PERSONAL AWARENESS ASSIGNMENTpurpose of this midterm assignment is to allow you to integrate the concepts and theories on grief and loss explored up to the due date. This is intended to give you the opportunity to gain a broader understanding of your own thoughts and feelings toward grief, loss, death, and dying; the appreciation of their origins, and the application of material from the professional literature and insights gained from course that have broadened your understanding. Your personal attitudes significantly influence your approach to grief, loss, death and dying on both a personal and professional level. One�s earliest experiences with loss and death result in beliefs, feelings and attitudes that are carried throughout life. To prevent being controlled by our unconscious and conscious reactions to past experiences, and to better understand the significance of the loss, it is important to recognize and explicitly state how these experiences influence us.
Please discuss the following in your paper:
1. Discuss an experience you have had with death or grief and loss? How old were you when it occurred? Where were you when you learned of the loss? Who did it involve? Describe what happened. The paper should include identifying information of the individual and their relationship to you. What were the physical, emotional and cognitive reactions you were aware of in yourself following the loss?
2.How did the people around you respond to the loss? How did they respond to your reactions?
3.Discuss how death and loss were addressed within your family, e.g. ignored, openly discussed, etc. Relate how these experiences might be related to your ethnicity/race/religion/philosophical perspective.
4.Discuss the first funeral or grief ritual you attended, or if there was a funeral or grief ritual attached to the above loss, identify how you were prepared for it, your memories and feelings about the experience and its impact on you. If you were discouraged from attending grief rituals, discuss your understanding of the rational for this. Discuss any rituals that may relate to loss and that may be pertinent to your family as they relate to ethnicity/culture/race/religion. Incorporate relevant information from course readings/discussions about death anxiety, disenfranchised grief, anticipatory grief.
5.Identify how your beliefs and experiences may affect you in interacting and working with the bereaved. Also, include potential transference and countertransference reactions. Incorporate relevant course content about the grief process and the various theorists that relates to this self-examination.
6.Given your experience with loss, identify factors that assist your coping capacities with loss/grief. Comment on relevant course content.
Incorporate these reflections into a paper which demonstrates a thoughtful, well-organized analysis of your experiences toward loss and your socio-cultural, ethnic, and religious/philosophical attitudes toward death and loss/grief. Include and cite appropriate course readings (minimum of 7) that address these issues. Be sure your citations include references to ethnicity, culture, death and loss, and religiosity/spirituality.
**** Write the paper in first person meaning I or me. The paper is about the death of my grandmother when I was age 19 two weeks before I joined the Navy. I felt she was going to die even before she passed I had a sense. She was my biggest supporter we were close. I was her eldest granddaughter and her favorite grandchild. I was the first person she brought to the US from Panama. You can also mention that I grew up Roman Catholic and write about how roman catholics/Hispanic grief. My family fought and argued about who was going to pay for the funeral because my grandmother life insurance didn’t cover it all. Write about how depressed I was I cried everyday and blamed God for taking her away. Then I blamed her for leaving me. Talk about the stages of grief. Boot camp was challenging for me but I got through because I felt she was with me and proud of me despite me not wanting to join the military. Her last words to me was be strong and not to do anything that I didn’t want to do. Talk about prior to her death she was seeing childhood friends and family who had passed. If you need more information just email me. Please follow the instructions to a T. Use subheads and a conclusion.
