GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY: ACCOMPANYING BEREAVED PARENTS by MARNIE VENEMA Bachelor of Arts, University of the Fraser Valley, 2015 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY In the FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY May 2019 © Marnie Venema, 2019 GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY ii ABSTRACT This study explored relational grieving in community through examining how community members grieve with bereaved parents after the death of a child. Three bereaved parent couples and their community members were interviewed together using the qualitative action-project method (QA-PM) to examine their shared grieving actions. Data was analyzed through top-down and bottom-up processes to understand the shared intentions of their grieving actions together. The findings of this research elicited thick descriptions of relational grieving at a community level. Four main assertions of how communities grieve with bereaved parents emerged including: (a) selflessly offering emotional and practical support, (b) engaging in and honouring vulnerability, (c) holding the complexity of grieving, and (d) fostering remembrance of the deceased child together. The novel descriptions of relational grieving in community contributed to the growing area of relational bereavement research. The theoretical, empirical, and clinical implications of this study were discussed. Keywords: Grieving, bereaved parents, community, interpersonal grieving, relational grieving GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are several people that I would like to acknowledge at the completion of this project. I truly mean it when I say that this project would not have been possible without the support of my own community. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge my husband, Nik, who has listened and supported me through the last four years of this project. This included all of the excitement and joy, but also a significant amount of suffering and tears. Thank you for being my sounding board and for constantly encouraging me and seeing what I was capable of when I could not. To Derrick, my supervisor, thank you for your ongoing patience, gentleness, and support through this project. I appreciate the ways that you helped to guide me through the research, but also stepped back for me to make this project my own. Thank you for also being a source of encouragement and helping me to see myself more clearly and compassionately. To Janelle, thank you for always being a breath of fresh air in my thesis process. I appreciate how you always see goodness in what I am doing and helped me clarify perspectives and trust my decisions in the process. To the bereavement research lab, I am so grateful for your friendships and the safe place of community that I found with all of you. From the original crew with Tammy, Ben, and Janelle, who provided a guide for research and the potential for this process to be transformative to the growing group of wonderful people during my time, including Megan, Kristin, Ryan, Carly, Ivy, Grace, and Peter. I so enjoyed the ways that we were able to share our lives together in community and for your amazing support and help on this project. To Kristin, my valued friend and constant thesis companion. You have been such a source of encouragement in this process and allowed me the space to vent all of my frustrations, GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY iv fears, thoughts, and joys with this project. Thank you for being there always through the ups and downs and championing me onwards. You have been such a gift! I would also like to recognize and thank the Canadian Institute of Health Research for their funding and for investing in graduate research helping to improve Canadian health. Lastly, to the communities who opened their lives and suffering with me. You have forever become part of me and impacted my community life. I have learned so much through you about what it means to hold suffering together and have grown in my own capacity to do so through engaging with you. Thank you for modeling to me the beauty, sacredness, depth, and immense joy that can emerge in sharing together in all of life’s suffering and joy. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY v DEDICATION To the brave and courageous communities who opened up some of their deepest suffering to share how this can be held together in relationship. And to their beautiful children: Peter Julie James Anna Judah Max GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................ v TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................ 3 Defining Key Terms ........................................................................................................... 3 Bereavement. .......................................................................................................... 3 Grief and grieving. .................................................................................................. 4 Mourning................................................................................................................. 5 Interpersonal grieving. ............................................................................................ 5 Relational grieving. ................................................................................................. 6 Community. ............................................................................................................ 6 Grief Theories and Models ................................................................................................. 7 Psychoanalysis. ....................................................................................................... 8 Attachment. ............................................................................................................. 9 Continuing bonds. ................................................................................................. 11 Dual-process model. ............................................................................................. 12 Neimeyer’s meaning-reconstruction model. ......................................................... 14 Attig’s relearning the world model. ...................................................................... 15 Existential analysis (EA) perspective of loss. ....................................................... 18 Summary of grief models...................................................................................... 18 GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY vii Empirical Research on Parental Bereavement .................................................................. 20 Health outcomes.................................................................................................... 23 Relationships outcomes. ....................................................................................... 25 Interpersonal Bereavement ............................................................................................... 28 Dyadic grieving. .................................................................................................... 29 Family grieving. .................................................................................................... 31 Community grieving. ............................................................................................ 33 CHAPTER 3: METHOD .............................................................................................................. 40 Design ............................................................................................................................... 40 The instrumental case study approach. ................................................................. 40 Qualitative Action Project Method. ...................................................................... 41 Appropriateness of the QAPM for the research question. .................................... 44 Adjustments to the QA-PM. ................................................................................. 46 Participants ........................................................................................................................ 47 Recruitment. .......................................................................................................... 47 Screening............................................................................................................... 47 Three communities recruited. ............................................................................... 50 Data collection procedure. .................................................................................... 51 Initial set of interviews.......................................................................................... 52 Member-check and feedback interview. ............................................................... 55 Analytical Procedure ......................................................................................................... 56 Preliminary analysis. ............................................................................................. 57 Within-case analysis. ............................................................................................ 60 GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY viii Between-case analysis. ......................................................................................... 61 Rigour and Quality Evaluation ......................................................................................... 61 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS ........................................................................................................... 64 Within-case Analysis ........................................................................................................ 64 Community one. .................................................................................................... 64 Community two. ................................................................................................... 88 Community three. ............................................................................................... 116 Between-Case Analysis .................................................................................................. 142 Commonalities in the community grieving process............................................ 143 Unique processes. ............................................................................................... 156 Key Assertions ................................................................................................................ 162 Assertion one. ..................................................................................................... 162 Assertion two. ..................................................................................................... 163 Assertion three. ................................................................................................... 164 Assertion four...................................................................................................... 165 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................... 166 Summary of the Research Problem................................................................................. 166 Contributions and Implications ....................................................................................... 167 Connecting with previous bereavement research and theory. ............................ 168 Novel Findings ................................................................................................................ 179 The relational process of community grieving. .................................................. 179 Theoretical Implications ................................................................................................. 189 Clinical Implications for Counselling Psychology ......................................................... 192 GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY ix Strengths and Limitations ............................................................................................... 195 Future Research .............................................................................................................. 198 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 199 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 201 APPENDIX A Recruitment Poster ............................................................................................. 211 APPENDIX B Telephone Screening for Bereaved Parents ........................................................ 212 APPENDIX C Telephone Screening Call for Community Members ......................................... 215 APPENDIX D Demographic Questionnaire for Bereaved Parents ............................................ 217 APPENDIX E Demographic Questionnaire for Community Members ..................................... 220 APPENDIX F Informed Consent................................................................................................ 223 APPENDIX G Master List of Codes .......................................................................................... 226 GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY x LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Demographics of Bereaved Parents and Community Members ..................................... 51 Table 2 Demographic Statistics for Data Set (Deceased Children) ............................................. 51 Table 3 Transcription Data Set ..................................................................................................... 58 GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The death of a child is a painful and life-altering experience (Oliver, 1999). The strain of losing a child can significantly impact parents’ psychological and physical health (Cacciatore, Lacasse, Lietz, & McPherson, 2013). Bereaved parents have been found to have increased rates of mental health problems, including complicated grief, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation (Cacciatore et al., 2013). Losing a child also impacts physical health resulting in premature mortality rates; escalation of parents’ stress levels can increase their risk of cancer, infection, and cardiovascular disease (Bergstraesser, Inglin, Hornung, & Landolt, 2015). Bereaved parents suffer intense emotional pain, face difficult life questions, and reshape their sense of self and identity as they adjust social roles and life goals (Attig, 2004). The parents’ own relationships can become strained, resulting in distance and conflict (Oliver, 1999). Family systems can become disordered and hostile as each member grieves and navigates familial changes (Fletcher, 2002; Nadeau, 1998). During this process, parents’ relationships with friends and community members can become distant and sometimes dissolve (Vandecreek & Mottram, 2009). Until recently, grieving has been researched mainly as an intrapersonal process (Archer, 2008). The study of grieving has often focused on the individual process of grieving and outcomes after loss without examining the interpersonal context and relational dimensions of grieving (Shapiro, 2001). Although bereavement researchers have suggested the interpersonal context is important in the process of grieving and in shaping grief experiences, the activity of grieving in these contexts has largely been unexplored (Archer, 2008; Shapiro, 2001). More recently researchers have examined interpersonal aspects of grief between bereaved parents and families, but there is limited research on the experience of grieving in community GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 2 (Archer, 2008; Bartel, 2016; Bentum, 2017; Klaassen, Young, & James, 2015). The research regarding community is often focused on the experience of social support, and particularly, on the lack of social support bereaved individuals experience and the adverse outcomes that result (Arnold & Gemma, 2008; Giannini, 2011). To date, bereavement research regarding positive aspects of community support has examined the role of social support in decreasing parental grief and promoting recovery. There is, however, a paucity of research examining the interpersonal process of relational grieving in community settings deemed to be supportive; it is not clear how communities engage together and share with bereaved parents in their loss (Giannini, 2011; Wilsey & Shear, 2007). My study seeks to contribute to this gap in the literature by exploring relational grieving in community through the following research question: How do communities grieve with bereaved parents? GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW The purpose of this chapter is to situate the current research within a theoretical and empirical framework and provide a rationale regarding the need for the current research. This chapter will begin with definitions of relevant key terms, followed by the development of grief theories and models used to frame the research. Lastly, an overview of current research on bereaved parents and interpersonal bereavement will be provided including the limitations of the extant research, providing a rational for the current study and research question. Defining Key Terms The literature on bereavement includes various terms to describe different experiences involved in loss including bereavement, grief, and mourning. Although many of these terms are used interchangeably, it is important to distinguish between them to understand how they describe different aspects of the loss experience. The current research also has a focus on the interpersonal process of grieving that occurs in community settings. The terms interpersonal and relational grieving as well as community will also be defined to clarify these concepts and the focus of the research. It is also important to note that each of the terms outlined in this section have various definitions used throughout the literature based on different theoretical frameworks. The terms defined in this section may not represent agreed upon definitions among all researchers, but rather the conceptualization of these terms as they are understood and used in the current research. Bereavement. Researchers in the area of bereavement suggest a need to distinguish the terms bereavement, grief, and mourning (Stroebe, Hansson, Schut, & Stroebe, 2008). Bereavement is defined in the Handbook of Bereavement Research as “the term used to denote the objective situation of having lost someone significant through death” (Stroebe, Hansson, GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 4 Schut, & Stroebe, 2008, p. 4). Bereavement describes the whole experience of death and dying including the experience leading up to the death, the death, and the adjustment after the loss of a loved one (Attig, 2004). Bereavement includes both grieving and mourning, but is used to describe the overall condition of an individual after the loss of an important person through death. In the current research the term bereaved will be used to describe the condition of parents who have lost a child and are experiencing grief and mourning as part of their current state. Grief and grieving. There are varying definitions of grieving within the bereavement research and literature. In the Handbook of Bereavement Research, Stroebe et al. (2008) defined grief as “primarily [an] emotional reaction to the loss of a loved one through death…[that] incorporates diverse psychological and physical manifestations. It is a complex syndrome, within which a variety of symptoms may be apparent” (p. 6). Stroebe et al. capture many components of grieving, but their definition is broad, mainly descriptive, and outlines grieving solely as a reactionary process. For the current research, the understanding of grieving emerges from Attig’s (2004) phenomenological model and an Existential Analysis (EA) understanding. Attig (2004) differentiates two aspects of grieving, the emotional reaction that follows the bereaved state and the active response to loss in which the bereaved engage with the loss to reshape and redirect their life. Attig provides an understanding of grieving as an active, holistic engagement with loss that involves relearning the world on multiple levels. In EA, Längle defines grieving as an active engagement in which we “turn toward” loss (Längle, 2012, 40:49). This definition was also included, as it not only involves active engagement, but the unique and personal relationship to one’s life involved in grieving. From an EA perspective, grieving is not merely a passive emotional reaction, but something that requires an active and decided engagement (Längle, 2012). Grieving is not simply about resolving the pain of loss, but rather coming into GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 5 relationship with the new situation of one’s life and checking whether or not life still feels valuable given the loss (Längle, 2012). As such, grieving requires a decided engagement to turn toward the loss, to be touched by it, and to honestly answer regarding how this loss impacts one’s life. This activity of grieving is engaged with to regain a connection to life, which is essential for living a fulfilled existence. These two definitions were chosen for the current study, firstly because grieving is differentiated from a reaction to loss and understood as also an active, shared process. Secondly, to understand how communities engage with the bereaved in ways that allow them to “turn towards” their loss and actively and honestly engage with their new life situation. Lastly, this definition was chosen to understand how community relationships can be part of this important existential activity of engaging with all of life, relearning life, and coming into relationship with life, rather than simply surviving or coping with the loss. Mourning. Mourning is defined as the public demonstration of grief that is often rooted in social and cultural traditions (Stroebe et al., 2008). While grief is a personal expression, mourning is based on societal norms of expressing grief. Mourning rituals create clear expectations of behaviour and identify the bereaved person within society (Fowlkes, 1990). Mourning and grief are often difficult to distinguish, as it is hard to determine whether someone’s expression of grief is due to socially prescribed norms or personal experience (Stroebe et al., 2008). Furthermore, social expectations and norms often implicitly shape the experience of grief, while more explicit rules and norms outline acceptable mourning rituals. For the purpose of this research, the emphasis will be on the experience of grieving, the personal and shared experience, and not mourning. Interpersonal grieving. Interpersonal grieving involves using a systemic framework to conceptualize grieving not only as an individual process, but also examining the ways that it GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 6 occurs in and is influenced by the interpersonal context including social, cultural, and familial influences (Harris, 2009; Shapiro, 2001). The current research study will involve interpersonal grieving by examining grieving within the context of community and how grieving occurs together among community members and bereaved parents. Relational grieving. Grieving is not something we do in isolation, but occurs within relationships. The term relational grieving is not clearly defined in the grief literature, but is used to describe the experience of grieving with another. A definition of relational grieving that was presented at the Canadian Psychological Association Convention is, “the personal decided engagement with the loss of life-relevant values in which we share our turning towards with another person” (Klaassen, Bentum, & Gallagher, 2015). As such, relational grieving involves an active engagement with loss that emerges between two or more people. This definition was used, as it is an extension of the EA definition of grieving used in the current research and how this can be shared in relationship. Relational grieving was used to define the shared grieving that occurred between bereaved parents and their community members. Community. Community has become increasingly difficult to define in modern society due to urbanization and expanding social networks (Chavis & Newbrough, 1986). In the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology (2007), community is defined as a “set of members living in a physically defined locality characterized by commonality of interests, attitudes, and values” (p. 201). For the purpose of the current research, community is defined as a group of people gathered around common interests, values, or attitudes1 (VandenBos, 2007). Therefore, the community is defined not by boundaries on the outside of 1 This definition of community was used, however, besides community one, the participants that volunteered for the research did not identify a group of individuals, but one close friend as their community. This will be examined as part of the discussion chapter in light of the community focus and changing definitions of community. