The invention of the camera changed the capacity to see the world, remember events, document time, and capture emotions. For nearly two centuries, photography has been used in a myriad of circumstances. Its main function of freezing time through the creation of a visual image reflects a desire to remember experiences, people, and things, and to preserve them in a photograph. This desire may increase when the image-maker is experiencing an impending loss or is in the grief process. Photography is a medium of communication that can be used to relate to others, inspire the meaning-making process, document events, and memorialize significant life events--even death. Imagery is a vital part of all the stories we create. Opening our eyes and hearts to death and loss and choosing to be mindfully present through the grief process engages the most authentic parts of ourselves. Our meaningful presence through the grief process and those reflective moments we create for ourselves become a path forward. As we allow the space for grief to evolve, we begin to notice our interconnectedness- and within those heartfelt moments we recognize the essence of who we are, and from there the seeds of inner strength are nourished. There is a deficit of sufficient tools, rituals and practices to manage grief and loss, and talk therapy alone is not enough of an intervention. A number of people are visual learners and processors, which is just one reason this book is needed. Another reason this book is needed is because the experience of grief, death and dying is still considered a taboo subject and is difficult to think about and communicate about. Death avoidance and unhealthy grieving is problematic in many cultures, specifically Western culture.
Dr. Jessica Thomas holds an MS in Marriage and Family Therapy and a PhD in Psychology with an emphasis in Transpersonal Psychology. She is a therapist, clinical supervisor, grief educator, and organizational consultant. Jessica has served on the not-for-profit board of the NW Association for Death Education and Bereavement Support for over eight years. She has been a hospice volunteer and a proud volunteer and advocate for Death Cafes, working to increase awareness of death and dying in the greater community. As a professor at Lewis & Clark College, she has created course work and taught on death and grief, psycho-spiritual development and counseling, research methods, and clinical supervision. She also provides clinical supervision for counseling students at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her doctoral research, Mindful Photography and its Implications in End-of-Life Caregiving: An Art-based Phenomenology, focused on creative expression and the experience of anticipatory loss. Jessica's subsequent developments include integrating her mindful photography therapeutic method into groups. Within and Without mindful photography reflection groups support those who are traversing grief due to a death or other major life transition. She offers both professional and community workshops, presentations, and talks on death and grief, transpersonal psychology, and the Within and Without therapeutic method. Some of Jessica's favorite projects involve consulting with organizations and developing death and grief education, as well as facilitating creative training sessions and meaningful group practices.
As the Social Activities Coordinator for Alzheimer's San Diego, I had the honor of observing the facilitation of Dr. Jessica Thomas's Mindful Photography, a program offered for our care partners. The four-week program was powerful because not only did it offer support, but it also transformed each person's 'lens' and way of seeing their role as a care partner, and their relationship with their loved one. The practice outlined by Dr. Thomas offered a gentle and creative path toward empowerment as care partners became aware of their ability to choose how they want to perceive their experiences, create meaning, and gain insights through the world of photography. During the course of the four weeks, we saw significant shifts in perspective, as care partners transitioned from feeling frustrated in their current situations to feeling gratitude for the present moment. At the end of our four weeks, one of our care partners emphasized, 'This program has truly changed how I see life. I am a much happier person now.' I could not recommend Dr. Thomas's book Choosing Light more, and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to experience the wonderful program. --Sara Moller, social activities coordinator, Alzheimer's San Diego Bringing together the processes of transforming, grieving, and reflecting, Jessica Thomas brings us into a novel and powerful way to integrate and understand the experience of grief and the counter-instinctive secret blessings that it holds. It has been said that the degree to which we do not accept life as it is given to us--rather than what we wish and even insist that it be--keeps us from moving through the experience of loss to the other side of grief's sorrow and pain. Thomas's approach holds great promise in deepening our understanding and attaining this most often hidden and truly sacred side of the grieving process. --Ron Valle, author, psychologist, researcher, and grief expert Choosing Light offers a gentle invitation to those who are stepping into the realm of grief to slow down and find anchors of connection and support. Grief is disorienting, and most are left wondering what to think, feel, and do. In the pages of this book, those who are grieving and those who support them will find not a prescription, but options for what we might do in and with our grief. --Jana DeCristofaro, LCSW, community response program coordinator, Dougy Center; host, Grief Out Loud podcast Contemplative photography, or mindful photography, is a series of methods for letting go of discursive fixation and releasing into the vividness of direct experience. It is also a way of expressing that vividness to others. Entering into direct experience creates space in the mind for perceptions, feelings, and emotions to be accommodated and recognized. In Choosing Light, Jessica Thomas puts these powerful methods to use to help people deal with the great challenges of death, grief, and loss. I commend this important effort. --Andy Karr, teacher, photographer, and author of Contemplating Reality: A Practitioner's Guide to the View in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism Dr. Thomas presents a fresh, innovative, and impactful vision for the use of mindful photography in processing loss and grief. This book provides an extraordinary new set of tools for counselors and individuals that creates an intersection between psychology, spirituality, and art. --Terri Daniel, DMin, CT, end-of-life advisor, interfaith chaplaincy, bereavement and trauma support Dr. Thomas' masterful writing about the practice of mindful photography and reflective journaling benefits people who grieve and those who sit alongside them. Her words are a gift, which when opened, empowers the reader to uncover and make meaning out of often hidden, mysterious layers of personal feelings around death. Viewing the shared images makes readers' hearts swell with emotion. This book is an awakening that is good for the soul. --Susan L. Schoenbeck, nurse educator; author, Good Grief: Daily Meditations: A Book of Caring and Remembrance I am pleased to recommend Dr. Jessica Thomas's Choosing Light: Transforming Grief through the Practice of Mindful Photography and Self-Reflection. I come to this having worked with her and the innovative study she completed on her PhD dissertation on this same topic at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in 2016. She has continued to explore and develop her project in ways that make what she has done in the field of psychotherapy and contemplative photography even more profound and relevant to the needs of a broader public. I am especially pleased to see how her project has evolved to include ways photographs help facilitate personal growth through ongoing bonds with departed loved ones. --Mark Gonnerman, MDiv, PhD, former PhD program chair and professor, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology In a dominant culture so uncomfortable with death, where ancestral mourning rituals are long forgotten, creative practices like the mindful photography and reflection skillfully taught by Jessica Thomas can offer a transformative portal to meaning-making and healing. I engaged in this practice, with Jessica's support, while mourning the illness and death of a close friend; it helped me slow down, notice the beauty, shed some tears, and think about life and death in fresh ways. --Holly J. Pruett, funeral celebrant, death doula, community death educator In lucid, nearly meditative language and with engrossing images, Jessica Thomas ushers the reader into the quietly compelling practice of mindful photography, and in doing so, opens doors of perception to deeper realties that await discovery for all those who grieve. Part guide and part fellow traveler, Thomas draws on her own life losses to build a bridge of compassion into those of her readers, inviting curiosity about the correspondence between the visual world without and the personal world within. The result of this reflective practice is greater wisdom, self-care, and the discernment of new and resonant meaning in the face of impermanence and change. --Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, director, Portland Institute for Loss and Transition; editor, New Techniques of Grief Therapy: Bereavement and Beyond
