Jane Williams

I am a recently retired clinical psychologist who worked for over 25 years with individuals who had experienced trauma, life threatening illness, and grief. After completing a Ph.D. at the University of Memphis, I completed postdoctoral fellowships at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Harvard Medical School. At Harvard, I trained in medical crisis counseling and later developed the Medical Crisis and Loss Clinic at Arkansas Children's Hospital. I helped plan and participated in the "Good Mourning" Program at ACH, made national presentations at grief conferences (ADEC), and published peer-reviewed articles on grief. In addition to my work in grief, I published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, 3 book chapters, and one test manual on various psychological topics. After retirement from the Wake Forest Medical School as an Associate Professor of Pediatrics, I wrote and recently published a book, Mysterious Moments: Thoughts That Transform Grief. In retirement, I spend most of my time with my hands in clay and writing. Apart from my academic description, I would have to describe my work in grief as providing the most meaningful experiences that I have had in my life. When someone allows you to walk down their path of suffering and loss, it is an unbelievable journey that results in a bonded relationship and teaches about the resilience of the human spirit. Although I am no longer engaged in active therapy, I would like to contribute articles that would be helpful to grieving individuals. I am the author of Mysterious Moments: Thoughts That Transform Grief, available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/161846034X/

Articles:

Grievers Need to Tell Their Stories

Grievers Need to Tell Their Stories Because of the personal and varying nature of grief, I believe that narratives—stories—are critically important and helpful both for accepting death and coping with loss. Initially, we often need to tell our story of a death over and over to ourselves internally or to others. This helps us assimilate what has happened. It is almost as if we need to imprint the experience to make it real. I once had a wise mentor who was supervising my work with a patient who kept telling his history over and over. I asked her when she thought he would stop repeating […]

The Death of the Love of Your Life

A Grief Perspective A grief perspective is personal. It is an individual’s way of thinking about and understanding their own grief. As grief is unique to every person and every relationship, our perspectives will differ from each other. But sharing our differing perspectives may offer us new ways to contemplate our grief. Prior to retiring, I was a clinical psychologist who worked in hospital settings with individuals who had experienced trauma, been diagnosed with a life-threatening or chronic illness, were dying, or were grieving the death of a loved one. I had read and written a lot about grief. After […]

Comforting Words to a Griever

Sometimes, words spoken to individuals in grief do not make a difference; so many words have been said that they don’t pierce the thin protective layer that we develop while grieving. We may have heard so many words that they don’t even distract us from our grief. Additionally, words can miss the mark. Words such as “I know how you feel” or “it’s time to move on” not only miss the mark but may bring further injury or distress. Sometimes, the effects of words are related to the particular person or situation. For example, when my mother died two years […]

Music Can be a Balm for Grief

Music can be soothing during our low points in grief. It may resonate with our soul even when there is not personal meaning in it. The tempo, rhythm, melody, harmony—all can bring healing as the music makes connection with our emotional core. It may or may not have lyrics. But sometimes the lyrics say things that we cannot normally say—-allowing us to express a wide range of emotions—even singing or screaming out our pain and sorrow. For each of us, this is a highly individual experience. What works for you—blues, jazz, spiritual, blue grass, classical, hip-hop—-may not work for someone […]

Grief Gift: How a Friend Can Help

Our overwhelming feelings of loss during grief often make any grief gift hard to imagine. We search our inner world and wonder how we will put the pieces back together. What can possibly bring us any feeling of gratitude? Suddenly, our thoughts turn to our friend — the person who is with us, fully present, right now. This person can focus solely on our grief with no preoccupation or telling of his or her own suffering. Our comforter offers no platitudes and simply recognizes our need to be heard. We can tell our grief story over and over and our […]

The Power of Stories in Coping With Loss

We have an affinity for stories—they are the vehicle for making meaning out of chaos. By late adolescence, most of us have developed a “life story” that gives us a sense of identity and reflects our explanation of how the world works. This overarching story is not particularly factual, but rather consists of experiences that are remembered as being powerful and shaping our lives. With these life events, we tend to construct and reconstruct our life story. One of the experiences that can impact our life story is the death of someone important to us. We develop a grief story […]