The COVID-19 global pandemic exacerbated and altered death- and
non-death-related loss, insisting that grief and bereavement adhere to protocols that were
unfamiliar and sometimes even prohibitive to moving forward in a healthy manner. As a
dying, death, and loss educator who explores grief using applied theatre methods with
children and adolescents, I responded to this recommendation by contemplating safe and
novel ways to provide acute support within these new and uncertain parameters. To meet the
long-term needs of the bereaved, development of grief literacy was recommended (Breen et
al., 2022).
When my beloved uncle Chris died unexpectedly on May 17th, 2020, I grappled to
negotiate my own pandemic-restricted grief. This caused me personal and professional angst:
if I, with the appropriate tools and strategies at hand, was struggling, how was I ever going to
be capable of holding space for others? I yearned to learn how to grieve in this new realm to
subsequently hold space for others and enrolled in an online workshop to learn about digital
storytelling.
This autoethnographic study examined my own pandemic-restricted grief experience
through the digital storytelling workshop’s process and product (digital story) as well
ascertaining its applicability in my applied theatre praxis within dying, death, and loss
education. [...
