Ladybird Care Foundation and our framework of caring for the bereaved draws on the wisdom of many esteemed colleagues, clinicians, researchers and people with a lived experience.

 

One of these is Dr Alan Wolfelt, founder of The Centre for Loss and Life Transition, USA. Dr Wolfelt has shared his response to the inclusion of Prolonged Grief Disorder in the 2022 version of the DSM-5. Like Dr Wolfelt, we take the approach that grief is a normal, necessary response to the loss of someone we love. It is not a disorder, but a life experience that requires, love, support and companioning.

 

We ascribe to the Slow Grief Movement (Wolfelt, 2022) acknowledging grief as a normal, natural and necessary spiritual process that fosters wellness and companioning of the bereaved that is heart based, rather than pathologising.