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This deeply moving, but ultimately uplifting picture book follows the psychological and emotional journey of Carla van Laar after the death of her three-year-old son, Vaughn. In the form of a visual and written journal, Carla’s exploration of her own grief is saturated with honesty, and a depth of feeling that will generate new understandings of maternal bereavement.

Includes reflective notes that provide practical suggestions for using the book in classrooms, workshops and groups to create soulful conversations and activities about trauma and loss.

‘The journey I have documented is one of personal grief, creativity and transformation. The story of transforming loss, however, is relevant not only to bereaved mothers, but to people learning to live with other life-changing losses and trauma. I encourage you, the reader, to engage with the images, text and reflective notes in this book—guided by your own creativity, courage and compassion.’

Carla van Laar

Sample pages... Carla van Laar's illustrations with design from Tim Lane

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Producing books and cards sets at Innovative Resources is a complex and hugely rewarding exercise in team work. We have discovered that doing it well requires a great deal of reflection, conversation, and at times, a great sense of humour. 

All through the process we learn from those who participate in our meetings, focus groups and those who contribute in all kinds of ways such as designers and printers. In creating resources that may have the capacity to be experienced as life-changing, we often find that our publications takes on their own idiosyncratic timetable for production. What seems like a simple requirement may, in fact, call for a great deal of consultation and collective rumination before it is ready to settle into a clear set of tasks.  

This is certainly the case with the book Bereaved Mother's Heart. This book is evolving out of a strongly collaborative relationship between the author, Carla van Laar, and the designer, Tim Lane. Together they are creating an aesthetically stunning publication that we believe will touch the hearts and minds of many people in a most transformative way. The subject matter is so deelpy personal; and yet we believe that this book will have the capacity to speak to the experiences of many, many people who are travelling through experiences of grief and loss. It will demonstrate how our own unique and innate creativity can be accessed to create profound pathways for our own healing.  

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A letter from the author:

Dear Reader,

If you have taken the time to open this book and start reading this text, I can only assume that something about the book has sparked your interest. I wonder if it is to do with the title – the topic of either motherhood or bereavement – or maybe the colour and texture of the cover invited you to want to see more….maybe you are intrigued (as I am) about matters of the heart…. Maybe someone you know suggested you have a look, or maybe you came across it by chance. Regardless of how you came to open the book, Welcome.

I’m Carla and I’m the author of the book. I made it in an effort to fully understand the nature of my experience of being a bereaved mother. I was completing my Master’s degree in Creative Arts Therapy. It was three years after my son Vaughn’s death at age three years nine months. I wanted to create research that accurately reflected a crucial aspect of human experience. I wanted to get to know my own experience intimately, partially to be of better service to others, and partially in keeping with the notion that knowledge is power. I knew the journey of becoming totally intimate with my loss would be taxing, but I was motivated by the conviction that if I did not become the master of all that this experience entails, then it could in fact destroy me. I wanted to take the pain and make it into something beautiful.

I hoped that creating an exploration saturated with honesty and depth would somehow serve to generate understandings of maternal bereavement that could help others live more fulfillingly with such loss.

The process of creating the book became many things. It became the next phase in my relationship with my deceased son. It became a journey of fascination, exploration, discovery, acceptance and honouring. Immersion in making the artwork has had profound impacts in my ongoing art practise and work with people experiencing all sorts of hardship. The closeness and familiarity with which I got to know the transformative power of creativity now informs how I live my whole life; professional and personal alike.

I learned that whilst I was researching one experience – my own of maternal bereavement – that I was also researching all types of loss and trauma. The journey I have documented is one of loss, creativity and transformation, and the themes and understandings that have been revealed are common to many situations of loss and trauma. Likewise the story of transforming the loss is relevant not only to bereaved mothers, but to persons learning to live with other life changing losses.

I hope it is obvious that this book is a work of love. For me it embodies my love for my son. For me he is now part of the entire universe. So my love for him extends to the universe, and a desire to create actions in the universe that are ripples expanding outwards from my love for him. This is the meaning I make of sharing this personal journey.

The book itself is now an entity of its own. It is time for me to send it out into the world to develop its own relationships with other people. If you are still reading this text it is possible you have become engaged with the book. If this is the case then it is possible that you have already found something here that resonates with you. It is a good starting point.

I encourage you, the reader, to engage with the images and text in ways other than what I can imagine or prescribe, with your own creativity and imagination, with bravery and spirit, with compassion and with love.

Carla van Laar.

< Bereaved Mother's Heart is currently due for release in September 2008>

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