Bøger af Christina Welch

This edited collection brings together academics and practitioners to explore six physical and three socio-cultural senses in relation to death and dying: the senses of sight, of smell, of sound, of taste, of touch, of movement, of decency, of humour, and of loss. Each sense section will comprise two chapters to provide differing examples of how death and dying can be viewed through the lens of human physical and cultural senses. Chapters will include historical and contemporary examples of ways in which death, dying and grieving are inextricable from their physical sensual expressions and socio cultural mores. Most books about death explore how death can be theorised, theologised, and philosophised, or attend to the particular needs of health professionals working in palliative or pastoral care, with little attention to how people engage with and attend to, death, dying and grief sensually. The uniqueness of this collection lies in two areas, firstly its deep engagement with a range of physical and socio-cultural sensual responses to death and dying, and secondly, through its contributors who are drawn from a wide spectrum of professional, practical, and theoretical expertise and scholarship in fields which continue to redefine our understanding of mortality.

As I sit down to write this book, I write specifically to those of you who have found yourselves in a dark hopeless place; a pit where nobody has the ability to pull you out... a hole that just will not fill. I write to you who have no sense of identity or healthy self-esteem, and have been tormented with questions of where you belong, spiritually depleted, and with no perceived security. I speak to those who have felt abandoned and rejected; open to the attacks of negativity, or been victim to word curses, where death and doom has been spoken into your ears, conceived in your heart, and taken space into your spirit. I write to you who feel imprisoned with no way out; exposed to the struggles of life with no guidance; crying out for discipline, crying out for love, crying out for someone to cover you, shield you, and protect you from the storms that come in like waves so high, you've begun to feel that if the waves don't drown me now, I am going to submerge myself, and cut off the breath of life because it's too painful to face the music, too painful to live in the process, and too painful to face any more rejection.I share my story with those of you who have lived through the effects of being abandoned, disappointed, out of control, betrayed, cursed, alone, isolated, and by yourself. ...Those who have decided to slay; in spite of it all.