Living with Loss From Grief to Wellbeing

Introduction - Living with loss

Katrin Den Elzen, Robert A. Neimeyer and Reinekke Lengelle

Part I - Coping with loss: Research contributions

1. Narratives of experiences of presence in bereavement: sources of comfort, ambivalence and distress

Pablo Sabucedo, Jacqueline Hayes and Chris Evans

2. Supporting bereaved students in higher education: student perspectives

Chantal N. Spiccia, Joel A. Howell, Carrie Arnold, Ashton Hay and Lauren J. Breen

3. How are worriers particularly sensitive to grief? Tonic immobility as a mediating factor

Sherman A. Lee, Amanda A. Mathis and Mary C. Jobe

4. Determination of resilience factors in individuals who tested COVID-19 positive

Mehmet A. Karaman, İsmail H. Tomar, Ramin Aliyev, Hasan Eşici, Mehmet Şam and Yaşar Özbay

5. Grief and functional impairment following COVID-19 loss in a treatment-seeking sample: the mediating role of meaning

Lauren J. Breen, Sherman A. Lee, Vincent O. Mancini, Michaela Willis and Robert A. Neimeyer

Part II - Writing through loss: Therapeutic approaches 

6. The impact of expressive storytelling on grieving: how narrative writing can help us actively and effectively process and reconcile the loss of a loved one

Linita Eapen Mathew

7. These roots that bind us: using writing to process grief and reconstruct the self in chronic illness

Jennifer Bertrand

8. Healing wounds: exploring the hyphen in son-father relations as an adult child of an alcoholic

Daniel Wade Clarke

9. Grief tending through the wilderness: toward a poetic consciousness for adult survivors of childhood trauma

Iris J. Gildea

10. Braiding western and eastern cultural rituals in bereavement: an autoethnography of healing the pain of prolonged grief

Linita Eapen Mathew

11. The literature of loss: elegy writing as a therapeutic strategy for coping with grief

Judith Harris

12. Grief memoirs and the reordering of life: on resilience, loneliness, and writing

Maïté Snauwaert

13. A tale of two widows: investigating meaning-making and identity development through writing in the face of grief

Katrin Den Elzen and Reinekke Lengelle

Part III - Adapting to loss: Evaluating change and promoting wellbeing

14. Compassion-focused grief therapy

Darcy Harris

15. Meaning-oriented narrative reconstruction: navigating the complexities of bereaved families

Carolyn Ng

16. Assimilation in bereavement: charting the process of grief recovery in the case of Sophie

John F. Wilson, Lynne Gabriel and William B. Stiles

17.  Rewriting grief following bereavement and non-death loss: a pilot writing-for-wellbeing study

Katrin Den Elzen, Lauren J. Breen and Robert A. Neimeyer

Biography

Katrin Den Elzen is Research Associate at Curtin University, Perth, Australia and a Writing-for-wellbeing lecturer for graduate students in expressive art therapies, Murdoch University. She has written a grief memoir and works as a grief counselor and Writing-for-wellbeing facilitator. Her most recent publication is Writing-for-wellbeing: theory, research and practice with Routledge.

Robert A. Neimeyer directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, actively practices as a trainer, and consultant, and has published over 600 articles and 35 books, most on grieving as a meaning-making process. His most recent books are New Techniques of Grief Therapy (2021, Routledge) and The Handbook of Grief Therapies (2023).

Reinekke Lengelle is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Athabasca University, Canada and a researcher at The Hague University, The Netherlands. Her book Writing the Self in Bereavement: A Story of Love, Spousal Loss, and Resilience won the Best Book Award for Ethnography in 2021 and the Qualitative Inquiry Book Award in 2022.