The meaning of reconciliation: women’s stories about their experience of reconciliation with suffering from grief

Abstract

Grief can be seen as a form of suffering. In this study grief was not only defined as loss, but as the process of inner suffering caused of some kinds of loss. We must recognise the importance of increased understanding for patient reconciliation with grief to expand earlier formulated knowledge about health and suffering. The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of reconciliation among women suffering from grief. A qualitative explorative design with a hermeneutic narrative approach was used to analyse and interpret the interviews. Caring theory about health, suffering and hermeneutical philosophy about understanding provided the point of departure for the analysis. The study was approved by an ethical research committee. Findings reveal different plots that give light to the meaning of reconciliation in the different phases of analysis. In the women's narratives the meaning of reconciliation is a process to a new way of seeing, but also to opening and transition from the experience of grief and suffering to the experience of health and wholeness. Reconciliation has a progressive form and the meaning of reconciliation cannot be seen as synonymous or homogenous but an understanding of reconciliation as a heterogenic synthesis of health and suffering. Understanding the reconciliation process will enable nurses to plan and provide professional care, based on caring science.