Expression Of Grief Research Articles

Gendered Narratives of Grief for a Fallen Soldier in a Course of the Russian Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine as Expressed Online

This article explores gendered narratives of grief for fallen servicemen and women in the course of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine after February, 24 2022. While the public image of a soldier typically represents a plethora of traditionally masculine features, the public nature of the private grief in the age of digitalization challenges this image. Moreover, a rather significant participation of women in combat roles adds to the distortion of the traditional expressions of grief in a public space. Another prominent factor is the sheer scale of invasion and the proximity of the soldiers to the civilians, which forges the bonds of micro-solidarities and changes the perception of the military. Drawing on the narrative analysis of the public expressions of grief in the social media, this text explores how the decentralization of grief granted by the social media and the changed demographical landscape among the soldiers are echoed in the process of mourning online.
 This article focuses solely on the death of the soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the volunteers who died as the result of the military action and does not touch upon the death of Russian servicemen and/or deaths of the soldiers and volunteers that occurred beyond the combat zone and military action.

A qualitative phenomenological exploration of prolonged grief in New Delhi, India.

Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a condition characterized by difficulty in coping effectively with the loss of loved ones. The proposed diagnostic criteria for PGD have been based predominantly on research from developed Western nations. The cultural variations associated with experience and expression of grief and associated mourning rituals have not been considered comprehensively. The current study aimed to understand the experience of prolonged grief in India through a qualitative enquiry with mental health professionals (focus group discussions) and affected individuals (key informant interviews). Several novel findings diverging from the current understanding of manifestation and narratives of PGD emerged from the study, including differences in the social contexts of bereavement and culture-specific magico-religious beliefs and idioms of distress. The findings point to limitations of existing diagnostic systems for PGD. The results of this study suggest that the assumption of content equivalence for psychiatric disorders across cultures may not be justified and that there is a need to develop culturally sensitive diagnostic criteria and assessment scales for PGD.

Healing the Hauntings: A Discourse Analysis of Grief in Two-Spirit Poetry

This paper provides a discourse analysis of two poems selected from the book Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (Driskill et al., 2011b) to explore the concept of grief in Two-Spirit/Queer Indigenous poetry. It analyzes the diction, voice, formality, themes, metaphors, similes, personification, and the use of repetition the authors utilize to represent grief and discover the social, cultural, and political realities and discursive practices behind the poems. It concludes that through their expression of grief, the poets highlight the emergence and endurance of a community and people who will continue to fight for survival and the right to live in peace and harmony outside of colonial gender and sexual binaries. Both poems engage with a continuing sense of Two-Spirit identity that call forth new generations of Queer Indigenous/Two-Spirit people while remembering their history and the Elders who came before to heal personal and historical trauma often through connection with nature, their ancestors, and spirituality.

By sharing our loss, we fight: Collective expressions of grief in the digital age

This essay explores the potential of digital mourning for activists and social movements, enabling them to navigate the injuries inflicted by hegemonic powers and harness these experiences as a meaningful force for social change. Through a literature review of scholarly works on mourning within digital platforms, the article identifies theories and characterizations that foster critical reflections on the significance of these online instances. Moreover, by presenting three examples of digital mourning activism (Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 protests, and the Arab Spring), the paper highlights the significance of digital platforms as spaces for collective mourning, shaping public opinion, building collective memory, and driving activism beyond the digital realm. Overall, this essay aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of digital mourning as an empowering tool for activism, shedding light on its role in facilitating meaning-making processes and fostering the potential for profound social change in the face of systemic challenges and injustices.

Grieving a Drug-Related Death in the Context of One's Own Drug Use: An Exploratory Study

Drug-related deaths (DRDs) are a major societal challenge. People who use drugs are at particular risk of witnessing DRDs, and of losing people close to them to a DRD, and experiencing an overdose or other health issues themselves. People who experience sudden, unexpected, and stigmatized deaths, such as DRDs, are found to struggle more afterward than when the death is more natural and expected. Additionally, people who use drugs are more likely to experience a complicated grieving process following the loss of someone. Despite this, knowledge about the connections between a person's own drug use and reaction following bereavement from a DRD is scarce. This article makes a start at filling this knowledge gap. Based on interviews with people who used drugs and were bereaved following DRDs, the article explores how the bereaved spoke about the relationship between their drug use and losing a close friend or intimate partner to a DRD. We present four types of stories about the relationship between grief following DRDs and drug use. Informed by the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement, we discuss the stories and highlight how drug use is used to handle emotional overload, how drug use leads to uncommon expressions of grief, and how the relationship between grief and drug use may lead to an avoidance of the reality of loss. We point out that drug use and grief are strongly intertwined and how stigma associated with DRDs and drug use creates obstacles to openness and relating to social networks in support processes.

