Our Journey through mourning begins...

In this fifth suite of poems, from which he was to read in an event organised by GCB on 6 March 2022 (see the event here) Seán Gaffney has collected years of poetry and prose as he charted his journey through grief and mourning for his son Dara. This book is "a celebration in love and gratitude of the life, death and legacy of his son Dara Gaffney, May 9, 1972, Dublin, Ireland - August 9, 1986, Stockholm, Sweden, as of August 2021 and counting..."

Years of celebrating his son's birth and acknowledging his death in poetry have given us this suite, which will touch the readers whether their loss is recent or in the more distant past, whether a parent, a child or a friend.

Familiar themes are woven through, from the actuality of the illness and death, to the passing of time, from shock and sorrow and regret to peace and joy, from the disconnection of death to the reconnecting of the loved one to a life beyond one's material existence.

Those themes are well-known of therapists, but mostly they are the themes we all grapple with as we go through life.

And so we, his former trainees, his supervisees, his colleagues, his friends, begin our own journey of mourning, as we measure the huge debt of gratitude we owe this great teacher. We will in time organise an event to celebrate Seán's contributions. Check in through our event page, or email us at info@gestaltbelfast.org.