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 7 the community, but by a central shared interest. In the current research, this central interest was the bereaved parents and community as those who share the interests of the bereaved parents. The bereaved parents identified the individuals who share this interest. The way in which bereaved parents define their community members was based on the sense of community they share with people in their lives. In community psychology, Chavis and Newbrough (1986) defined community as “any set of social relations that are bound together by a sense of community”. A sense of community refers to “an individuals’ experience of community life”, including belonging, shared emotional connection, influence, integration, and fulfillment of needs (Mannarini & Fedi, 2009, p. 212). Therefore, community in psychological research is not simply people connected by locality or values, but people sharing a relational and emotional space. In the current research community was defined as a group of people that share a common interests for the bereaved parents and with whom the bereaved parents share a sense of community. Grief Theories and Models Grief theories and models have developed over time contributing to a greater understanding of the experience of loss and processes thought to produce ideal outcomes for bereaved individuals (Archer, 2008; Attig, 2004). For the current research, three aspects are important to respond to within the current models. Firstly, the ways that grieving is conceptualized as an interpersonal process, which is lacking in many of the grief theories. Secondly, the way that grieving is understood, not as a passive or reactive process, but an active and decided engagement with loss. This active engagement in grieving is referred to as the grief work hypothesis, which originated from Freud’s theory and has been expanded. And lastly, how the models respond to the suffering that occurs in grieving and the possibility for meaning and GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 8 value to emerge. The following section will provide an overview of the historical development of the grief literature with a focus on how these different models respond to these three components; this will frame the theoretical understanding of grieving in the current research. Psychoanalysis. Freud was the first to propose a formal model of grieving in his book Mourning and Melancholia (Freud, 1917/2005). This model is important to outline as it provided an initial understanding of grieving and remains influential in societal concepts of grieving (Parkes, 2001). Freud suggested the concept of grief work, which involved an active engagement with the loss with the goal of detaching from the deceased loved one to move forward with life (Stroebe et al., 2008). Freud used a term called decathexis to describe detaching the libido, or the psychic energy, from the attachment to the loved object (Freud, 1917/2005; Hagman, 2001). Freud suggested that because the loved one is no longer present, the libido must detach from the loved object to restore psychological balance in the individual (Hagman, 2001). Due to the libido being part of the pleasure seeking aspect of the individual, an intrapsychic struggle ensues in which reality is denied in an effort to maintain the attachment to the loved one (Freud, 1917/2005). Grief work involved the process of examining the memories and hopes that attached the libido to the loved object and detaching those through catharsis, or emotional expression, over the course of time. Successful resolution of grief would occur when the libido could re-direct its energy to new objects and regain pleasure in life (Hagman, 2001). As a result people who remain connected to the loved object would have unresolved grief meaning grief reactions would persist. If people engaged in detachment through emotional release then grief would eventually resolve over time. In the psychoanalytic model proposed by Freud, grief work involves the active process of detaching from the loved one (Freud, 1917/2005). Freud’s contribution had a significant impact GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 9 on the understanding and conceptualizing of grief. Firstly, Freud created a distinction between normal and unhealthy grieving (Stroebe et al., 2008). Freud’s concept of unresolved grief led many researchers to further define and categorize unresolved grief and seek for an understanding of how to avoid these outcomes. Secondly, in Freud’s theory he suggests that grief work is an individual and internal process, which many grief researchers and theorist still use to frame their understanding of grief. This concept, however, individualizes grieving and fails to capture the bereaved and their grief within the context and relationships in which they exist. More recent researchers have challenged the internal and individual conceptualization of grieving and are starting to explore grief from an interpersonal and relational framework (Shapiro, 2001). Another major implication of Freud’s work is the concept that grieving requires letting go of the deceased individual in order for the bereaved to move on with life and find pleasure again (Hagman, 2001). This concept is unhelpful as it creates increased conflict and stress for bereaved individuals as they are forced to choose between staying connected to their loved one or moving on with life (Klass, 1993). Klass (1993) more recently contested this concept, providing evidence that continued connection with the deceased is part of healthy grieving and contributes to positive outcomes (this will be outlined further in the section Continuing Bonds). Lastly, Freud’s theory suggests that the engagement in grieving is simply about recovering to regain pleasure in life, and fails to understand the value of grieving for connecting to our lives (Längle, 2012). Freud provided a foundation for grief theory and research, but the definitions of unresolved grief and grief work have been revised beyond his initial conceptualizations (Archer, 2008). Attachment. Following Freud, a major theorist, Bowlby, contributed significantly to grief theories through applying attachment concepts to grief (Archer, 2008). Given that parents GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 10 have strong attachment relationships to their children, this model is important to consider. Bowlby suggested a biological framework of grief in which distress is triggered through the separation of an important attachment figure as the bereaved person is not able to get the security, support, and love from the deceased person any longer (Bowlby, 1969; 1980; 1988). Bowlby built off Freud’s concept of grief as an intrapersonal process, suggesting the goal of grieving is to restore a sense of safety and comfort through psychological reorganization (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2008). Bowlby (1969) proposed that this occurs through a series of natural stages after separation without reunion. These stages include numbing (with outbursts of distress), yearning and searching for the deceased, despair and disorganization, and finally, reorganization. Researchers who have expanded the attachment model of grief suggest that to achieve reorganization there are two central psychological tasks: first, accepting the death through returning to regular activities and engaging in new attachment relationships and second, sustaining a symbolically represented bond with the deceased attachment figure and finding a place for them within the new existence without them (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2008). Bowlby’s model helps provide understanding of the extreme distress experienced because of the role loved ones play in our lives as sources of security and comfort. Although Bowlby’s understanding of grieving is one that emerges from our interconnected nature as humans, his model focuses on grieving as something that occurs as an isolated individual process. Furthermore, Bowlby’s stages of grieving suggest that these are natural responses that passively ensue when separation occurs and that the active process involved to achieve psychological reorganization involves acceptance by moving back into normal functioning; this implies the way forward through grief is turning away from the pain, rather than engaging it as part of acceptance of the loss (Attig, 2004). Bowlby’s model suggests that once the person is able to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 11 reorganize their psychological representations they will be able to engage once again in attachment relationships; although this may capture aspects of attachment involved in grieving, grieving is not simply a matter of psychological reorganization. This model does not account for the way that loss and grieving changes people and impacts all aspects of their being (Attig, 2004). Bowlby’s model helps to expand the understanding of the pain of grief given attachment relationships, but suggests a more passive, intrapersonal model of grieving that does not engage in the larger experience of suffering in grieving or the interpersonal dimensions. Continuing bonds. An important theory which has been integrated into many models of grieving is Klass’ continuing bonds theory (Klass, 1993; Klass & Walter, 2001). This theory is relevant to address, as an important aspect of the engagement with grieving revolves around dealing with the connection to the deceased, particularly given Freud’s initial concepts of detachment from the deceased loved one as a central aspect of grieving. Klass (1993) proposed the theory of continuing bonds in opposition to Freud’s psychoanalysis theory in which grieving requires severing the bonds with the deceased. Klass and Walter (2001) examined the way that in many other cultures the bereaved maintain connections to the deceased and how this is beneficial for grieving. This model is particularly relevant to the literature on bereaved parents as they have a strong desire to remain connected to their child (Hunt & Greeff, 2011). He argued that in western societies the focus on youth and progress combined with death anxiety and past theories of grief contribute to the assumption that bonds with the deceased should be severed (Klaas & Walter, 2001). Yet in research and clinical practice many bereaved individuals sense the presence of their deceased loved ones, have conversations, and look for moral guidance from the deceased (Klass & Walter, 2001). Klass (1993) suggests that this continued connection to dead loved ones in the midst of our ongoing lives is a healthy and important part of grieving. As GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 12 such, part of grieving involves finding new ways to maintain a continued connection to the deceased. Many other models have integrated the continuing bonds theory into the process of grieving and recommend for the bereaved to retain an internal connection and symbol of the deceased loved one. In regards to grief work, the continuing bonds model implies that part of engaging with grieving is finding continued connection with the deceased loved one in the bereaved individual’s life. The continued bonds theory will also be included in the current research to understand, as a part of grieving, how community members with bereaved parents can facilitate ongoing connections with their deceased child. Dual-process model. Stroebe and Schut (1999) developed a model of grieving that focused more on the process of coping with grief (Stroebe, & Schut, 1999). This model is important to address, as it is a relevant debate in the literature regarding whether grief work, as an active engagement with the loss, is necessary or helpful for the bereaved. Furthermore, in the current research grieving is differentiated from coping. Stroebe, Hansson, Stroebe and Schut (2001) suggested a dual process model (DPM) of coping with grief, which involves both confronting and avoiding the loss. “Coping refers to processes, strategies, or styles…of managing (reducing, mastering, tolerating) the situation…if coping is effective, symptomatology should be reduced, and the outcome more positive for the individual (Stroebe, Hansson, Stroebe, & Schut, 2001, p. 9). Stroebe et al. (2001) suggested bereaved individuals have two categories of stressors: those related to the loss and those related to restoration from the loss. Adaptive coping involves oscillating between loss oriented coping (processing the pain of the loss) and restoration-oriented coping (building the new life of the bereaved without the deceased). From this framework the bereaved oscillate between facing and avoiding these two orientations and stressors at different points in time as a means of coping. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 13 This alternation helps the bereaved to progressively come to terms with the loss and focus their attention more toward their future. Stroebe and Schut challenge Freud’s concept that emotional release is always necessary to relieve the pain of loss and instead see avoidance as an adaptive means of regulating the intensity of the emotional pain. Stroebe and Schut’s (1999) model of coping is integrative by allowing for different experiences and forms of grieving. Their model also acknowledges that facing the loss is not always possible and it can be adaptive at times for the bereaved to involve themselves in other tasks focused on building a new life. Although Stroebe and Schut’s model includes important realities of the grieving process, the word coping suggests that grief is something we simply put up with and get through. In regards to the grief work hypothesis, Stroebe and Schut’s model proposes a dichotomy in the attention of the bereaved, which is necessary to survive grief. Although this perspective acknowledges that an active engagement and turning toward loss is necessary, it implies that this process is only related to coping (reducing, mastering, or tolerating), excluding valued meaning that can develop through the engagement with loss. Furthermore, although Stroebe and Schut (2015) have sought to integrate their model in more intra and interpersonal ways through developing a family DPM, these still involve segmented tasks of individuals that can be coordinated to accomplish specific outcomes; they fail to account for the ways that relationships are intrinsically connected and shared in the engagement and disengagement with loss and building a new life. Stroebe and Schut (2015) propose an integrative model that involves coping with loss by alternating between processing the loss and building a new life, but fail to include the interpersonal and relational aspects of grieving and conceptualize grieving as something to merely survive, doubting the human capacity to engage with meaning in suffering (Attig, 2004). GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 14 Neimeyer’s meaning-reconstruction model. Neimeyer (2001) proposed a constructivist approach to grieving that integrates many aspects of other theories including attachment, stress and coping, and the dual-process model (Gillies & Neimeyer, 2006). Neimeyer suggested a model that accounts for engagement with meaning in grieving and proposed that grieving involves reconstructing a world of meaning that has been shaken by loss. The meaning structures the bereaved held previous to the loss, regarding faith, worldview, future, and selfperceptions are evaluated after loss; if they fit with the experience of loss then there is less distress, but if they are challenged there is increased distress. Neimeyer argued that loss often challenges assumptive worldviews and requires the bereaved to construct a new existence and framework of the world that can hold the loss experience and effects called reconstruction. In regards to the grief work hypothesis, Neimeyer proposes bereaved individuals must engage in the process of reconstruction after loss. Reconstruction involves three main tasks: sense making, benefit finding, and identity change. In the process of sense-making bereaved individuals question and try to make sense of the loss and their bereavement. Benefit finding involves positively reframing the loss to look for benefits within the experience. Identity change involves reconstructing the bereaved individual’s sense of self, focusing on the ways that they have grown and been strengthened through the loss experience. The three processes are worked through until new meaning structures that are helpful are developed. If the bereaved are not able to construct helpful meaning structures their distress will persist as they continue to reconstruct new meaning structures. Neimeyer emphasized that distress is not something to be ignored or minimized, but rather the catalyst that drives the bereaved toward a search for meaning. Niemeyer also suggests that other people are an important part of the reconstruction process as we make sense of ourselves through our relationships and interactions with others. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 15 Neimeyer proposed a model of grieving that involves active engagement and does not shy away from the pain of loss, but allows it to help the bereaved develop meaning. Furthermore, the constructivist framework of Neimeyer’s model points to the relational aspect of grieving, which requires dialogue with others to reconstruct meaning after loss (Neimeyer, Klass, and Dennis, 2014). Although Neimeyer’s reconstruction process involves engagement with the loss and the ability to draw meaning from loss, the process may not reflect the senseless and painful suffering sometimes involved in the loss of a child. The loss may never make sense or seem to have any benefit and it can be burdensome to search for one. It may be more useful to accept the loss as suffering that is part of our existence, rather than impose meaning (Attig, 2004). Neimeyer does not account for the way the bereaved need to engage with the realities of life, loss, and suffering, which involve mystery and often fail to make sense, and in in this place, to personally engage with their decision as to whether they still find value in their life. Attig’s relearning the world model. Attig (2004) proposed an existentialphenomenological model in which grieving is relearning the world in the wake of loss (Attig, 2004). Attig (2004) suggests that grieving is our “active response to what happens in bereavement and the suffering that loss entails” (p. 343). Bereavement is a state we cannot control and occurs not as a reaction or a response, but is the deprivation that occurs when we lose someone we love. Attig suggested that loss fractures our wholeness and reveals how interconnected we are with the deceased in multiple layers of our existence. The bereaved need to relearn their lives including their daily routines, new relationship with the deceased, their selfunderstanding, and their understanding of the world. On the one hand grieving involves an emotional reaction to the state of deprivation we experience in bereavement and the realization of losing something of value (Attig, 2004). GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 16 Grieving, however, does not end there, but is also our active engagement in the process of relearning the world (Attig, 2004). Attig approaches grieving not simply as an emotional or cognitive task, but as a holistic process involving us emotionally, cognitively, physically, spirituality, behaviorally, socially, and intellectually. The process of relearning how to live in the world occurs on each of these levels in an intertwined fashion as we engage in the world. Furthermore, grieving occurs within the contexts of all of our lives and relationships, rather than an intrapersonal activity. In Attig’s (2004) model he also outlined the way that grieving brings us close to the existential aspects of life. Attig (2004) states that: “As we grieve we engage with some of the most profound mysteries of life, including finiteness and limitation, change and impermanence, uncertainty and not knowing, fallibility, vulnerability and suffering, death and mortality, others and ourselves, love and relationships, and the meaning of life. In engagement with mystery, grieving is neither a matter of problem solving nor of completing tasks. None of these can be solved, answered definitively, controlled, managed, or mastered…we cannot change them. We can only respond to them” (p. 352). Attig’s (2004) inclusion of the existential aspect of grieving is important as it addresses the reality of suffering and our finiteness as humans that we experience in loss; grieving does not require us to make sense of loss, but to learn how to live authentically and meaningfully while struggling with the limitedness of our human condition. Attig (2004) proposed that in grieving, the grief work we do is engaging with the loss to learn to: “Transcend and find meaning in our suffering, make ourselves at home once again in the local and global contexts of our lives, and stretch into the inevitably new shape of our daily lives and new course of our life stories” (p. