ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents arts- and fiction-based research processes, to re-imagine therapeutic moments as a way to ponder the crucial roles played by soul and communitas within the her quake-arts therapy grief work. Therapeutic processes that take place within enduring liminality call for an approach that leans into the connective permeability and attends to soul-wounds. Soul-building therapy thus becomes firstly a quest to discover how soul is characterised for each individual client. This informs the grief-healing that follows. This healing may not be about chugging through predictable stages, or about attempts to return to a former wholeness. Attachment and relationship development is core to therapeutic healing. Soul-based and communitas-infused arts therapy offered many benefits to the author’s grief work during the Canterbury earthquakes. This way of working paved a route to the healing state of flow while allowing clients to feel deeply supported through the most wretched moments of their sadness.
