Choosing Light: Transforming Grief Through the Practice of Mindful Photography and Self-Reflection

This book is a gentle and creative guide that supports the reader through their grief journey. Through the practice of mindful photography and reflection on self-made images, one learns to face grief and create meaning from their experience.

Dr. Jessica Thomas holds an MS in Marriage and Family Therapy and a PhD in Psychology with an emphasis in Transpersonal Psychology. She is a therapist, clinical supervisor, grief educator, and organizational consultant.

Jessica has served on the not-for-profit board of the NW Association for Death Education and Bereavement Support for over eight years. She has been a hospice volunteer and a proud volunteer and advocate for Death Cafes, working to increase awareness of death and dying in the greater community.

As a professor at Lewis & Clark College, she has created course work and taught on death and grief, psycho-spiritual development and counseling, research methods, and clinical supervision. She also provides clinical supervision for counseling students at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her doctoral research, Mindful Photography and its Implications in End-of-Life Caregiving: An Art-based Phenomenology, focused on creative expression and the experience of anticipatory loss. Jessica’s subsequent developments include integrating her mindful photography therapeutic method into groups. Within and Without mindful photography reflection groups support those who are traversing grief due to a death or other major life transition.

She offers both professional and community workshops, presentations, and talks on death and grief, transpersonal psychology, and the Within and Without therapeutic method. Some of Jessica’s favorite projects involve consulting with organizations and developing death and grief education, as well as facilitating creative training sessions and meaningful group practices.