Stop being a wuss: People's perceptions of men experiencing grief in Australia.

Three years have passed since the Australian Government's Department of Health released its National Men's Health Strategy 2020-2030. Presently, little evidence is available to show whether the strategy has achieved success in rectifying men's mental-ill health, particularly the experience of stigma when expressing vulnerable emotions such as grief. Concurrently, research within the field of psychology continues to show that men experience significant pressure to conform faithfully to their socialised gender role. Given the focus to better men's mental health in Australia, this study ascertained people's perceptions of men experiencing grief. The study adopted social constructionism to explore how participants perceived a fictious character living with grief using a hypothetical vignette by way of convenience sampling. Nine males and seven females who resided in Australia participated in answering seven questions concerning the character's experience of grief. Inductive thematic analysis yielded three themes which collectively represented perceptions of masculinised grief. Notably, avoid stigma by fixing grief, avoid stigma by quickly getting over grief, and avoid stigma by suppressing the expression of grief. SO WHAT?: The study suggests that a stronger research focus should be targeted towards rectifying stigma resulting from men's expression of vulnerable emotions by incorporating in depth interviews in order to create worthwhile public awareness initiatives. Such initiatives should seek to minimise societal pressures that are placed upon men to ensure conformity to dominant masculine ideologies and their socialised gendered role when experiencing and expressing vulnerable emotions such as grief.

Death is the cause of my predicament: A cross-cultural study of death-related personal names in Nigeria

This article explores the motivations, beliefs, and attitudes toward death-related names in some onomastic traditions in Nigeria: Ibibio, Igbo (south-east), and Owe (mid-west). The study is anchored theoretically on the ethnopragmatic framework which accounts for the locally interpretable meaning of discourse practices in terms of values and beliefs within particular cultural contexts. Drawing on ethnographic qualitative data sourced through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 30 participants, I argue that death-related names are based on varied cultural scripts that communicate many nuances of meaning grounded in lived experiences of name-givers. The article concludes that death-related names have cultural semantics that are shared cross-linguistically: to acknowledge the inevitability and unpredictability of death; to admit the existence of superior forces that control the affairs of human beings and to question the temporality of life. These names, therefore, serve as consolatory sites for the expression of grief, tension, and the rebuilding of identity.

LGBQ+ college students’ expressions of grief during sexual identity development: photographic insights from a qualitative study

Featuring the experiences of 14 LGBQ+ college students at U.S. institutions across the country, this paper centers on photographs participants took and reflected on as they described expressions of grief relative to their sexual identity development (SID). Drawn from an interview-based narrative inquiry study focused on how LGBQ+ students detail ambiguous loss in SID by considering stories and photos, we employed narrative analysis to examine their photos and data gathered through two individual interviews with each participant. Guided by a conceptual framework integrating literature on SID and scholarship on the social constructionist model of grief, we identified four thematic expressions of grief: Navigating External and Internal Conflicts Shaped by Oppressive Structures, Articulating Varied Emotional Responses in SID, Processes Associated with Coming into Queerness, and Engaging with the Future as Unknown, Yet Filled with Hope. We provide implications for research, as well as for practice targeted at educational and counseling professionals.

The Man in the Mirror: Reflections on Dementia Caregiving in Lebanon

ABSTRACT In this article, I study the different expressions of grief that I experienced while taking care of my Father who lived with Alzheimer’s for over a decade, in Beirut, Lebanon. As his primary caregiver, I was shocked by the reaction of the medical team who, at times, treated my Father as ‘invisible.’ Drawing on a parallel between Pokr Mher, an Armenian mythological figure, and my Father’s status locked in the house for years, I explore how alienation from friends and family affected him. I stress the caregiver’s significant and under-represented role, possible burnout, and withdrawal from society. In a country entrenched in corruption, and sinking in economic and political malaise, the Beirut Port Blast created an immense wave of collective grief, paralleled and even outweighed by the extracted grief of going through the Alzheimer’s arc. I shed light, too, on the importance of one’s mother tongue in dementia care. Discussing end-of-life matters in one’s own language may carry with it a finality that a second language masks. Finally, in seeking to bequeath meaning to my caregiving journey, I emphasise the role of life writing as a tool of remembering and focusing on the fullness of the forget-fullness journey.

