Life review is an essential and fruitful element of aging. In this experiential workshop, we will investigate the healing potential of not just telling, but reframing stories from our lives. Using midrash, an ancient Jewish process of inquiry into sacred texts, we will seek meaning in the sacred texts of stories from our lives. We will question and re-tell our stories, in order to glean both lessons from the past and directions for the future. In addition, we’ll explore how we might use this tool in our work with elders.

The presenter is Rabbi Dayle A. Friedman, MSW, MAJCS, BCC.  She is founder and director of Growing Older -- Wisdom + Spirit Beyond Midlife.  She was founder and director of Hiddur:  The Center for Aging and Judaism of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and was the founding director of chaplaincy services at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center.   She is an ordained Rabbi and a board certified Jewish chaplain.  Rabbi Friedman is the editor of Jewish Pastoral Care: A Practical Handbook from Traditional and Contemporary Sources (2nd edition, 2010) and author of Jewish Vision for Aging: A Professional Guide for Fostering Wholeness (2008), and the forthcoming Growing Older: Sustenance for the Journey.

• Participants will be able to recognize life review as a natural and integrative process in growing older.
• Participants will understand midrash as a process of meaning-making, which can be applied to our own life stories as well as sacred texts.
• Participants will use midrashic techniques to realize the healing capacity of their own (or their elder clients’) sacred stories.

Presentation Outline

1. Introduction to life review:  “Our stories are our only maps.” Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot.
2. Warm up:  telling a one-minute story to one or two other participants.
3. Didactic presentation on life review.
4. Experiential exercise:  write down (for participant’s eyes only) a story from your life.
5. Didactic presentation on midrash as a tool for meaning-making.
6. Experiential exercise:  take one or more midrashic question(s) and apply to your story. Take notes. Then rewrite the story in light of new understandings.
7. Debrief:  process the process, not the content. First in pairs, then with whole group.
8. Discussion:  applying this approach to our work with elders.