yateem
[Arabic]:
“A child who has lost a father.”
“One who has no identity
or no self of their own.”
At the Dougy Center a pioneering Childhood Grief Centre in the USA, special stones are given out at the end of each child’s stay.
The stones act as both symbolic reminders of their healing journey and of their eternal ‘grief in progress’ (Schuurman, 2003, p.205)
As children, my brothers and I had missed an opportunity to heal and grieve in such a communal and open way when our father died, aged 41.
This body of work is a response to the childhood grief that I experienced in isolation, aged 13.
Created over four years, the process has been slow, careful and largely unconscious. The work comes from a deep place inside me that is asking for a little love and light to be shined on to it – ‘to be seen’.
