About the study
This exhibition is a result of doctoral dissertation research conducted by Paige S. Spangler, LCPC, under the supervision of Melissa Fickling, PhD, LCPC at Northern Illinois University.
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Participants in this study are licensed counselors who have experienced grief following the death of a loved one. To describe their personal grief experiences and how these experiences influence their counselor identity, participants captured photographs. This methodology is called photovoice. Photovoice uses visual image and accompanying stories to provide a voice and to promote an effective way of sharing individuals' perspectives. An important goal of a photovoice project is to produce an exhibition of these photographs.
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Each photograph was captured, titled and/or captioned by a counselor who has experienced loss, grief, and an influence on their identity as a counselor. They have provided permission to share their words and photographs to this exhibition. As you take the time to view their photographs, you are helping shine a light on grief. I hope you connect with their stories and share this exhibition with others. Please pass this along to those who have the potential to influence how counselor education programs, counselor supervisors, and other counseling professionals support counselors and enrich dialogue of grief.
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I am so grateful to the counselors who participated in this exhibition. I thank each one of them for offering their time, for being vulnerable and open, and for putting such effort into their photographs and written words (during a pandemic!). They shared with great tenderness the meaning behind their relationships with their loved ones as well as the significance of their grief and how grief influences who they are as a person and as a counselor. I thank them for sharing their lens with me, bringing their experience into the light, and allowing me to share those experiences with academic and professional communities.
-Paige S. Spangler
A Personal Note (from my dissertation):
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While in the early stages of developing this study, Dr. Kortegast, my committee member, had encouraged me to test out the photovoice prompts by capturing my own photographs of my grief experience.
This photograph is one of my photographs. In my written description of the photograph, I wrote that it represented the hope that I gained from grief and that I try to bring into the counseling space for clients while they are in the midst of pain and change.
Now that I reflect on what I have learned from participants in this study, I think this photograph also represents that meaning making does not take the place of grief, but instead exists alongside of it. Just as the sunlight breaks through the storm clouds and rain droplets become prisms for the light, light and storm exist side by side to create a spectrum of color. Participants in this study taught me about seeing color and beauty in the ongoing partnership of meaning making and grief.