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 17 350). This process requires the bereaved to walk through the pain and once again find meaning and engage with hope by opening up their hearts and lives again to new possibilities and meaning. Importantly, this process also happens in connection to the larger wholes of which we are a part, including relationships. Attig’s (2004) model of grieving as relearning the world is ideal for conceptualization of grieving in the current research. Firstly, Attig’s model differentiates between bereavement, a state out of our control, and grieving, which involves a reaction to bereavement but extends to our active response. This distinction is important as it frames grieving as a process that the bereaved can engage with instead of something that passively happens to them. Secondly, Attig’s model is holistic as it involves all our being; grieving is not separated into cognitive or emotional tasks, but just as we engage in the world normally with every part of ourselves and in relationship, so we do in grieving (Attig, 2004). Thirdly, the holistic perspective embedded into Attig’s model implies that grieving is both an individual and interpersonal process. The state of bereavement is our realization of how intertwined and connected we are with the ones we love and grieving as holistic beings also involves families and communities adjusting to the loss, redistributing roles, and collective meaning-making. Lastly, in Attig’s model he addresses the existential questions posed by loss and suggests that grieving is also finding meaning in suffering. In relearning the world the bereaved do not simply cope or get through loss, but can be transformed. Attig’s model will be one of the main grief theories used in the current research to conceptualize grieving as it frames grieving as an active, decided process, it addresses the holistic nature of grieving involving our relationships, the existential realities of suffering that are encountered in grieving, and the value and transformative potential of grieving. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 18 Existential analysis (EA) perspective of loss. Längle (2012) has outlined an understanding of grieving from an EA framework. This theory was also included as one of the main conceptualizations of grieving because it describes grieving as an active, decided activity and incorporates the existential engagement possible in grieving. Längle (2012) proposes that grief signals that we have lost something of value, which requires our goodbye. Längle also conceptualizes grieving as an active process. As he so eloquently states: “grieving is turning toward this wound, where my life is bleeding…this change requires a new relationship to my life” (Längle, 2012, 40:57). Längle suggests that turning toward loss involves emotional openness, time, and attention. From this framework, the pain of suffering is not something to be controlled or coped with, but rather something the bereaved must engage honestly as part of their existence. This involves turning toward suffering, being impacted by the loss, and coming into relationship with the loss and one’s life situation. Through relating to the loss, the bereaved must then respond to whether or not they personally find value in life given what has been lost; in this response, there is potential for reaffirming the value of life and coming closer to one’s life. The EA perspective of grieving was also be used in addition to Attig’s (2004) theory of grieving to frame the conceptualization of grieving in the current research. Both of these theories outline grieving as an active response in which the bereaved engage with their loss. While Attig’s (2004) theory helps to frame the holistic, relational, and existential process of grieving, the EA perspective is also included to propose the ways that grieving is not only re-learning the world, but also a unique personal engagement with the relationship to one’s own life. Summary of grief models. Grief theories and models have developed over time contributing to a greater understanding of grieving. Freud suggested that grieving involved grief work, in which the bereaved detach themselves from their deceased loved one to put energy back GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 19 into life (Freud, 1917/2005). Bowlby (1969; 1980; 1988) proposed that grieving is the result of a broken attachment bond and the bereaved must re-organize their internal representations of attachment figures to once again engage in relationships. Stroebe, & Schut (1999) offered a dual-process model for coping with grief in which the bereaved oscillated between engagement and avoidance of both processing the loss and rebuilding a new life. In Niemeyer’s (2001) meaning-reconstruction model, he suggested that loss impacts our beliefs about the world and grieving involves engaging with the pain of loss to construct new meaning that can make sense of and find benefit in the loss experience. Attig’s (2004) proposed a holistic, existentialphenomenological model of grieving in which he argued that the bereaved have to relearn the world in the wake of loss. Lastly, Längle’s (2012) proposes a model of grieving that involves an active engagement with the loss to relate honestly to one’s new life situation and decide if life is still valuable. Klass (1993) has also been influential in the study of grief contesting Freud’s theory of detachment in grief work and arguing for the value of continued connection to the deceased. Although many of these theories include important aspects of grieving, many of them fail to capture the active and decided engagement, particularly in ways that are holistic, involve the interpersonal nature of grieving, and how to engage in the suffering encountered in loss. The models used to conceptualize grieving in the current research are Attig’s (2004) model of relearning the world, Klass’ (1993) continuing bonds theory, and Längle’s (2012) Existential Analytical perspective of grieving. These theories provide an understanding of grieving as an active, decided, holistic, and interpersonal process in which continued connection with the deceased is encouraged and meaning and value can emerge through suffering. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 20 The previous section has helped to provide an outline of some of the theoretical concepts and models that frame the current research. It is also important to outline recent research on bereaved parents and why they are an important population for research as well as interpersonal bereavement to understand the value and necessity of research on community grieving. The following section will provide an overview of the research on bereaved parents including the experience of losing a child and the outcomes that can result from losing a child. The following section will also include an outline of the current research on interpersonal grieving starting with bereaved couples, bereaved families, and community support. Empirical Research on Parental Bereavement The death of a child is described as one of the most devastating and life-altering losses (Arnold & Gemma, 2008; Giannini, 2011). Compared to other death losses, bereaved parents have reported losing a child as more painful and have been found to have more intense and prolonged grief responses (Hunt & Greeff, 2011). There are many reasons that contribute to the powerful grief response of losing a child. Couples in Western society today tend to have fewer children and those children receive more of parents’ time, resources, and emotional investment (Braun & Berg, 1994; Davies, 2004). Consequently, the attachment between parents and children in Western society is often very strong contributing to the intense grief parents experience (Braun & Berg, 1994). Furthermore, due to the degree of investment in children, the loss of a child often represents not only the death of a loved child, but also the loss of future hopes and dreams of the parent. The death of a child involves loss at multiple levels and devastates not only their current life but also future plans. The death of a child is also viewed as uncommon and unnatural contributing to the intense grief experienced by bereaved parents (Davies, 2004). Today in Western society GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 21 advanced medicine reduces mortality rates of young children, increasing expectations that children will survive and grow up (Davies, 2004). Children do not often die and therefore parents do not anticipate losing their child; when they do it is shocking due to the rarity of this occurrence. A child’s death is also experienced as unnatural (Braun & Berg, 1994; Hibberd, Vandenberg, & Wamser, 2011). Death is something that is anticipated in old age; therefore, when a child dies it goes against the natural progression of life (Hibberd et al., 2011). As a result, it often comes unexpectedly and is experienced as unjust, intensifying the grief response. Due to the uncommon and unnatural nature of the death of a child, it challenges the assumptions parents have held about the world and life (Braun & Berg, 1994; Hibberd, Vandenberg, & Wamser, 2011). When children die it shakes the natural order of life, and often parents experience a world that was previously secure and ordered as unjust, unfair, and out of control (Braun & Berg, 1994). Some of the assumptions about the world that are challenged involve the nature of life, personal control, external control (e.g. God), and the existence of order. The nature of life is assumed to be generally good (Braun & Berg, 1994). Although tragedies may occur, people often do not expect them to occur in their own lives. The death of a child shatters these assumptions and suffering becomes a part of life. In regards to personal control, many people assume that if they do the right thing, they will get a positive outcome (Braun & Berg, 1994). When a child dies, parents often have little control over this event and either experience the world as out of control or hold themselves personally responsible for their child’s death; if the latter, immense guilt and shame ensues. The death of a child also challenges assumptions about external control, such as the role of God (Braun & Berg, 1994; Hibberd, Vandenberg, & Wamser, 2011). People often hold beliefs that God or a powerful deity will use their supremacy for good and will intervene to keep their followers safe (Braun & Berg, 1994; GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 22 Hibberd, Vandenberg, & Wamser, 2011). When a child dies parents often question the beliefs they held about an external being and can experience a sense of abandonment and anger toward this being for not saving their child’s life (Braun & Berg, 1994). Another assumption many people hold is that the world is orderly and everything happens for a reason (Braun & Berg, 1994). When a child dies it confronts this belief, as a child’s death is often experiences as senseless suffering. Parents’ can begin to experience the world as chaotic and meaningless, contributing to a sense of hopelessness and anxiety. Bereaved parents can also experience a loss of their sense of self after the death of their child (Braun & Berg, 1994; Oliver, 1999). The role of parents in their child’s life is to protect, nurture, and provide for them; when a child dies parents often experience a sense of failure in those roles and have continued yearning to fulfill that for their deceased child (Davies, 2004; Hunt & Greeff, 2011). If the child who died was the parent’s only child, they also lose their social position as parents and have to re-negotiate their role and sense of purpose in society (Braun & Berg, 1994). For some parents, a significant part of their identity and sense of purpose comes from being a parent and losing a child can create confusion around their individual meaning and role in life (Braun & Berg, 1994). Child loss is also often considered a traumatic event given the way that it causes extreme distress and challenges one’s foundational assumptions of themselves, the world, and their position in life (Albuquerque, Narciso, & Pereira, 2017). Researchers have suggested that loss of a child can lead to increased risks for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Bennett, Litz, Lee, Maguen, 2005). Murphy, Shevlin, and Elklit (2014) found that parents who lost their child due to perinatal or postnatal loss reported elevated levels of traumatic specific symptoms and psychological outcomes up to five years post loss. Other researchers have found parents GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 23 reported more depressive symptoms, poorer well-being, more health problems, and marital disruption at an average of eighteen years post-loss, pointing to the long-lasting, far-reaching impacts, as found in traumatic events (Rogers, Floyd, Seltzer, Greenberg, & Hong, 2008). The types of loss can also impact the traumatic nature of the event, such as cases of sudden death or violent deaths, leading to increased symptoms of PTSD continuing many years after the loss (Murphy, Johnson, & Lohan, & Tapper, 2002). The event of child loss itself is described as one of the most painful losses one can experience. Although they can vary in terms of traumatic content, it is overall a world-shaking event that is widely described as traumatic (Albuquerque, et al., 2017). Overall, parents experience the death of a child more intensely and prolonged due to the role of children in parents’ lives, the rarity and abnormality of the loss, and the shattering of worldview assumptions. Due to this negative experience many parents can develop poor health and relational outcomes. Health outcomes. The stress of losing a child can take a toll on parents’ physical health (Oliver, 1999). Parents’ grief reactions to the loss of their child often involve an intense lack of energy and extreme physical pain (Hunt & Greeff, 2011). Grief is not only emotionally demanding, but also physically draining. The direct impact of stress as well as the ways stress is managed or lack thereof can impact parents’ physical health. Stressful life events, such as losing a child, can impact various systems of the body, which can lead to a variety of illnesses (Li, Precht, Mortensen & Olsen, 2003). Some of the health problems parents report after the death of their child are weight gain, chronic fatigue, high blood pressure, psoriasis, heart palpitations, headaches, and weakened immune system (Cacciatore, et al, 2013). GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 24 Bereaved parents can also experience a decline in their health due to unhealthy stress management behaviors (Cacciatore et al., 2013). Many parents expressed exhaustion from grief that reduces their energy and effort to care for their bodies (Hunt & Greeff, 2011). Bereaved parents report turning to food or alcohol as a means of dealing with the stress (Cacciatore et al., 2013). As a result, bereaved parents often allow poor lifestyle patterns to develop including an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, and increased substance use; these contribute to poor health and increase their chances of physical problems such as cardiovascular disease and cancer (Cacciatore et al., 2013; Li et al., 2003). Consequently, bereaved parents have been found to have an increased mortality rates in comparison to parents who have not lost children (Li et al., 2003). The death of a child, therefore, poses a risk of decreased physical health of parents through the detrimental impact of stress on the body and maladaptive stress management. The death of a child also increases bereaved parents risk of mental health problems (Murphy, Johnson, Chung, & Beaton, 2003; Oliver, 1999; Rogers, Floyd, Seltzer, Greenberg, & Hong, 2008). Bereaved parents have been found to have higher incidents of depression and anxiety than parents who have not lost a child as well as higher incidents of complicated grief (Cacciatore et al., 2013; Oliver, 1999). Bereaved parents whose children have died due to violent deaths have been found to meet the criteria for PTSD two to three times more than parents who had not lost a child (Murphy et al., 2003). Bereaved parents risk of hospitalization also increases, particularly for mothers due to poor mental health and increased risk of suicide ideation (Li, Laursen, Precht, Olsen, & Mortensen, 2005; Li, et al., 2003). Bereaved mothers often express suicide ideation due to either wanting to be reunited with their child or to find relief from their intense suffering in grief (Harper, O’Connor, Dickson, & O’Carroll, 2011). GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 25 Not only are bereaved parents at a risk for mental health problems soon after the death of their child, but also persisting long after (Rogers et al., 2008). Rogers et al. (2008) examined long-term adjustment of bereaved parents. Bereaved parents tested at an average of 18 years after the loss of their child were found to have higher rates of depressive symptoms as well as a decreased sense of purpose in life compared to parents who had not lost a child. Time does not necessarily heal and bereaved parents can continue to experience intense grief and mental health problems long after their child has died. Surprisingly, Rogers et al. (2008) also found that parents did not report significant disruption to their life and roles long term; although parents may continue to carry on with their lives, there is often underlying mental health difficulties that most likely go unnoticed. Grief that goes unresolved can also increases bereaved parents’ risk of mental and physical health problems (Lannen, Wolfe, Prigerson, Onelov, & Kreicbergs, 2008). Harper, O’Connor, O’Carroll (2014) examined the factors related to higher levels of grief and depression in a population of bereaved parents three years after the loss of their child. They found that avoidance of grief accounted for 28% of the variance in grief scores. Furthermore, when examining variables associated with depression symptoms, high avoidance-focused coping explained 25% of the variance of depression symptoms and high alcohol and substance use accounted for the additional 7% of variation in depression scores. Bereaved parents who do not have the resources or support to engage in grief are at an increased risk for poor mental health outcomes. Overall, bereaved parents have higher incidents of poor mental health outcomes both in the wake of the tragedy and lasting long after the death of their child (Rogers et al., 2008). Relationships outcomes. The death of a child has an impact not only on the individual parents, but their marriage, family, and community relationships (Arnold & Gemma, 2008; GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 26 Nadeau, 2001; Oliver, 1999). Researchers have found that bereaved parents experience increased conflict, dissatisfaction, and marriage dissolution compared to non-bereaved parents (Oliver, 1999). Even when divorce may not ensue following the death of a child, the research findings point to increased stress in the lives of bereaved parents that can add significant strain on the marriage relationship (Oliver, 1999). The death of a child can contribute to increased conflict and anger in the marriage relationship (Oliver, 1999). While dealing with grief, parents can experience a lower tolerance for one another increasing tension in their relationship (Schwab, 1992). Bereaved parents can also experience guilt around engaging in sexual intimacy and withdraw contributing to distance and conflict in the relationship. The death of a child can also adversely impact bereaved parents’ communication with one another (Oliver, 1999). Couples may not know how to address the topic of their child or whether they should. As a result, spouses can withdraw and remain silent causing a sense of isolation in the marriage rather than support (Arnold & Gemma, 2008). The death of a child can also negatively impact family relationships when there are multiple children (Hunt & Greeff, 2011). The death of a child often leads to a crisis of the family unit (Giannini, 2011; Nadeau, 1998). The missing member changes the family dynamics and families have to re-learn how to operate without the deceased child (Nadeau, 2001). Parents also have responsibilities to their other children after the loss, but these can be difficult to fulfill (Hunt & Greeff, 2011). Hunt and Greeff (2011) found that parents often felt they did not have enough energy to care for their other children and experienced a sense of guilt for neglecting and overlooking the other siblings. Bereaved parents can also experience dissolution and distancing of their community relationships after the loss of a child (Giannini, 2011). Community members often struggle to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 27 know what to say and respond with insensitive comments (Giannini, 2011). Bereaved parents often feel hurt and invalidated by community members who offer advice and minimize their pain (Rack, Burleson, Bodie, Holmstrom & Servaty-Seib, 2008). Community members who do not know what to say often distance themselves, or avoid talking about the deceased child (Arnold & Gemma, 2008). Although it is painful to talk about their child, bereaved parents often draw strength and comfort in doing so (Arnold & Gemma, 2008). Bereaved parents are often willing to share their grief, but find that very few people ask about it or are available to listen (Arnold & Gemma, 2008). Bereaved parents also often desire to maintain a connection to their deceased child, which can create conflict and discomfort in community relationships (Giannini, 2011). Community members can perceive the continued connection with the child as a lack of moving on and limit talking about the child in an effort to help them let go (Giannini, 2011). Community members also often have certain perceptions of the timeline of grieving (Arnold & Gemma, 2008). Bereaved parents report, however, that the loss of a child is a grief that you never get over, but is with you for all of life. Although the intensity may decrease, the grief is always there (Arnold & Gemma, 2008). Community members often fail to understand the nature of parental grief and do not provide ongoing support or recognize the need to continue talking about the deceased child contributing to distance and resentment in those relationships. As a result, bereaved parents report feeling alone in their grief or lonely despite the apparent social support (Wilsey & Shear, 2007). In summary, the death of a child has a profound impact on bereaved parents due to the role of children, the unexpected nature and unnaturalness of the death, and the shattered assumptions caused by the loss (Arnold & Gemma, 2008; Giannini, 2011). As a result, bereaved GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 28 parents often have poor physical outcomes resulting in significant health challenges and higher mortality rates (Cacciatore et al., 2013; Hunt & Greeff, 2011; Oliver, 1999). Bereaved parents also have higher incidences of mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, complicated grief, and suicide ideation (Murphy et al., 2003; Oliver, 1999; Rogers et al., 2008). After the loss of a child, bereaved parents’ relationships also suffer resulting in marriage difficulties, family problems, and community relationships becoming conflicted or distant (Arnold & Gemma, 2008; Nadeau, 2001; Oliver, 1999). Of importance in the current research is the way community relationships are involved in grieving. From the research covered in the previous section regarding community relational outcomes after the death of a child, it is clear that there is often not space for grief or positive experiences of engagement with grieving in communities. It can be suggested that these adverse experience may contribute to the poor physical and mental health outcomes of bereaved parents (Giannini, 2011). Given the importance and intrinsic connection to relationships in the grieving process, it is important for bereaved parents to have community relationships where they can grieve together. There is significant research examining the negative impact communities can have, yet, there is little research exploring how communities and bereaved parents are able to create space for grieving and engage in grieving together. Therefore, more research on grieving in community is needed. Interpersonal Bereavement There is still very little bereavement research regarding grieving and communities. Although theorists have suggested that grief is heavily influenced and shaped by social surroundings and involves relationships, there is a lack of research of this process at a community level (Neimeyer et al., 2014). Although grieving research regarding community is GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 29 lacking, there is recent research exploring the interpersonal process of grieving between bereaved parents and families. These studies help provide an understanding of grieving in relational contexts and can have implications for the study of community grieving. Research involving community has been studied but is still mainly focused on the experience of social support. This section will help outline the current research in these areas and the existing understanding of interpersonal grieving. Dyadic grieving. Researchers have begun to explore the interpersonal and relational aspects of grieving with bereaved parents through understanding how they cope or grieve together (Bergstraesser et al., 2015; Umphrey & Cacciatore, 2014). Bergstraesser et al., (2015) examined dyadic coping of bereaved parents after the loss of their child. Dyadic coping is defined as “the effort by one or both partners to manage stress and to create or restore prior physical, psychological, or social homeostasis” (Bergstraesser et al., 2015, p. 129). Their results indicated that dyadic coping played an important role in the grieving process (Bergstraesser et al., 2015). Parents shared their emotions together, provided comfort for one another, and remembered their child together to maintain continued bonds. Bereaved parents reported that the death of their child ultimately bonded them closer together, but for several it meant a lot of difficult work together in the process. Parents also reported having rituals together to remember their child that increased their sense of togetherness. Parents found ways to support one another and found that dyadic coping functioned best when there was shared respect, presence, and allowance. This study suggests that spouses share in grieving together and have a reciprocal impact on one another in the grieving process; this brings attention to the interpersonal and relational processes that occur in grieving. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 30 Umphrey and Cacciatore (2014) look at the metaphors bereaved parents used after the death of their child to describe their relationship. They found that bereaved parents’ relationship was significantly impacted by the death of their child. One of the most common metaphors used by parents was describing their relationship as motion, something that “is moving and changing as a result of the child death” either together or apart (Umphrey & Cacciatore, 2014, p. 6). Parents also described their negotiation of the grief as a couple. Bereaved parents struggled to navigate the tension between openness or being closed with their spouse in talking about their grief or the deceased child. Bereaved parents reported relational quality was improved with a balance between topic engagement and avoidance. These results point to the way that grieving naturally becomes a part of the relationship of bereaved parents. The ways that they engage with or avoid the grief and their acceptance of one another can markedly impact their relational outcomes. Grief cannot be experienced in isolation, but becomes part of our relational experience with others. Klaassen, Young, and James (2015) explored the relational and spiritual dimension of parental grieving. Klaassen et al. (2015) explicitly explored the relational process of grieving by looking at how bereaved parents grieve jointly for their deceased child. They found that relational grieving was a significant part of parental grief. Relational grieving included “the experienced and intentional emotional and/or physical presence and supportive actions between bereaved parents” (Klaassen et al., 2015, p. 84). Although parents grieved individually, they also discussed the ways they did this together. Bereaved parents engaged in relational grieving through shared activities such as visiting the gravesite or praying together. Bereaved parents also grieved together spontaneously through situations that would remind them of their child by talking and remembering together. Bereaved parents also reported taking time to listen to each GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 31 other’s experiences with grief and learn from one another. In this study, joint actions of grieving were identified pointing to the relational process of grieving. Bereaved parents not only grieved individually, but also did so together, which helped them to heal, maintain the bond with their child, and find connection in their pain. Bergstraesser et al. (2015), Klaassen, Young, and James (2015), and Umphrey and Cacciatore (2014) bring attention to the relational aspects of grieving among spouses after the death of a child. Grieving becomes a central part of the relationship and something that is done together in combination with their own individual processes. The experience of grieving together and the relational process can also significantly shape individual grief experiences and relational outcomes. These studies point to the importance of the interpersonal and relational grief and although community relationships may not be as closely knit as a marriage, they can still provide a useful framework for the relational process of grieving in communities. Family grieving. Interpersonal bereavement literature has also expanded to the study of grieving in family contexts (Nadeau, 2001). Janice Nadeau (2001) has examined the study of grief from a systemic perspective looking at the way death impacts the family system and how families strive to rebalance and create new meanings after the loss of a member. Nadeau emphasizes that individual family members do not grief in isolation, but make sense of the loss through their interactions with one another. How the family constructs the meaning of the loss through their conversations together can impact the course of grieving for each member. In family contexts grief may take many different forms for each member and the different relationships and dynamics of families also impact the experiences of family members’ grief (Nadeau, 2001). Nadeau uses family systems theory to guide her research with families and examine the structural changes that occur after a death in the family such as the “roles, rules, and GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 32 boundaries” (Nadeau, 2001, p. 99). Roles are the “expectations attached to given positions within the family” (p.99). Rules “are prescriptions for familial responses to a wide range of possible inputs…[that] govern family life” (p.99). Boundaries “delineate the elements belonging to the system in question and those belonging to the environment” (p.99). Nadeau emphasizes that each of these aspects in family systems are impacted by the death of a member and the family has to renegotiate roles, rules, and boundaries which can be connected to the process of grieving. There are not only individual styles of grieving in families, but also relational and structural dynamics that impact grieving for each individual, pointing to the holistic and relational nature of grieving. This is of particular importance in community settings as it is often a system that has structured roles, rules, and boundaries. The loss of a member and the grieving individual can challenge these structures and require community members to find new meanings and navigate new structures. These structures can also influence the way members are able to make sense of and express their grief. Nadeau’s research with families demonstrates the relational and interpersonal process of grieving and the importance of studying grieving within the wider context. Bartel (2016) also examined family grieving processes after the death of a child. Bartel focused specifically on how families grieve together and maintain a continued connection to their deceased child. Bartel found that families share in joint grieving activities including, reminiscing, remembering, and recalling events and participating together in rituals. In these activities there was an overarching intention to engage with a shared relational connection to the deceased family member, which connected the family members together. The shared processes included meaning making as well as sharing emotional experiences together. Each of the families had unique grieving processes based on the implicit family rules that operated in their GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 33 system and guided their shared grieving. The findings of this study point to the complex and relational nature of grieving and the ways that shared grieving uniquely manifests in relational units. Bartel’s research examines a family together, which captures a relational system in action. This research relates to community level grieving, which involves a system of relationships operating based on implicit rules of the relational context and points to the need for capturing the complex relational nature of grieving. Community grieving. Community level research in the area of bereavement is still very limited (Neimeyer et al., 2014; Shapiro, 2001). Most of the research has focused on aspects of social support rather than the relational aspect of grieving. Swartwood, Veach, Kuhne, Hyun Kyung Lee, and Ji (2015) examined messages of online support communities for bereaved individuals. Through analysis of the messages, they found that online community support groups allowed the bereaved to exchange support through disclosing their story and hearing other people’s story. Online grieving communities had particular norms including selfdisclosure (creating a give and take environment), dismantling grieving expectations (to normalize the variety of grief responses and timelines), and creating a sense of hope. The online posts were interactional and allowed users to give and receive social support. Swartwood et al. (2015) found that people seek community in grieving and the norms of the online community helped the bereaved to express their grief, have their process validated, and make meaning of their loss. The analysis of online messages was helpful to understand the type of discourse grieving individuals use when supporting one another, however, focusing only on the messages without asking participants of their experiences limits the conclusions of whether the messages were helpful and what made them helpful for the bereaved. The online support community is also generally largely female and more highly educated so the norms of GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 34 the grieving process in this study may reflect a specific population. Online communities also only involve written messages rather than the physical presence, which may influence the grieving process and the relational dimension of grieving differently. Nonetheless, this study reveals that people do seek out communities in their grieving process and may shed light on the culture of communities that can help to facilitate and share in the grieving process. Sherkat and Reed (1992) examined the influence of religion and social support on selfesteem and depression of people bereaved due to a sudden loss. Data was gathered from 156 family members located in the southwestern United States who lost a member due to suicide and accidental deaths. Social support was measured in three ways: the amount of time spent with relatives and friends, the use of social support, and quality of support. Through regression analysis they found that all three social support items had a significant negative correlation with depression and significant positive correlated with self-esteem, pointing to the potential benefits of social support. Sherkat and Reed’s inclusion of the three aspects of social support help increase understanding of the quality and usefulness of support. These measures, however, provide a limited understanding as the researcher’s defined social support rather than the participants sharing about their experiences. Nonetheless, the research implies community relationships are important in grieving and can significantly impact outcomes of the bereaved. More recently, Wilsey and Shear (2007) examined the stories of the death of a loved one for those dealing with complicated bereavement, looking specifically at the descriptions of social support and whether they could contribute to the development of complicated bereavement. Participants were recruited from an outpatient program and their stories of the death were recorded and analyzed for themes of social support. A lack of support was identified as a prominent theme in the stories the bereaved told about the death of their loved ones and GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 35 participants described unsupportive individuals as cold/rude, unhelpful/unavailable, and combative (Wilsey & Shear, 2007). Another theme was good social support described as people who were available/helpful, giving affection, and giving honor to the deceased. Wilsey and Shear did not explicitly ask for social support experiences, but rather looked for these themes in the stories the bereaved told. The less explicit approach could limit experiences of social support to events important to the death narrative rather than the full breadth of experiences. Nevertheless, Wilsey and Shear’s research demonstrates the importance of community relationships in the narratives of the bereaved and their grieving process. Rack et al. (2008) examined what messages recently bereaved young adults find more or less helpful. Participants (n = 105) were students attending a mid-western university who had lost a loved one in the last two years. They assessed the different messages that students found most helpful through having participants complete a Modified Support-Intended Statements Scale (SISS) including 64 messages with 16 different grief management strategies. They found that the most useful strategies included being present with the person, listening, and offering care and concern. The grief management strategies that were least helpful included giving advice and minimizing the emotional experience. They found a significant correlation between the personcenteredness and perceived helpfulness of support, accounting for 80% of the variability. The large sample size of the study points to consistent themes in the experiences of social support for the bereaved. Using the SISS scale to assess helpful and unhelpful messages, however, limited the types of messages assessed and did not provide information on the individual’s response and why they found them helpful or unhelpful. Rack et al.’s study, however, does provide an understanding of what messages the bereaved find helpful and unhelpful, which contributes to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 36 understanding what bereaved individuals may be seeking in their communities and the influence of social support to grieving. Sherkat and Reed (1992), Wilsey and Shear (2007), and Rack et al. (2008) all examined social support of bereaved individuals. In these studies, they found that social support can be a valuable resource for bereaved individuals mental well-being and possibly the prevention of complicated bereavement; however, the form of social support is crucial to the perceived helpfulness with certain types of social support actually increasing stress of bereaved individuals. While this research provides more understanding of helpful social support, it fails to describe how engagement in grieving occurs in community relationships. Furthermore, it provides an understanding of social support from the retrospective reflections of the bereaved and does not include the perspectives of the community together with the bereaved. More recent research by Bentum (2017) examined relational grieving through examining how religious communities grieve the death of a member. Bentum conducted an ethnographic study involving a religious congregation after the loss of three members. Primary data was collected through attending funeral services and events in the wake of the loss. Secondary data was collected through audio-visual recordings, individual and group interviews, self-report journals, and an analysis of community bulletins. The data was analyzed using the constant comparative method and through presenting the analysis back to the community in a performance ethnography to confirm the findings and collect further data. The four prominent themes that emerged through the research were: “(a) community members desire to care for the bereaved, (b) community members assessed relational proximity to the bereaved and the deceased to inform action according to role expectations in bereaved, (c) community members GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 37 grieved together, being impacted and impacting each other reciprocally, and (d) community members grieved, and interacted, according to their own unique characteristics and experiences.” Bentum’s (2017) findings point to the complex, relational nature of grieving. Bentum’s study is unique in capturing the grieving process in action within a community setting immediately after the loss, rather than retrospective reflections. Furthermore, this study is the only known research that examines multi-directional interactions in community examining the internal processes of both the bereaved and community members, capturing the reciprocal nature of grieving in community. This research offers insight into how communities interact with the bereaved within a large community setting immediately following the death of members and rich descriptions at many levels within the community. Yet this research does not provide insight into the close accompaniment of the bereaved with community members they self-select with whom they intentionally engaged with in shared grieving. Furthermore, the research is focused on members who died within a community at an older age, rather than the loss of a child, which is known to be a more shocking and life-altering loss for the bereaved and their community (Davies, 2004). Limitations in the Extant Research In the previous section, an overview of the recent research regarding interpersonal grieving was provided. Until recently, grieving has been conceptualized mainly as an intrapersonal process (Shapiro, 2001). Bereavement researchers have suggested the many ways that relationships are important in the grieving process, but little research has explored how grieving in interpersonal contexts occurs (Neimeyer et al., 2014; Shapiro, 2001). To date, research regarding interpersonal bereavement has explored the ways that bereaved parents grieve together for their child and the ways that families grieve after the loss of a member; these studies GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 38 provide evidence of the ways that people grieve together in relationships (Bergstraesser et al., 2015; Klaassen, Young, & James, 2015; Nadeau, 2001; Umphrey & Cacciatore, 2014). Yet it is unclear how grieving takes place together in community relationships. Research regarding communities has been focused on the experience of social support mainly from the retrospective reflection of the bereaved (Sherkat & Reed, 1992; Wilsey & Shear, 2007; Rack et al., 2008). A significant amount of research has focused on the way that community relationships deteriorate after the loss of a child, negative experiences of social support, and the adverse outcomes that result from a lack of support. The research has also pointed to helpful types of support and the value that social support can have for the bereaved in reducing their distress and improving mental well-being. Although the existing research on social support provides an understanding of the impact communities can have and what the bereaved find helpful and unhelpful in communities, it does not provide an understanding of how grieving can occur together in community relationships. Much of the research fails to examine what occurs within positive experiences of community and there is no known research investigating community grieving that captures the perspectives of both the bereaved and community members together regarding their shared grieving. Lastly, the extant research examines community as an external factor influencing the individual process of the bereaved and there is no known research examining grieving as a relational activity that can be engaged in and shared together with community members. Rationale for the Current Study Thus, the current research seeks to fill an important gap in the bereavement literature by examining bereaved parents’ positive experiences of community to understand how grieving can be engaged in together from the perspectives of both bereaved parents and community members. