"Lighting his way home" : pastoral conversations with a missing child's mother

Abstract

Missing children is one of the horrors that we are confronted with in today's society. The case study method, a feminist co-search methodology, is used to give a missing child's mother the opportunity to tell and re-tell the painful story. During this co-search process the following aspects of doing ethics and pastoral care and counselling with the mother are constantly negotiated. The term "missing child" is defined and the relevance between the distinction of "missing children" and "run-away children" is discussed. Furthermore, this study explores the many diverse practices of narrative pastoral care and counselling with parents of missing children within an economically disadvantaged community. The conceptualisations regarding loss, hope and meaning-making and how these are utilised in the life of a missing child's mother is discussed.