The Wicked Weeping Woman: A Reconsideration of Women's Agency in the Lament

Drawing on philosophical frameworks of agency, autonomy, and vulnerability as developed by feminist opera scholars, this paper examines the use of the lament in the expression of female unhappiness through a comparison of the representations of the sorceress Alcina in Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina, and George Frideric Handel’s Alcina. This paper begins by exploring how Caccini’s Alcina’s lament, “Ferma, ferma crudele,” exposes her journey through anger, confusion, and finally grief over her lost love. Alcina’s vulnerable expression of grief inspires another woman to join her in lamenting, an act which instills Alcina with greater emotional agency. The paper then considers Handel’s Alcina, suggesting that his Alcina’s aria, “Ombre Pallide,” functions as a lament rather than an invocation aria. The presence of lament characteristics following her abandonment of the musical conventions of the invocation aria see Alcina gain the freedom and autonomy to act without her self-destructive magical powers, showing that this loss of power is actually her liberation. Ultimately, these considerations question existing assumptions that composers reject lament conventions in order to lend agency to their women characters, and create space for nuanced understandings of women’s vulnerability and agency.

Launcelot's Swoon: Mourning and Memorial in Malory and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur

Abstract: Launcelot's embodied expression of grief at Gwenyvere's funeral is condemned by the Bishop in Malory's Morte , but the ideological basis for this condemnation is obscure. Linguistic, cultural, and doctrinal analysis provide useful interpretive context, but a close comparison to the Stanzaic Morte Arthur reveals more concrete evidence of Malory's amplification of the earlier poem and characteristic affinity for the secular.

Beards and Texts. Images of Masculinity in Medieval German Literature

Beards and Texts. Images of Masculinity in Medieval German Literature

“Can Men Have Hearts?”: Susa Young Gates's Divorce, 1878

“Can Men Have Hearts?”: Susa Young Gates's Divorce, 1878

Imprecatory Psalms as Prophecy: How John Chrysostom’s Commentary on the Psalms Addresses the Moral Problem of Anger

John Chrysostom’s Commentary on the Psalms, typically dated to his time in Antioch between 386 and 398 c.e., aims to shape the moral character of his congregants, which also involves directing their emotional lives. In this commentary, which was probably delivered orally, Chrysostom usually interprets the Psalms as expressing salutary emotions, feelings which, even if painful, encourage virtue. These salutary emotions include grief, which accompanies repentance as a response to one’s own sin, and anger, which responds to the sin of others, encouraging them to repent. Yet certain expressions of grief and especially anger within the Psalms create ethical difficulties in that these expressions do not always appear admirable. Drawing on the tradition that David was a prophet and authored all of the Psalms, Chrysostom justifies the psalmist’s words as prediction phrased as cursing to heighten the language’s emotional effects, or as speech on behalf of others. These interpretations not only absolve David of the charge of animosity but also depict the Psalms’ words as admirable either because they encourage virtue or because they express compassion for those who are oppressed. Thus, Chrysostom’s theological beliefs about the nature of sacred texts and their author give him warrant to explain some morally problematic texts.

Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler

Reviewed by: Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler Blake Leyerle Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity Maria E. Doerfler Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 396. ISBN: 9780520304154 In this nuanced and exquisitely written study, Maria Doerfler takes readers on an extended survey of the richly variegated terrain of loss. Drawing on hymns, as well as on homilies and commentaries, she not only assesses the response of clerics to child mortality but also illuminates the affective responses of bereaved parents. Throughout the work, she stresses the powerful role of the liturgy in scripting emotions, and she explores how expressions of grief are typically gendered. The merits of this splendid work are many. Chief among them is the rich array of cited evidence. With impressive ease, Doerfler ranges across genres and linguistic communities, weaving Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopian sources into a conversation usually solidly dominated by Greek and Latin authors. To extend and clarify her analysis, she draws on contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman sources, adduces ancient material evidence, and cites voices from the medieval period, as well as from our own. Epigraphs to the chapters are as likely to feature quotations from recently published manuals on parenting as extracts from documentary papyri, a verse from Galit Hasan-Rokem's poetry as a passage from Theodoret. An introductory chapter sets up the study. Although information about the death of children in Late Antiquity remains frustratingly scanty, the experiences of one particular group of children, namely biblical characters, "were amply—one might even say excessively—documented and discussed" (5). The fact that most of these children, (Abel, Isaac, Jephthah's daughter, and the Maccabean mother's seven sons) are adult offspring underscores how this study is as much about parental bereavement as it is about the death of subadults. For if theological treatises, borrowing from philosophical writings, often conclude that an early death is a boon to both the deceased and their families, the reactions of biblical characters suggest otherwise. In their unrestrained grief, they offer vital, if often overlooked counternarratives (12). After a helpful summary of the social, religious, and ritual contexts surrounding children's death and commemoration, each subsequent chapter focuses on one or two of these dramatis personae. Chapter 2 focuses on scripture's first bereaved parents. Presented as paragons of suffering, Adam and Eve functioned not only to moderate but also to elevate the grief of ordinary parents. The laments placed into Eve's mouth by Ephrem, among others, invited parents to set their own loss within that narrative framework, and thus they offered reassurance that their children—just like Abel—would enjoy a paradisiacal future (59–71). Chapter 3 takes up the binding of Isaac, which Doerfler presents not as an exceptional story but as a familiar horror: "the threatened death of an aged couple's only son—and with it, the end of the family's lineage" (77). Portraying Abraham as a paragon of piety and emotional restraint, homilists urged parents to respond to the surrendering of their children—to martyrdom or the ascetic life, as well as to premature death—in a similarly pious and trusting manner (82–88). Realism enters, however, in the [End Page 252] figure of Sarah, whom homilists insert into the narrative to give voice to maternal grief and to theological protest. Her words allow "writers to express what Abraham in these texts could not, but what late ancient audiences evidently felt the situation required" (96). Indeed, for some homilists, Isaac's survival was due to her vociferous lament (99–101). In an especially brilliant chapter, Doerf er illuminates how the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter and the death of the Maccabean mother's seven sons function as parallel narratives to the Akedah. Although Jephthah is praised by Jacob of Serugh as a model parent, one who balanced allegiance to the divine and devotion to his family, for most early commentators, he is "a compromised hero, a counterfeit Abraham, a dangerous example" (116). Condemned as much for his overt expression of grief as for his rash vow, his mourning...

Experiencing Land Loss: Land Dispossession in the Name of National Security in Sylhet District, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the inhabitants of Ratargul living next to the Sylhet Cantonment of the Bangladesh Army. Since 1977, construction of the cantonment has gradually driven villagers from their land, with no significant opposition. This alienation will soon reach full completion through the new extension plans of the cantonment. Villagers anticipate this expansion with fear and express anger at the poverty caused by land appropriation. However, in their accounts, dukkho (grief) overshadows their fear and anger. What do they grieve for, exactly? The article suggests that dukkho is an expression of grief over material losses but also of pain over the disappearance of previous forms of life. Additionally, dukkho represents villager’s regret over missed opposition opportunities that did not materialize because they were misled; as low-caste Hindus they lack solidarity; and it is still unclear who is responsible for the land capture: the army or the government.

Expressive Arts for Grieving Youth: A Pilot Project

The experience of loss due to death, illness, and social mitigation was inevitable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mental health services are chronically difficult to access in Canada, and this barrier is further exacerbated when trying to access certified art therapists to deliver expressive arts therapy. This pilot project attempted to provide an alternative to this service through an interprofessional alliance with a professional artist and certified counselors. A small group (n = 6) of vulnerable youth who had suffered the recent loss of a loved one and were at risk for mental health issues participated in an expressive arts therapy program, over a four-week period in the late Spring of 2021. Expressive arts activities such as clay mask making to express the emotions of grief, provided opportunities for the youth to learn healthy ways of coping with grief and loss. A mixed-methods approach involving quantitative data was collected with a battery of well-validated instruments to assess changes in depressive symptomatology, social and emotional loneliness and satisfaction with life. These measures were complemented with qualitative data collected during a focus group at the end of the program. Measures conducted before and after the program found decreases in loneliness, coupled with youth expressing the shared experience was comforting, reduced feelings of isolation, and increased a sense of belonging. Preliminary evidence supports that expressive arts programs for vulnerable youth may help to stabilize mood, decrease feelings of isolation/loneliness, and may generate a supportive community of peers, providing a safe space for the expression of grief through creative outlets.

Public expressions of grief and the role of social media in grieving and effecting change

Public expressions of grief and the role of social media in grieving and effecting change

A ferida e seus contornos. Um discurso performativo sobre a ideia de felicidade

This work, aimed at students in the area of community services, carried out in Coruña (Spain) in March 2022, analyses a health prevention project, located halfway between the arts, psychology, education and social work, which uses performance to facilitate the identification of trauma and the incorporation of the experience as social learning. The researched event is analysed from the perspective of discursive practice and the production of meaning, with the aim of the actors generating a discourse of resilience. Three research techniques were chosen, documentary analysis, participant observation and public enquiry, in order to obtain depth in the conclusions and guarantee reliability. The results show the suitability of the performance for the elaboration of grief, by facilitating the expression and meaning of grief.

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre