ABSTRACT
I suggest she borrows Ceremony of Innocence (Carmichael, 1991) and Continuing Bonds (Klass et al., 1996), telling her that she will discover gems of social work writing. After many readings, I tell her, I am still astounded by Ceremony of Innocence, a book which explores the personal and social purpose and value of tears. I am humbled by the author’s courage in sharing her belief that she had maintained her effectiveness as a social worker in helping others to be healed, in part by maintaining contact with her own wound, developed from ‘the pain of the uncomforted child’. Here is no distant, detached expert who in social work reaches for the outside knowledge base alone and coolly decides which stage of coming to terms with dying or getting over someone’s death the person has reached. ‘I had tried
to let the world come through me rather than round me,’ she said (1991:2). Her authority is richer.
