Loss is universal. We all have, or will, experience a moment where everything we have taken for granted is wiped away, and everything we thought was true will be called into question. This is chaos; this, is crisis.

Traditional approaches in grief or loss counseling focus on validating one’s emotions and being sensitive to their often-erratic state of mind until the person is ready to move forward.  We don’t discount or discredit these approaches, but in our respective experiences, this kind of emotional courtesy wasn’t what we needed. 

Kris is a builder. He grew up believing that if something is broken, it needs fixed. It would be insensitive to suggest that one’s life is “broken” after a tragic loss, or that it can be automatically “fixed” once one makes up his or her mind to do so. However, logic and experience do seem to support a more pro-active and disciplined approach to grief and loss than current scholarship suggests.

Kris and I live in Kansas and, as I write this (summer 2011), just hours away, in Joplin, Missouri and Reading, Kansas, they are digging through the rubble of homes destroyed by tornadoes that ripped through their lives just days ago. This level of devastation, loss, sadness, frustration and fragility must be absolutely overwhelming, and these realities sit with the people affected for YEARS.  But there is another reality that cannot be ignored; although the feeling is still with them, people aren’t sitting in the remains of their home, head in their hands, crying for days. They can see the chaos, so they very quickly resume the inevitable, but sad and difficult task, of picking up the pieces and rebuilding their lives.

This is why we believe a rebuilding metaphor is so useful after tragedy strikes.

Healing is not automatic, but the simple act of beginning, of doing SOMETHING, in spite of the overwhelming destruction and the sheer volume to be done is, in itself, progress. That’s why The Birdhouse Project isn’t called The Birdhouse Book. It is more than just a story; it comes with tools and steps that allow us to see that rebuilding our lives is just as pressing as finding new shelter when violent winds and torrential rains destroy the shelter on which we depend. 

As an educator who loves language and research, I’ve looked into all kinds of theories to figure out why our approach works. Intuitively, it makes sense to me, but I want to be able to put some language behind the theory and begin to create a conversation about the important linguistic differences between tragedy and crisis, between wishes and goals and between recovery and rebuilding. I think I’ve found the basis for it, although for our purposes, the model welcomed some minor adjustments.

Please bear with me as I come at this discussion a little circuitously; educators and grief counselors will appreciate the additional context.

One of the reasons education can be said to be stale and irrelevant in this country is that we are not helping young people make sense of the circumstances that matter to them. Years ago, an educator named David A. Kolb forwarded the idea that if student learning took place in an authentic context, in an experience, rather than a classroom setting, student might be more engaged. Kolb’s theory was labeled Experiential Learning and later became foundational to Project-Based Learning.

However, one of the most compelling arguments against using Kolb’s theory in the classroom - and it is one I whole-heartedly embrace - is that teachers cannot “manufacture” experience. We cannot set the stage for students to have an authentic experience without jeopardizing life and limb or driving already meager educational budgets further into the red. While, on paper and in theory, Kolb’s ideas would make a difference, in practice they are much more difficult to realize. For these reasons, although PBL instruction has taken off, few educators feel they know how to competently implement its predecessor, Experiential Learning.

While sifting through the scholarship, I came across an adaptation of Kolb’s model by a graduate student named Yeganeh. It was being touted as Integrated Learning, and the model suggested that the learner needs to go through all four stages of the cycle, experiencing, reflecting, thinking and acting in ways that would better prepare him or her to learn from the next “authentic” experience. 

From my own experience sitting in a 9x9 cell, I knew that this is how I had overcome my circumstances. Faced with the sobering realization that I was now roommates with murderers and rapists, I deliberately entered a self-directed rehabilitation program that consisted of thinking about my life, reflecting on the decisions I’d made, thinking of ways to mend fences and steer a different course, all the while holding on to these discoveries and insights when I would have a hearing, interact with a guard or be fortunate enough to have a family member come on visiting day. I was using past experiences – REAL experiences – as a context for new learning and transformative changes in my own life.  Just like Kris’s experience as a builder had prepared him to see the benefit in clearing away the debris in order to rebuild on a solid foundation after disaster, my own experience (as a teacher and student in my one-room school) resonated with this model of experience, reflection and adaptation/informed action.

For about a year, we felt good knowing that we had found some research to support the process we were presenting. It also felt good to know that Kolb’s theory, and Yeganeh’s model of integrated learning, had very useful applications when experience doesn’t have to be manufactured; in other words, the same cycle could be applied when the learning context is a real, however unfortunate, occurrence in life. And, as difficult as it is to admit, what better time is there to sort out the lessons our lives are trying to teach us than after we’ve just been humbled?

Although these established theories served us well for a time, our own adaptation of Kolb and Yeganeh emerged after a presentation we gave to the University of Kansas Social Work Department.

We were addressing a room full of future counselors and grieving adults and having a good conversation about how overwhelming everything becomes after loss. Then, it dawned on me. In crisis, we feel an absence of order, an absence of reason, an absence of purpose and, most days, an absence of hope. What The Birdhouse Project does is gives people the tools to identify and commit, through reflection and thinking, to a course of transformative action. Without the proper tools to put their loss in context, it becomes all-consuming, and oftentimes threatens to take over the person’s identity. Intellectually and objectively, we can see that although it feels incredibly debilitating, the loss itself was a single moment on the timeline of our lives. If we can contextualize, or make sense of, that loss in the larger and ongoing narrative of our lives, we find purpose in the experience: a quality that, over time, will diminish the pain associated with the loss itself.

There are no magic answers to picking up the pieces and moving forward after catastrophic change. But there is a way to pick up the pieces and move forward in a way that is sensitive and empowering: a way to look at our experiences as an opportunity for growth. The Birdhouse Project cannot promise healing for everyone, but it does facilitate a deep look into our feelings to see what we can only learn by being open to life’s greatest lessons. What it can do is provide tools to start restoring order to the chaos, helping us find our foundations, rebuild ourselves and learn to live again.