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 39 Given the impact of child loss on bereaved parents, the importance and value of community relationships for grieving, and the lack of research on interpersonal grieving in community settings, it is necessary to explore grieving within the community context to understand how communities and bereaved parents engage with the loss of a child together. My research seeks to fill this gap in the literature with the following research question: How do communities grieve with bereaved parents? Moreover, given the poor outcomes for bereaved parents’ community relationships, and the great sense of isolation that occurs in their suffering, this research will hopefully provide an understanding of how grieving can be held in community relationships. This understanding is expected to be helpful in better educating communities to accompany the bereaved, creating safer contexts for grieving within community relationships. Additionally, this research can hopefully extend beyond our understanding of shared grieving to recognize how we can engage meaningfully together with the realities of suffering that we encounter in life. Given specific directions and patterns in Western society, such as the staggering statistics of mental health problems, increasing professionalization of care, and growing individualism, this research can also be relevant to some of these concerns and the ways that people can engage together in relationships with all aspects of life. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 40 CHAPTER 3: METHOD In the following section, the method used to approach the study of community grieving with bereaved parents will be outlined. The design of the current study will be explained, including the ontological and epistemological assumptions, the rationale and suitability of this method for the current research, and limitations of knowledge generated through this approach. Participants will then be discussed in terms of their characteristics and the recruitment strategies. The data collection procedures and analysis process will be explained, including a discussion of the rigour and quality of the research approach. Design In the current research an instrumental case study approach in combination with the Qualitative Action Project Method (QA-PM) was employed to answer the research question: How do communities grieve with bereaved parents? Before outlining the suitability of this method for the current research, the instrumental case study approach as well as the theory, and ontological and epistemological assumptions of the QA-PM method will be discussed. The instrumental case study approach. In the current research an instrumental case study approach was used to explore the shared-grieving actions of bereaved parents and their community members (Stake, 2005). An instrumental case study approach is useful to gain a better understanding of processes or experiences through examining several cases. For the purpose of this research, the phenomenon of investigation is the shared-action of grieving as it occurs between bereaved parents and their community members. As such, each bereaved couple and the community members they selected were treated as a unique case, but one that can also contribute to understanding the larger process and phenomenon of grieving within community. The instrumental case study approach fit well with the QA-PM as joint actions can be studied GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 41 within each case; the QA-PM produces significant amounts of data about shared-actions, including observable behaviors, thoughts, emotional reflections, and social meaning of behaviors, through interviews and joint-conversations of participants that will be used to gain an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of grieving in community. Qualitative Action Project Method. The Qualitative Action Project Method (QA-PM) is a method used to explain human action (Young, Valach, & Domene, 2005). The QA-PM is based on Contextual Action Theory (CAT), which capture the complex and contextual explanations for human actions (Young & Valach, 2004; Young et al., 2005). One of the core assumptions of the QA-PM method based on the underlying CAT is that human action is goal directed and purposeful (Young & Valach, 2004; Young et al., 2005). Therefore, the focus in using the QA-PM is to explain the goals of human action as “goals represent the meaning of action processes” (Young et al., 2005, p. 216). Researchers who developed the QA-PM sought to diverge from post-positivist causal explanations of human action detached from the context, and instead develop a method to capture and explain “the process in which the action is embedded” (Young et al., 2005, p. 216). In using the QA-PM researchers focus on capturing how human goal-directed action emerges in the context rather than separating from it. The QA-PM draws from CAT of human behaviour (Young & Valach, 2004; Young et al., 2005). In CAT human action is analyzed in regards to the perspective of action, the levels of action, and the systems of action. Human action is considered from three different perspectives: observable behaviors, internal processes (thoughts and feelings that contribute to action), and social meanings (how actions represent and are guided by social meanings). The levels of action include action elements, which are “behavioural elements in the form of verbal and nonverbal behaviour”, action steps/functions, which are the “sequential order of the action…that serve to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 42 reach a goal”, which is a “desired end state…[that] represents the meaning of action processes” (Young et al., 2005, p. 217). The systems of action include individual action, joint action, projects, and careers. “Individual and joint actions are relatively short-term phenomena, anchored cognitively, socially, and environmentally in our everyday lives” (Young et al., 2005, p. 217). Projects occur over a longer period of time and include a sequence of actions that are aimed at a united goal. Careers include the structuring of projects over a long period of time. All of these aspects of human action are studied as they occur over time. Through examining the ways that individual psychological processes and contextual aspects emerge into joint activities, the analysis of action serves to help understand the phenomenon holistically rather than broken down into fragmented elements (Young, Valach, & Collin, 2002). Ontological assumptions. Ontology asks the question, “What is the nature of reality?” (Mertens, 2015, p. 10). The QA-PM draws from many theoretical and research approaches including “narrative, hermeneutical approaches, critical theory, and systemic and transactional methods”, but has developed a unique set of ontological and epistemological assumptions (Young et al., 2005, p. 215). The QA-PM ontology is based on CAT and draws from hermeneutics, which proposes that reality, is based on “everyday experiences of ourselves, others, the world and our ongoing interpretation of these experiences as meaningful” (Young et al., 2005, p. 218). Human actions are goal-directed and emerge in the landscape of the context. Therefore, reality is based in human action and experience. Epistemological assumptions. Epistemology asks the question “what is the nature of knowledge and the relationship between the knower and the would-be-known” (Mertens, 2015, p. 10). Young et al. (2005) have suggested that CAT underlying the QA-PM is conceptualized as an epistemology in and of itself. The epistemology of CAT is similar to the constructivist GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 43 paradigm in that each individual constructs knowledge, however, in CAT knowledge is created and conveyed through action and how we make meanings of those actions. To understand the meanings of actions, we need to engage in the “hermeneutic dialectic of human, goal-directed action” (Young et al., 2005, p. 218). This involves understanding actions based on the perspectives, levels, and systems of action previously discussed. It also involves understanding how our actions and the meanings we make of them are contextually situated within the social, cultural and historical setting. CAT also includes the theory of social constructionism, which has further paradigmatic assumptions that are important to outline for the use of QA-PM (Young et al., 2005). A core assumption of social constructionism is that humans make meaning of their experience through their interactions with one another (Young & Collin, 2004; Young & Valach, 2004). Therefore, meaning emerges through an interactive process. This suggests, ontologically, action and the meanings people make of them emerges through an interactive process, wherein actions shape and are shaped by the social, cultural, and historical contexts. As a result, knowledge of the meaning of actions is understood through also understanding how actions emerge through this interactive process. As a result, social constructionism and CAT perspectives frame the ontology and epistemology of the QA-PM that “allow for agency; intentionality; and the social, cultural, and historical basis of the construction of knowledge” (Young et al., 2005, p. 218). Based on the ontological and epistemological assumptions, researchers assume that they are able to study and examine how joint or shared actions emerge and contribute to larger goals (Young et al., 2005). Researchers using the QA-PM focus on examining shared actions and the intrapsychic processes and contextual components in which these actions emerge. Researchers use individual and joint interviews, joint discussions, journals, and phone calls to capture the GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 44 current and ongoing actions. Self-confrontation interviews are used by playing back recorded joint discussions and pausing them frequently to inquire retrospectively about internal experiences (cognitions and emotions) occurring at the time of their actions. It is assumed that through understanding the aspects of actions and how they occur over time, researchers can also understand how actions are organized into the goals and the larger projects and careers in which these joint actions are embedded. As such the researcher facilitates the dialectical process of action and reflection to make meaning of the action in order to understand specific phenomenon. Appropriateness of the QAPM for the research question. The QA-PM was an appropriate method to explore joint grieving between bereaved parents and community members. Firstly, it is important to outline how the conceptualization of grieving fit with the paradigmatic assumptions of the QA-PM used in the current research. Grieving in the current research, as previously outlined was conceptualized through an existential-phenomenological framework. From an existential-phenomenological perspective, grieving is understood as an active and decided engagement with the loss, re-learning the world, and developing a new relationship to life (internally and externally) (Attig, 2004; Längle, 2012). As such, the active process of grieving can be understood as an action as defined with the QAPM. The perspective of action in the QA-PM proposes that human actions are goal-oriented, but also includes a phenomenological-existential perspective of human action, in that it has meaning. To understand this meaning, the QA-PM includes a hermeneutical methodology, examining people’s experience of themselves, others, and the world and the meanings they ascribe to those experiences. In the current research grieving was also conceptualized as not only an intrapersonal, but relational and interpersonal action, which fits well with the QA-PM perspective of human action GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 45 and the study of joint action. From the perspective of CAT in the QA-PM, human action is also understood from the perspective of its social meaning. Furthermore, CAT and social constructionism theorists propose that action and the meanings we make of action emerge through the interaction of the individual and the context so that individual and joint actions shape and are shaped by the social, cultural, and historical context. This perspective fits well with the conceptualization of grieving as an interpersonal process. Grieving is not only an intrapersonal process, but emerges through relationship situated in the larger contexts of people’s lives. Thus, the QA-PM was suitable to study grieving as conceptualized in the current research. The QA-PM was also practically suited to study the joint action of grieving between bereaved parents and community members. The QA-PM was developed to examine how actions are engaged in jointly in relationships, making it suitable to examine grieving in community. Data collection procedures of video recorded shared discussions of grieving between bereaved parents and community members and self-confrontation interviews provided a rich and novel perspective of grieving at a community level. The QA-PM has also previously been used to explore grieving, specifically, dyadic grieving between bereaved parents and also the joint actions of bereaved families, demonstrating its suitable for the study of joint grieving actions (Bartel, 2016; Klaassen, Young, & James, 2015). Given the limited time frame of the current study, the QA-PM was not used to examine how actions develop over time, but was adapted to examine the joint action of grieving currently and retrospectively. As a result, the shared conversation between bereaved parents and community members and the self-confrontation interviews were included, but the journals and check in phone calls with participants to monitor actions over a period of time was excluded. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 46 Adjustments to the QA-PM. Several modifications were made to the QA-PM to suit the research project. Firstly, as mentioned above, the longitudinal aspect of the QA-PM was not included. Young et al. (2005) created the method to capture how projects are enacted over time, and therefore typically the QA-PM includes a monitoring period to what actions unfold into larger projects. Given the timeline of the current research project and ethical constraints, the QA-PM was adapted to involve retrospective reflection on previous shared grieving activities from the time of the child’s death until the present research project, rather than from the present moving forward in time. The change from longitudinal to retrospective is important to note. The method does, however, still capture shared grieving in action in the interviews through their conversation together and the in-depth individual reflections on their shared conversation, not just retrospective content on shared grieving. The adaptation to the method simply did not include monitoring how this developed over time. Secondly, the QA-PM was adapted to include more than two people in the shared interview. The QA-PM procedure was established to understand joint actions between two people (Young et al., 2005). For the purpose of these research interviews, the method was adapted to capture shared grieving actions of a community in a conversation among three or more people. Lastly, a reflexive component was implemented into the QA-PM. The principal researcher recorded personal feelings, thoughts, and reflections that emerged with each community after the interviews and during the analysis process. These were synthesized and added into the within-case analysis for each family to share about the primary investigators experience with each community. Additionally, the primary researcher’s reflections were used to compose a short personal reflection regarding the impact of each community on the researcher GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 47 that was shared as part of the member check interviews. Each community reported being thankful to hear about the researcher’s personal reflections and the ways their community had left a mark and the communities all reported feeling very grateful to be involved in the research. Participants Recruitment. Three sets of bereaved parent couples and their community members were recruited through email, social media advertisements and word of mouth through the Lower Mainland (see Appendix A). The study was advertised at various organizations that work with bereaved parents, including Canuck Place and various Compassionate Friends groups. Local hospices were also contacted and informed about the study and several agreed to advertise the study in their waiting rooms. The study was also advertised through the Facebook social media page and also through word of mouth with the student population in the counselling psychology program at Trinity Western University. The advertisements directed interested participants to contact the primary investigator through email. Once a bereaved parent contacted the author about the research, a time was set for a screening conversation during which the primary investigator provided an overview of the research and the rationale for the research study. During this conversation the primary investigator also outlined the expected time commitment for participation, as well as the potential risks and benefits of participation in the study. The interested participant was then told that they would need to include their spouse and community members they identified as supportive and who accompanied them in grieving to participate with them in the study, as the research focus was on community grieving with bereaved parent couples. Screening. The screening criteria for inclusion were determined through a conversation and series of questions with the interested participant during the screening phone call (see GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 48 Appendix B & C). Selection criteria for participants included the following: (1) had experienced the death of a child (“child” was not defined in terms of age, so miscarriages, still births, and any aged child was included), (2) the bereaved couples must have been bereaved for more than a year (no restriction was set on the number of years after the loss as the criteria for inclusion was based on their recollection of community experiences of grieving and continued relationship with community members) (3) both bereaved parents needed to be willing to be involved as they were the unit of focus and both needed to be willing to discuss and reflect on community grieving (4) the bereaved parent couple needed to be in a romantic relationship (i.e. married, common-law union, cohabiting) and have been in the same relationship at the time of their child’s death, (5) the bereaved parent couple needed to have experienced community support and accompaniment that they could recall and were willing to reflect on together with their community member(s), as the shared action of grieving in community was the central focus of the study (this requirement was, however, flexible. For some couples, one parent connected more with community support and the community member supported the other spouse through supporting their partner. Bereaved parents were also left to define the number of community members), and (6) bereaved parents needed to be in an ongoing relationship with the community members. Community members were identified by the bereaved parents and received permission for the primary investigator to contact them by phone for a screening phone call. For the purpose of the current research, community was defined as a group of people gathered around common interests, values, or attitudes (VandenBos, 2007). Selection criteria for the community members included the following: (1) those who share the interest of the bereaved parents in their grieving (community was defined not by boundaries on the outside of the community, but by a central interest, which was the bereaved parents), (2) having been positively involved in grieving with GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 49 the bereaved parent couple (by having the bereaved parents identify community members that were involved and engaged in grieving with them, community members met inclusion criteria by default as those who were positively involved in the grieving process), and (3) community members were impacted by the child’s death, not necessarily through their own relationship with the child, but grieving with the bereaved couple for their loss. Potential bereaved parent and community member participants were to be excluded from participating if they did not meet the above criteria, or if they met one of the following criteria: (1) lack of mental capacity to reflect, (2) current psychological instability and risk as indicated by self-reported self-harm or suicidality; or (3) participants who had a non-stable psychiatric condition (e.g. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, or Anxiety), for which they require regular psychiatric or psychological intervention; or (4) participants who indicated significant distress and difficulty talking about the loss (5) participants who had an overall negative experience of grieving together and did not engage with the loss. These exclusion criteria were established to ensure participants could reflect on the experience of grieving together. These exclusion criteria were also set to ensure that participation in the research study did not pose any significant risk to the mental well-being of participants who may have had trouble regulating distressing emotions and/or memories. The bereaved parents and the community members were asked to discuss the death of their child and what they do together as a community, which was expected to evoke a level of sadness and other emotions. As a result, it was crucial that all participants would be able to self-regulate any emotional distress that resulted from the research interviews. Psychological stability and non-stable psychiatric conditions were evaluated during the phone screening interviews using a semi-structured series of questions (see Appendix B & C). If participants had indicated yes to any of the above questions, the primary investigator GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 50 discussed with them their ability to discuss the loss in a way that felt comfortable for them. Interested participants were also asked about the initial response after the death of their child and to briefly describe their grieving process. None of the participants indicated they would be emotional overwhelmed, but reported being able to discuss the topic in a way that felt controllable. Four interested participants self-selected out of the study for various reasons. Three communities recruited. Three bereaved parent couples and their community members volunteered to participate in the study. Participants were led through an informed consent (see Appendix F) before the initial interview, giving time for any questions. Due to the nature of the study, participants were encouraged to remove themselves from the interview if anything became overwhelming. Overall, the study was determined to be at a minimal risk, not beyond that which participants would encounter in their daily lives. Overall, ten participants were included in the study (see Table 1), three males and seven females. All of the bereaved couples were heterosexual and married. Community one included two female community members, and community two and three included one female community member each. The bereaved parent couples from communities one and two lost one child each, and in community three, the bereaved parents and the community member had lost two children each (see Table 2). All of the bereaved parents and community members identified as some denomination of Christian, except for one community member who identified as Atheist (see Table 1). All but one of the participants were born-Canadian citizens and one born in the United States of America. Participants were primarily Caucasian and from European backgrounds, except for one participant who was Japanese-Canadian (see Table 1). All participants reported English as their first language. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 51 Table 1 Demographics of Bereaved Parents and Community Members Name of Community Participants Ages Ethnicity Religion Community one 1M and 3F 1M and 2F Community three 1M and 2F 50, 49, 43 English, German, Scottish JapaneseCanadian; European European Christian; Atheist Community two 44, 38, 45, 29 42, 40, 40 Christian Christian/Agnostic Note. F = female, M = male. Table 2 Demographic Statistics for Data Set (Deceased Children) Name of Community Yrs. since death How child died Age and Gender of child Community one 8 Health complications Male-24 weeks Community two 9 Health issues Female-13 months Community three 15, 14; 19, 15 Miscarriage; Stillbirth Male-19 weeks, Female14weeks; Male-24 weeks, Male-20 weeks Data collection procedure. Data collection followed the procedures set out in the QAPM by Young et al. (2005). Trinity Western University Research Ethics Board approved the research and then data collection began. The process of data collection was followed by transcription and analysis of the data, which was conducted mainly by the principal researcher as well as the primary supervisor and the research team. The research team included five fellow graduate students in the Counselling Psychology program at Trinity Western University three of whom were part of the research interviews, and two of whom helped with transcription. The GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 52 principal researcher, the primary supervisor and members of the Bereavement Research Lab, who are also fellow students in the Trinity Western University Counselling Psychology program, conducted the data analysis. The principal researcher was the primary person responsible for data collection as well as the organization, managing, and analysis of the collected data. The initial interviews took place on the Trinity Western University campus and the member-check interviews took place at the bereaved parents’ homes. Data collection included the following steps: (a) the initial set of interviews – approximately four hours each, and (b) member check/feedback interviews – approximately two hours each. Initial set of interviews. Data collection began with an initial set of interviews that included a Narrative Introduction Conversation (NIC)2, in which the family shared about their community, their child, and his or her death, a Community Conversation (CC), in which the bereaved parents and the community members discussed their shared grieving, and SelfConfrontation Interviews (SCI), which were individualized processing interviews reflecting on the shared conversation. At the beginning of the NIC, the primary researcher outlined the schedule for the interviews, explaining the different interviews and their purpose. The participants were all asked to fill out demographic questionnaires (see Appendix D for bereaved parents and Appendix E for community members) and the informed consent form. The NIC began with the research team introducing themselves and sharing about their intention in volunteering to help with the research study. The NIC then moved into the bereaved parents and community members introducing 2 The terms traditionally used in the QA-PM were changed to suit the nature of the current research. What was originally known as the “Warm Up Conversation” was changed to the “Narrative Introduction Conversation” (NIC), to represent the way the conversation involved the personal story of their community and their child’s life and death. The “Joint Conversation” was changed to the “Community Conversation”, to represent the modification of the method in being used with a community of three or more participants. Lastly, the original term “Self-Confrontation Interviews” was not changed in the current research. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 53 themselves and explaining their relationships to one another. The participants were then invited to share about the child who died and the story regarding their death and their individual grieving, which took up the majority of the NIC. Each bereaved parent couple and the community members were invited during the screening phone calls to bring with them any memorabilia or pictures that they would like to share; these were often shared at the end of the NIC. The purpose of the NIC was to build rapport and comfort together and a shared understand among the community and research team of the child who died. The NIC also functioned to allow the bereaved parents to share the story of their loved child who died. The researchers listened and empathized with the bereaved parents and community members. The NIC looked slightly different for each community, but was generally a meaningful time together of sharing and deeply connected the research team to the community as a whole. In this time of sharing the research team was able to encounter the community and often their raw grief, which felt sacred and deeply impactful for the research team as a whole. After approximately one hour of the community sharing the parents’ story of the child, the researcher transitioned the community into the CC at the most natural point in their sharing. Community Conversations. The CC involved a video recorded conversation among the bereaved parents and their community members without any researchers present. The principal researcher set up the community for this conversation by asking them to reflect on the ways that they grieve together as a community, both after the death of their child and over the course of time. The primary researcher encouraged the community to imagine they were together in someone’s home discussing the ways that they shared in grieving and gave examples such as things they did to remembered the child, activities they did together, ways they talked about the loss, and attitudes they shared. The primary researcher instructed the community to discuss this GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 54 topic for the next 20-30 minutes and the researcher would knock on their door to check that they were done at that time. The conversation without any researcher’s present is meant to replicate the natural style of the community’s way of interacting and allows for topics of most importance to the community to emerge (Marshall, Zaidman-Zait, Domene, & Young, 2012). The research team knocked on the door after the allotted time, checking the community had covered what they wanted to. Once the CC was complete, the participants were given a fifteen-minute break, while the research team set up for the individual interviews and copied the video recorded interviews onto each of the research team’s computers. Each participant was then paired up with a member of the research team and taken to a private room for the individual processing interview. Self-Confrontation Interviews. The SCI’s were conducted by playing back the video recorded CC and stopping each minute to ask about the thoughts, feelings, and any relevant contextual information during that minute of the CC. The purpose of the SCI’s was to elicit deeper levels of communication during the CC by understanding the thoughts and feelings of each participant during each minute of the CC. Due to these interviews being privately conducted, the research team size was matched to the number of participants for the initial interview set. For each SCI, the participant was taken into a private room and the research explained to them that they would be playing back the video minute by minute and asking about their thoughts, feelings, and any relevant contextual information during that minute of the conversation. The researcher also let the participant know to ask them to stop the video at any point if anything important came up for them during that minute of the conversation. At the end of the SCI the participants were asked about their intentions/goals for the CC and more broadly GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 55 for participating in the research. Lastly, the participants were asked if there was anything else important that they wanted to share regarding the CC. Once all of the SCIs were complete, the primary investigator thanked each of the participants, gave them their honorarium, and provided them with a rough timeline of when they would meet again for the member-check interviews and how the researcher would be in contact. The initial interviews were followed by a preliminary analysis (see below). Member-check and feedback interview. The member-check interview (MCI) was a second interview scheduled with the bereaved parents and the community members, in which a summary of the research analysis for each community was presented back to them. The purpose of this second interview was to help with rigour and trustworthiness by receiving feedback from the communities regarding whether or not the analysis accurately represented the information they provided about their community grieving. The interviews took place roughly a year or less, depending on the community, from the dates of the initial interviews; these interviews were conducted after the transcription and analysis of the data and were presented to each community as a written narrative summary (see preliminary analysis below), which represented their shared grieving as a whole. The QA-PM protocol was followed for the second interview, which included the primary investigator reading out loud the narrative summary to the community and asking for their impressions and any feedback. The researcher explained that the narrative summaries represented the content and process of their shared grieving as witnessed in the initial interviews, specifically, the CC combined with the reflections from the SCI. The MCI’s involved a time for connection and discussion together, reflecting on the narrative summaries, but also the research process as a whole. The primary researcher structured the interviews by stopping after each paragraph of the narrative summaries and asking the GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 56 members specifically what feedback they had regarding the researcher’s understanding of each portion of their CC and the goals and intentions. Some communities engaged more in discussing the narrative summary and elaborated further on the themes brought up through the summary while one of the communities listened intently and confirmed the accuracy with little discussion until the end of the summary. Only one of the communities had minor revisions regarding a few aspects of the narrative summary, but the discussion was largely about the ways they felt the researcher had accurately captured and communicated their shared grieving and further reflections on their shared process. At the end of the narrative summaries, the researcher also read a written reflection regarding the personal impact of their community for the researcher, which was a meaningful connection point with each community. Debriefing. The MCI’s all ended with a discussion around how the research process was for the participants. Overall, the communities shared about their gratitude for being involved in the research and how impactful it had been to reflect on their shared grieving. Most of the bereaved parents shared how special it felt for their child’s story and their community process to be shared and how the intentional reflection had been healing and immensely connecting for them as a community. The debriefing concluded with the researcher sharing their gratitude for all of the participants’ involvement. Analytical Procedure The analysis process was ongoing throughout the data collection between the initial interviews and the MCI interviews. The QA-PM analysis process is integrative and continuing (Young et al., 2005). Young et al. suggest that a clear understanding of the research question and the purpose of the research are required for the analysis process. The analysis process GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 57 includes both describing and interpreting actions as well as linking together actions. The general process of analysis flows from “description to organization” (p. 219). The focus of the analysis was on the shared actions and understanding the goals and intentions of these actions. The purpose of analysis was to compose a detailed description of how each community engaged together with bereaved parents in grieving together. The process of analysis included sharing understandings of the data back and forth with the primary supervisor and the research team to engage in both a bottom up and top down analysis. The process overall included a primary analysis after the initial interviews, and then a within-case and between-case analysis following the MCI interviews. The final step of analysis included synthesizing all of the analysis to elicit key assertions. Preliminary analysis. Once the initial interviews were completed, the preliminary analysis began. The process began with transcription recording verbatim all three interviews part of the initial interview, including the NIC, CC, and SCI for each participant. The primary investigator mainly conducted the transcription with some help from members of the research team. The transcription allowed the primary investigator to begin the process of immersion in the data necessary for the analysis process (Young et al., 2005). The total minutes of transcription included three data points: data point one, the NIC, data point two, the CC, and data point three, the SCIs (see Table 3). GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 58 Table 3 Data Set in Minutes Name of Community NIC CC SCI Total in minutes Community one 60 12 154 253 Community two 64 23 260 347 Community three 64 27 330 431 Note. NIC = Narrative Introduction Conversation, CC = Community Conversation, (SCI) = SelfConfrontation Interview Valach, Young, and Lynam (2002) propose a framework for data analysis, which was followed for the current research. The analysis begins with rich descriptions of the progression of the social conversation between bereaved parents and community members and moves into a more organized analysis of the actions to develop an overall intentional framework and shared grieving narratives of the bereaved parents and community members (Young et al., 2005). The first step involved immersion in the data, in which the primary investigator reviewed the transcribed interviews as well as the audio and video recordings of each interview (Young et al., 2005). The process began by listening to these interviews to form initial impressions and thoughts about the shared grieving process. At this point specific actions began to appear. During these listening, the primary researcher sought to identify the over-arching goals/intentions of the shared actions. After identifying the overarching goal of the action, a more bottom-up approach is used to “code specific elements or units of behavior that make up the action” (Young et al., 2005, p. 219). The bottom up approach involved using coding (see Appendix G) based the action theory framework with a focus on labeling goals, function steps, and elements of each minute of the CC GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 59 conversation for each community. The coding helped to organize the more important and less important action steps that contributed to the action performance. These different actions were then analyzed for the function they served in achieving the goal of the action. As part of the bottom-up analysis, the SCIs were also reviewed in detail by the primary investigator and the relevant thoughts, feelings, and contextual information provided in these interviews were combined with each minute of the CC to further understand the shared actions emerging each minute and provide a framework for the goals of the shared grieving project between bereaved parents and community members. Quotes from the SCIs were carefully chosen and included in bottom-up minute-by-minute analysis to provide support for the emerging actions and intentions described in that minute. The completed bottom-up minute-by-minute analysis was presented alongside the videorecorded CC interviews to the primary supervisor as well as some members of the bereavement research lab; they reviewed this data, sharing their thoughts and reflections of the intentions in each minute, helping to further formulate the over-arching goals and intentions of each community to elicit their unique shared grieving process. Consensus between the primary researcher and the primary supervisor was reached at each level of analysis after discussion and conversation. The primary investigator then brought together the different analysis of this bottom-up approach to develop an inclusive and holistic description of the action. The information collected through the primary analysis was synthesized into an analysis template. The analysis document included the research question, data points, contact time, demographics for each bereaved parent couple and community members. The document also included a detailed summary of the CC combined with important information from the SCIs and the NIC to generate GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 60 a summary of the shared grieving process including the over-arching intentions and purposes as well as the individual elements, functional steps, and goals throughout the conversation making up the shared actions. The analysis document was finalized by further summarizing the shared grieving process into a summary statement. The analysis document was then used to develop a shorter narrative summary of the analysis of the shared grieving process for each community, which was presented back to them at the MCI. This included a summary of the progression of the CC with the actions and overarching intentions embedded and thematic descriptions of the shared grieving actions for each segment of the CC. Although thematic analysis is not characteristic of the QA-PM, it was included to capture not only the process, but also content of shared grieving to more concretely communicate the findings of the research. The narrative summary was concluded with the summary statement as well as personal reflection from the primary investigator regarding the impact of the community for the researcher. The purpose of this was to bring the analysis back to the participants to ensure it correctly reflected their understanding of actions and goals. Within-case analysis. Once the MCIs were concluded, the within-case analysis continued. In the within case analysis, the procedure outlined above was conducted for each case of bereaved parents and community members (Young et al., 2005). The within case analysis focused on how each case answers the research question. Detailed summaries were developed including demographic information followed by rich descriptions of their shared grieving, including supporting quotes; these were organized around emergent themes of their shared grieving process. Any feedback from the communities was used to make necessary changes and included in the detailed thematic summaries. In developing the summaries all data collected from the screening calls, NIC, CC, SCIs, and MCI were reviewed. Key assertions from GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 61 each case were then developed based on the detailed descriptions and how this case in particular answered the research question. Between-case analysis. A between case analysis was then conducted to examine the similarities and differences between each case (unit of bereaved parents and community members). The between case analysis involved comparing the different aspects of analysis (themes, intentional frameworks, goals, function steps, and elements) with those in other cases to understand similarities and differences of joint grieving in community. Broad categories were first created and these were reviewed several times to synthesize the commonalities into more specific categories. Once the commonalities and unique processes were identified, the commonalities were reviewed again to elicit the key assertions to summarize the findings. These were reviewed with the primary supervisor and discussed to determine the final key assertions. Rigour and Quality Evaluation Research methods each have different paradigmatic perspectives, ontological and epistemological assumptions, and procedures for data collection, which alter the criteria under which the quality of the research is evaluated (Morrow, 2005). Due to the vastly different data that is collected through qualitative methods as opposed to quantitative methods, Young, Domene, and Valach (2005) referred to Guba and Lincoln’s (2005) proposal that the questions of rigour and validity within qualitative studies be assessed by their authenticity (resonance with other people’s experience) and trustworthiness. They outlined two criteria that could address the authenticity and trustworthiness of the research, including “the extent to which there is rigour in the application of the method and the extent to which the study represents defensible reasoning in the interpretations offered” (Young et al., 2005, pp. 220-221). GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 62 In the QA-PM researchers have outlined comprehensive and systematic procedures to ensure the rigourous application of the method. The data collection and analysis procedures outline by Young et al. (2005) were followed in the current research. Data was collected from multiple perspectives and sources. By gathering data through the NIC, CC, and SCI, video recordings, and MCI, there were descriptions of action from many different perspectives. Another area assessing rigour in the application of the method is the application of the analysis process outlined. Actions were analyzed according to the protocol set out by Young et al. (2005), which included analysis from a wide and narrow perspective as well as incorporating contextual components of actions and internal processes; this process required the primary researcher and research team to go back and forth between the data and analysis ensuring that coding and organization of data was holistic and thorough. Furthermore, Young et al. proposed the need for two researchers during analysis for coding; in the current research, the analysis was discussed between the primary researcher and the research supervisor as well as among research team members. As part of the QA-PM protocol, participants were also given an opportunity to review the data at the MCIs. Trustworthiness and authenticity also needs to be evaluated in terms of the resonance and interpretation of data. One aspect of trustworthiness involves adequate data. The data from multiple interviews provided an adequate amount of data, with around 1000 total minutes of transcribed data. The sample size included a total of ten participants and three cases, providing a significant amount, range, and analysis of data regarding community grieving experiences. As Morrow (2005) stated regarding sample sizes in qualitative research, the sample sizes are not as important as the “sampling procedures; quality, length, and depth of interview data; and variety of evidence” (p. 255). The number and variety of interviews and procedures involved in the QA- GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 63 PM elicited rich, thick descriptions of how bereaved parents and community members grieved together from the various methods of data collection and analysis. The last area of trustworthiness is the adequacy of the interpretation of the data, to check that interpretations fit with participants’ meanings. The analysis not only involve multiple layers of analysis, but these were discussed and scrutinized by members of the research team as well as the primary supervisor until consensus was reached; this was to elicit resonance with multiple researchers’ understanding of the data. The primary investigator was immersed in the data through the transcription process and through reviewing the transcripts and video and voice recordings multiple times to allow for a deep and rich understanding of the data. The primary investigator’s interpretations were balanced with numerous quotes from the participants to support the findings within the participants’ experience. Lastly, the MCI interviews provided the participants with the opportunity to check that the researchers’ understanding fit with their experience. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 64 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS This study was designed to explore the ways that communities grieve together with bereaved parents after the death of a child. The main purpose of the research was to answer the following research question: how do communities grieve with bereaved parents after the loss of a child? This research project examined the shared grieving processes of bereaved parents together with their community members. The QA-PM yielded rich descriptive summaries that provided insight into the complex nature of interpersonal grieving on a community level and the interpersonal dynamics of how care is given and received. These findings invite the reader to examine more closely the contextual, multi-layered, relational nature of grieving. The findings also invite the reader to understand the relational dynamics that occur in shared grieving as well as those that invite and facilitate engagement with grieving and support of the bereaved in their grief. Each community had unique shared grieving processes, and there were consistencies among all communities that appeared in the data regarding the ways communities and bereaved parents grieved together. This chapter will begin by outlining the within-case analysis including a detailed description of the findings for each community. This will be followed by reflexivity from the primary researcher regarding the personal experience with each community. The between-case analysis will follow with an examination of the commonalities and differences among the three communities. To conclude, a summary of the key assertions will be provided to denote the significant findings of this research study. Within-case Analysis Community one. Community one included Justin (40), and his wife Andrea (36), and their two community members, Christine (44), and Chloe (27). Justin and Andrea have one GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 65 living child, Ella (7), and one deceased son, Peter, who died at 24 weeks of age. Both Justin and Andrea are born Canadian citizens and described their heritage as English-Canadian and their faith affiliation as Christian. Justin works in a business setting and he and Andrea own and run a local private business. Christine is also a born Canadian citizen, speaks English as her first language, and described her heritage as English-German and her faith affiliation as Lutheran Christian. Christine is single and works in a helping profession. She has known Justin for 18 years and Andrea for 12 years and is a close friend and member of a club with Andrea and Justin. Chloe is a born Canadian citizen, speaks English as her first language, and described herself as Atheist and her heritage as German-Scottish. Chloe is married and has two daughters (3 years old and 12 months old). Chloe has known Justin and Andrea for 10 years as a close friend and member of a local club together with Andrea and Justin. Seven years prior to the initial interview, Justin and Andrea lost their first-born son, Peter at 24 weeks old. Andrea suffered from health complications that led to a pre-mature labor and birth. Peter lived for 24 hours and then died of health complications. Justin was able to meet his son and spent the first 24 hours with him. Andrea was extremely ill, and only met their son for a brief moment when the medical team was fighting to keep him alive. Therefore, Justin and Andrea’s connection to their son while he was alive was limited. Additionally, the community was never able to meet their son, and so the grief of the community was related to the suffering that Justin and Andrea were experiencing. Both Christine and Chloe supported Justin and Andrea with many practical aspects of their lives in the weeks following Peter’s death. The NIC began with the researcher asking about the community and their relationships together. The conversation then moved into the bereaved couple being invited to share the story of their pregnancy, the health complications, pre-mature birth and death of their son. Andrea and GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 66 Justin shared openly about the details of their experience leading up to and after the death of their son. The researcher asked several questions about their individual experiences and the experiences of the community regarding the loss, which each person openly participated in when asked. The NIC was lighthearted and filled with many moments of laughter and joking together. The tone of the NIC remained fairly factual and cognitive and there were no tears throughout the interview. Once the community as a whole had shared at length about their individual process, the community was invited to discuss their shared grieving in the CC. Detailed description of the community grieving process. The following section outlines a descriptive narrative of the community grieving process as it occurred during the CC and individual SCI. The descriptive narrative is presented through significant themes of the shared grieving process throughout the CC as it unfolded in the progression of their discussion together. These themes capture the relational process of how this community grieved together. Navigating emotional boundaries. Andrea started the CC by initiating the conversation, reading the question left by the researcher. Andrea started by talking about how she focused on the medical understanding of the loss when communicating with people after Peter died. An.CC2: “…I think that you probably (points to Christine) said the right thing when you said… I remember doing a lot of research. Like a lot of research! Trying to figure out why…I remember trying to… being able to explain to people what happened to me, rather than having the questions like ‘why did you lose him?’” Ch.CC.3: “I don’t know if it was at the memorial or later when people were at your house, I remember them asking about it…” An.CC.4: “And right, I…” Ch.CC.4: “Your immediate response was to go to the medical side…” An.CC.5: “Yeah (head nodding), that’s true. Which I think is probably the way that I processed stuff.” Ch.CC.5: “Yes.” Andrea expressed in her SCI that she started the CC discussing her way of relating to people, as it was relevant to how she engaged with her community, but to also acknowledge GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 67 Christine. Christine had cried near the end of the NIC when she discussed the sense of helplessness she experienced after Andrea and Justin’s loss knowing she could not change their suffering. No one in their community had acknowledged Christine’s tears and the NIC ended with Christine’s comment and transitioned from there to the CC. Andrea wanted to acknowledge Christine’s support and emotions and did so without directly addressing the emotions, but by mentioning what Christine had shared previously in the NIC. An.SCI.4: “I think feeling, yeah, probably more for Christine at that time because I felt like she, I didn't know that uhh...maybe it had impacted her so much, like emotionally, as far as like being able to talk about it, umm, she had a few tears and uh…I think I just really felt for her, like at that moment…I just wanted to...let her know that I acknowledge that she was probably very right [based on what she had mentioned earlier in the NIC] and that was how I managed and stuff. So yeah.” At this point in the conversation Andrea affirmed Christine’s reflection of how Andrea had emphasized the medical understanding in her own process and communicating about the loss. In the SCI, Christine reflected that Andrea’s way of interacting with people seemed to help her process the loss and talk with others in a more factual, emotionally distant manner. Ch.SCI.5: “…her medic would turn in to right away, and I think that was her way of processing it I think. And being able to talk about it with people without it being...cause she…closed everything off to people, that that medical side allowed it to be a little bit detached.” Both the reflections about Andrea’s way of dealing with people and her engagement in the CC were reflective of her desire to not engage with the emotional pain of loss and not allow others to go there with her. At the end of her SCI, Andrea reflected on how the grief felt too overwhelming to engage with on an emotional level. An.SCI.74: “Locked it away, let it go. Yup (yeah). Yeah, it's funny. I think it's just my way of coping with loss (yeah). It's just…” Re.SCI.74: “Just to kind of put it into a box and say ok ‘I'm going to put this over here’?” An.SCI.75: “Yup. I'm going to put it on the shelf and... it's there, and uhh...I can open it when I need to but...umm... yeah. So I think that's a lot of it. Yup.” Re.SCI.75: “Is that something you just kind of see in yourself even in the video and in today talking about or you kind of knew that about yourself?” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 68 An.SCI.76: “No, I kind of knew that because I had, I have lost both my parents. So...a major loss is not a new thing for me, but it's also, I know...that, ahh...I'm ok to talk about my loss...I don't want to re-live all those feelings. So, I would way rather, umm.. explain how it happened, and what happened, and why, but I don't want to re-live the emotional attachment to it. Because it's unbearable...to think. If you lose your Mom, your Dad, and your son it's unbearable! So I know that for myself, that I am ok. And I am ok to move forward... and not live in the past and live in my sorrows, and live in the pain, and all of the grief...I don't want to live in the grief. It seemed Andrea wanted to move forward as her way of dealing with the loss as the emotional pain was too big and all-encompassing to be faced. As a result, the emotional distancing felt in this moment of the CC and Andrea’s way of relating to people through a medical perspective seemed to be connected to her desire to remain emotionally distant from the pain. As Andrea stated, she did not want to re-live the emotional connection to grief, and this can be felt in the way that she talks about the loss and the communities discussion as a whole. Andrea shared at the end of the interview that her goal in the interview overall was to remain “strong”, given both her background of loss and for her husband Justin. Re.SCI.91: “…what do you think you were trying to accomplish/what was the aim or goal for you umm in this conversation?” An.SCI.91: “I think honestly to be strong (to be strong). To be able to get through this interview (yeah)…I think if I had have approach it as a very emotional, you know, hard time...that...it would have been much harder on Justin…because he gets VERY VERY ahh...I wouldn't say emotional, but...almost protective. I would say he gets very protective of me if I start to get upset (right, right)…so today, I really wanted to come here and do an interview and, and, I guess do well. You could say.” Re.SCI.95: “Do well, and stay strong.” An.SCI.95: “Mhmm (yeah).” For Andrea, her goal was to remain “strong”, and in control of her emotions. There was a shared sense between Andrea and Justin of not re-engaging with the pain of the past and focusing on how they have moved forward. The community interactions seemed to be organized around this protection for Andrea from the emotional pain. As a result, the overall tone of the CC was more rational, light-hearted, and practical, which also reflected the ways the community functioned and was organized together in relationship. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 69 Gaining support through social media. As the conversation continued, Andrea reflected on her way of relating to people with medical knowledge and Justin shared how he reached out to people through Facebook. He talked about how he shared many of the details of what happened in the hospital on Facebook and how this was a way of processing what was happening and reaching out for support. Both Justin and Andrea expressed in their SCI feeling a strong sense of support through the number of people who responded to them on Facebook and how social networking helped to mobilize people to meet needs. Justin and Andrea and the community members also reflected in their SCI’s about how Facebook seemed to be a safer, less intrusive form of communication in the initial time of loss. Ju.SCI.9: “…we ended up turning to…Facebook…I did anyway, instantly, so, just, you know, we have a lot of people that, that follow our lives, so there was just a lot people with a lot of responses. Like hundreds and thousands of messages and...ah, yah. Yah, and then we got response back, and that's why it wasn't difficult for a lot of people to offer help and come by and things…Yah, and it's a way to explain things to everybody without having to do it face to face a hundred million times. Yah.” An.SCI.9: “Umm...I think for Justin because he is...his way of managing was really which what he nailed which was he needed to post, he needed to he was VERY VERY vocal with what was going on. Like minute to minute. And for him that was his way of being able to talk to it. Maybe it wasn't like for people individually, he didn't have like...many phone calls, not that I remember a whole bunch, but...it was an easier way for him to get the information out that needed to get out and answers. He wanted almost no questions. So it was easier for him, and I know this, to...give answers before they were asked.” Ch.SCI.10: “I was thinking, because Justin was much more on the social [side], but at the same time through Facebook it's not a face to face…people are, like he's seeing that people are caring and responding to it but it's not that over and over, ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry’ kind of thing…” Facebook seemed to provide support for Justin, an outlet for his processing, and provided a more efficient means of communication. Their reflections seemed to highlight the ways Facebook felt like a safer way of communicating the information rather than face-to-face. In this way, Justin engaged with community in grieving through social media where he could communicate about the loss and receive support. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 70 Allowing different grieving styles. The community conversation continued as Justin and Andrea expanded on their personal differences in grieving and dealing with people after the loss and how those different styles complimented and benefited one another. In the CC they shared back and forth: Ju.CC.8: And then I was responding to every single person that had a question. An.CC.9: And then I didn’t have to. So you just said (looks at Justin) ‘don’t contact Andrea, contact me’. That way we were not trying to get double hit and so I think for me… Ju.CC.9: You were not in the mode for it An.CC.10: No, I wasn’t able to…but I think to respond to the loss together, you’re right, (points to Christine) for me it was like knowing or understanding the medical end of it, so that at least if someone said to me ‘what happened?’ I could tell them. Because I didn’t want to have that ‘I’m so sorry!’ ‘Oh that’s ok’, because I didn’t want to go down that road (looks down) (everyone else looking at Andrea). Ju.CC.10: I took care of the social side, and you took care of the intellectual side (giggles)” An.CC.11: (Laughs) (everyone laughs). I don’t know if I’d say that, but sure we’ll say that. It seemed Justin allowed Andrea to have a more insulated way of grieving, and took on a more social role to help mitigate the amount of people Andrea needed to engage with. Andrea talked about how she helped Justin through her medical knowledge and shared in her SCI, how she was able to explain things to him for his own process and to be able to communicate to other people what was happening. An.SCI.9: “Justin really relied on social media to get answers before they were asked and then I really relied on medical knowledge and listening to the doctors because he would say, ‘well what just happened?’ you know, ‘how bad is your blood pressure?’ and I would be like ‘it's really bad!’ You know and I could understand medically what was happening with me (what's happening, yeah) and he just took care of the social stuff (mhmm). Yeah.” It seemed that time since the loss had also brought more of an appreciation to their different styles of grieving, particularly for Andrea. Andrea talked in her SCI about how she initially did not understand why Justin posted so much information on social media, but now has more of an understanding for it. An.SCI.12: “I remember thinking, ‘why are you doing this so much?’ Like I remember at the time being like ‘ugh, why are you...you know... why are you posting all this stuff?’ (yeah). And GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 71 then I can look back and I...after years of being married, you know you just go well that's that's just, that's just his way, right? Of coping and dealing with the situation, so yeah.” There seemed to be an appreciation and allowance between the two of them for their different ways of dealing with the loss and engaging with people; Justin, supporting Andrea to have a more insulated way of grieving, and Andrea, allowing Justin to post his process with the loss on social media. The community also seemed to acknowledge and allow these different styles and ways of interacting with each spouse based on their different grieving styles. Later in the conversation, the respect for different grieving styles emerged as Chloe discussed the open communication she felt they had as a community. Andrea expressed that maybe Justin was open to discussing the loss, but she felt more guarded. Chloe responded in this moment by offering validation and understanding that not everyone can be let into intimate places of grieving. Cl.CC.54: “I think also just an openness with communicating with each other, like it was never uhh, like ‘don’t be afraid to ask’”. An.CC.55: “Yeah (nods).” Cl.CC.55: “And I think that made everything easier, because you’re not standing there worried, going ‘can I bring this up? Can I talk about this? Can I…?’ Or anything like that. It was always just an openness. Good communication?” An.CC.56: “Yeah (nods). I would say so. (Looks at husband). Maybe not on my end, I probably put a wall up, but…” Cl.CC.56: “I wouldn’t say you ever did. I never felt that (laughs).” An.CC.57: “Well probably not with you guys.” Cl.CC.57: “No.” An.CC.58: “But with the rest of the world.” Cl.CC.58: “Well…” An.CC.59: “Because you guys were directly involved in the…(circles with hand), like you knew exactly what was going and uh…” Cl.CC.59: “And it’s understandable that you can’t let the rest of the world into that neither. Like you definitely have to put up a wall to 90% of the world in that situation.” In this moment of the conversation, Andrea tried to respond honestly about how she felt closed off to people after the loss. Chloe responded by validating Andrea’s response with GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 72 understanding as to why she did not want to let people into her pain. In their SCI’s Andrea and Chloe discussed the dynamics of this moment of the conversation. An.SCI.59: “Yeah, umm...I think that, umm...I know at the time I felt like I had walls up all around me. And I just really wanted them to be up. But there were others, like, Chloe was just...she was so involved in our house, like...in so many different ways, that...I probably had walls up and they were not directed at her! Cl.SCI.27: “Um, yah, it was just, Andrea, in her, like, she...for a short time she kind of isolated herself and I, I knew that, I expected that, and like I would go into her hospital room and she would just kind of look at me and be just like, ‘ok, I just really don't want any kind of company right now’. And I would be like, ‘that's fine’. And I'll head out again...just wanted to see how you were doing, and, and like, she really did isolate herself in the hospital for quiet a while, but she was really sick too…[In this moment I] just [wanted to] acknowledge that she wasn't pushing everybody out of her life. Like she might have felt that she was pushing everybody out of her life, but the rest of us didn't feel like we were being pushed out of her life. It seemed that both Andrea and Chloe were aware of the walls that Andrea had up; they both held an understanding that they were not personally directed to push anyone away, but related to Andrea’s desires for space. Chloe seemed to follow Andrea’s lead in this, not trying to push past or be offended by the walls, but allowing them to be there and respecting them. Including the deceased child in the family mosaic. Andrea then focused the conversation back on the research question and talked about how being able to talk about their deceased son was part of their shared grieving. Andrea talked about answering the question of “how many kids do you have?” with the answer two as a way to remember her son as part of their lives. Justin responded by talking about the difficulty of answering that question given people’s awkwardness in response to hearing their son died. An.CC.13: “Or if someone asked a question ‘How many kids do you have?’ Well I have…had two. You know for a long time we would…” Ju.CC.13: “(nodding, sighs) It’s hard to answer that question to people sometimes (Andrea: Yes) because you’re like (big sigh) it’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, it’s just that a lot of people would be like (gasp) ‘oh I’m so sorry!’ (loud surprised tone), and you’re like (sigh) ‘it’s fine, it’s ok’ (laughs). So rather than dealing with making them uncomfortable, we would just often…(looks at Andrea)” An.CC.14: “Say one.” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 73 Ju.CC.14: “We would just say one. ‘How many kids do you have?’ ‘We have one.’” Both Justin and Andrea expressed being comfortable talking about their son, but often avoiding these conversations to save themselves the discomfort of people’s shock or overly sympathetic responses. In their SCI, Justin and Andrea reflected on this moment of the conversation and expressed not wanting to make others uncomfortable and therefore often keeping their loss private for this reason. An.SCI.14: “I would agree with Justin, it was very hard to...to answer some questions, in a way that... we didn't want someone else to...to feel uncomfortable. And we were both like that. And so it was like ‘well we know if I answer this question one way, then I'm going to have to have a big explanation’, because your face is going to go ‘oh my gosh! What did I just ask?’ Right? But for me, to save you, I would just answer differently. And it wasn't for us, because we were fine. At the end of the day…we got through it…” Ju.SCI.15: “And we, I use to always just say, ‘oh I have two, but I lost my first one’ and I would just be blunt like that and a lot of people don't know how to respond. ‘Oh I'm so sorry.’ ‘Totally fine.’ But it's...got kinda old. Cause then you're like, there's that awkward moment with the people. It's not my awkward moment, it's theirs. So, sometimes if I assess the person is um, not as significant, then I'll just be, well we just have one.” It seemed that Justin and Andrea wanted to include their son in their family description, but did not want people to get upset about their loss. Andrea mentioned in her SCI that they “got through [the loss]” and it seemed they preferred to talk with people about it in a more lighthearted manner that represented how they have moved forward. Andrea then talked about how they can no longer avoid the topic of their son’s death because their 5-year old daughter will bring it up in response to people’s questions about how many kids they have if they do not. An.CC.15: “But we can’t do that anymore because Sonia…” Ju.CC.15: “She knows and she’ll say ‘I have a little brother’…” An.CC.16: “Right, because Sonia always says ‘well I had a brother and he died, and I had a dog and she died, and Fluffy (dog) just died, and my fish [Goldy] died (Chloe laughing).” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 74 At this point in the conversation everyone laughed about how their daughter responds in a matter of fact way, mentioning not only their son’s death, but also the deaths of the many pets in her life. Christine talked in her SCI about how there is an open visual remembrance of their son within Justin and Andrea’s home. Ch.SCI.16: “It was interesting to see, because it's always very visual, like (mhmm)...so Sonia grew up in the home (right) it's very visual. They have Peter’s picture (yah) on the wall and things like that, so I think it's talked about but, for kids, it's much more literal (mmm). I think grieving is a lot more black and white for them cause they don't...'well my brother died and now Fluffy died' and now...and that might be partly Sonia’s personality too (yah), but it's interesting to see how it's just, matter of fact (yah) for her. It appeared that Justin and Andrea included their deceased son, Peter, in their home, but only brought him into other relationships with someone they felt could handle it or if their daughter brought it up on their behalf. It seemed including their son within their own home and in conversation was one of the ways they grieved together and acknowledged their son as part of their lives, even though there was difficulty at times. Giving back to make meaning of loss. The conversation shifted as Andrea brought up the ways she grieved with community and processed her loss by encouraging mothers to embrace all aspects of motherhood. Andrea expressed how she wanted to use her experience to bring perspective to having a healthy baby instead of worrying about all the small things. In particular, Andrea was able to encourage Chloe when she was pregnant. An.CC.20: “…And I know for other Mom’s and stuff, like I remember telling you (points to Chloe), like ‘don’t sweat the small stuff, just have a baby (Chloe: Yeah (nodding)) and if you end up being able to breast feed, great, and if you can’t who cares!’ (Chloe: Yeah (nodding, looks down at baby)). ‘And as long as they are healthy and happy, and you’re the same (Chloe: Yeah (nodding)), like just love it, don’t sweat anything small.’ (Chloe: Yeah). And I think that was probably another thing that, you know, got me through like the hard times.” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 75 Andrea felt that her investment in helping other mothers appreciate and embrace motherhood was one of the ways that helped her to get through her grief. Chloe recalled in her SCI the importance of her conversations with Andrea. Cl.SCI.12: “Um, it was just enjoyable remembering conversations we've had. Cause she was a really big influence on me when I was pregnant and she helped me out a lot in not stressing and worrying and she was just a big support, in being like, if you need anything, don't be afraid to give me a call. And ah, with everything she has gone through, she's, she's definitely been a shoulder for me to lean on many a time.” At this point, Christine also reflected on how Andrea had made meaning of her loss through giving back to others and making it something positive. Ch.SCI.24-25: “...she's taking her experience and being able to support other people, and she's taking her grief experience and being able to use that to support someone else, and encourage somebody else too…yah, that they've been able too...they have been able to go beyond and make something positive out of it, as well.” Andrea experienced meaning in being able to support and encourage other mothers with the perspective she had gained from losing a baby. Chloe experienced this as helpful, and Christine also saw it as a meaningful way that she was able to draw something good out of her loss. The theme of giving back seemed to be a way that Andrea made meaning of the loss and part of how she grieved the loss with community. The theme of giving back and reciprocity occurred later in the conversation as well and seemed to be a way that the community grieved together. Chloe and Andrea talked about how Andrea would always ask about Chloe’s friends and family that were in the hospital at the same time as she was. An.CC.31: “I think the help each other thing, like I think you nailed it (looks at Chloe), like I don’t remember having conversations about your Dad and your friend, but I’m sure we did (laughs).” Cl.CC.31: “Oh we definitely did.” An.CC.32: “And yeah…” Cl.CC.32: “Like, I’d come in and see you and you would say, ‘How’s your Dad doing?’ (chuckles).” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 76 An.CC.33: “Yeah.” It also seemed that Justin and Andrea dealt with the loss and shared their grieving through also caring, in small ways, for the people around them and eventually, using their loss experience as a way to help other people. Reciprocal care back and forth seemed to be a way that they grieved together and also how the community functioned at large. Offering practical support. The conversation then shifted as the community members each shared the ways they supported Justin and Andrea. Chloe reflected on how she offered practical support for their household and cared for their animals for an extended period of time in the days and weeks after the loss. Cl.CC.20: “Yeah, and I think like from my perspective to answer the question would be just of keeping the normalcy around you guys, like keeping the house so that you guys could come back and be like ‘great, the dogs are fed and walked and…’” Ju.CC.20: “Yeah” An.CC.21: “Yeah” (nodding, big eyes) Cl.CC.21: “Everything, like they can come back and not have to be overwhelmed by the rest of the world around you as well as what you were facing…and just have it covered, so when you came you could relax into it and not be stressed…” Chloe described that her intentions were to sustain normalcy around the couple in the wake of loss and create space for them to grieve without having to manage life tasks. Andrea and Justin also talked in the NIC how Christine took over management of their business without question, which was another significant practical show of support. Later in the conversation, Andrea and Justin expressed gratefulness to their community for the ways they could count on their support in the days and weeks after the loss. An.CC.45: “Yeah, I think we just knew that we could depend on you both (looks at community members), like for the business and for home and it just, there wasn’t a question. At all.” Andrea remarked that she felt assured that the practical aspects of their lives were fully covered. Andrea reflected in her SCI that she felt confident in being able to depend on her GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 77 community members and did not feel that she was burdening anyone or that anyone was looking to get something out of offering support. An.SCI.44: “And I know with both of them that...there doesn't have to be a thank you. Right...Some people need to have acknowledgement to be ok with helping out. They need the thank you. And I know that they don't. So, I know that I wanted them to recognize that...that I value your friendship in so much that I know that I can depend on you without even thanking you! Right? If that makes sense?” The practical show of support and the manner in which the community took up the tasks with such ease was one of the most significant ways that the bereaved parents received support from the community, as discussed at length during the NIC and screening calls as well. They also discussed other members of their extended community that supported them and Christine reflected on how a supportive community was part of the normalcy of Justin and Andrea’s lives. Ch.SCI.47-50: “Just the returning to normal…but the supportiveness is part of the normalcy of the community. Like it's not that happens and then...you know, like some people come and support and then you don't see them or anything but that support keeps going…be it for that situation or something else support wise…cause the supportiveness was just a level, was normal…Yup, yah, it just stepped up in this situation where it was needed more (yah) but it just continued (like it doesn't disappear) and it's still that way now (yah).” It seemed that this back and forth of support was also what maintained their relationships together, by not just being there for the good parts of life, but also supporting in difficult seasons of life. Ch.SCI.37: “Yah, it's just kept our friendship going having gone through these difficult times…if I wasn't there for them at that time and if they weren't there for me at other times then, there probably wouldn't be a friendship there, but because we have stepped up and helped each other out when the need has arisen, that is why we have a friendship.” Practical support was a significant way that this community came around to grieve with and support Andrea and Justin and it seems was an important factor in continuing their friendship together by being there for one another in all season of life. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 78 Re-engaging with life after loss. The conversation then shifted as Andrea and Justin discussed the things they did as a couple to support one another. Andrea and Justin reflected on how they thought ahead to the future and having more children as a way to share in grieving and offer one another and their community hope during that time. An.SCI.38: “…and I remember having the conversations of like ‘you know we'll just try again’ and ‘you know, we're ok’ and...it was hard because the nurses would come and it was really hard on the nurses to talk to us, but we were ok to talk to them so... and I remember the grief counsellor coming...and uhh...you know, ‘do you want to talk to somebody?’ and we were like ‘No, we're ok. We will be ok. There will be a future.’ Yeah.” Ju.SCI.35: “I was just reflecting on the fact that we just did everything um, a lot of normal activities just to get back into life as normal as possible…” The future focus seemed to be one of the ways Andrea and Justin supported one another and coped together, providing hope for what was ahead instead of focusing on what was lost. Justin talked about how they engaged in normal activities as a way to re-engage with the exciting and normal things of life happening around them. Justin talked in the NIC about the fun events they were able to attend and they joked about having wheel chair access due to Andrea’s ongoing health challenges. Ju.CC.54: “Well we just went out, like you and me went out with…we went to the events and things like that, just kind of did normal things I think. (Andrea: Yeah). Things that were cool that were happening, we didn't let them go by.” An.CC.54: “Yeah.” Their engagement in activities seemed to help them find enjoyment in life again and to feel the more usual rhythms of life that may have been shaken by loss. In this way, they dealt with the loss together by engaging in the present moment, finding joy, and looking forward to the future hope of more children. Attendance of the memorial service. The conversation then wrapped up with the community talking about the memorial service as a significant marker of shared grieving. At GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 79 this point, the community went back and forth recalling details of the event and people who were there in support. In reflecting on the memorial, there seemed to be a strong sense of community support, given the amount of people who attended the event and offered help in that season. The community members both felt the importance of the memorial in showing support and acknowledging the loss within the community. Ch.SCI.58: “That even though they had support from individuals, I think, the collective part of it, with having everybody there was also a part of the support and the grieving part of having the memorial and everybody at the house…Cause Andrea says that she doesn't remember much of it. But, to know that, everybody was supportive and I think that is part of other people's grieving process to, to acknowledge that that happened…I guess one of the things that I never realized was that how much they had with the community that they had around them how much they had donated like, there was really no expense to any of that [the memorial]. It was just...everything got donated with all the friends and family that they had around them which is awesome.” The memorial service seemed to be the one significant marker of recognizing the loss all together. Andrea commented near the end of the interview, that she felt she grieved more individually then together, but the memorial seemed to be one of the significant shared ways. It seemed that the memorial not only helped to acknowledge the loss within the community, but to signal the many people who care about the bereaved. Community grieving summary. The overall tone of the CC was cognitive, light-hearted, and a bit strained. During the NIC, the community had already spoken about their shared grieving and did not understand that they would have a separate conversation about their shared grieving. As a result, the CC felt repetitive to them. Andrea tried to lead the conversation and bring up relevant talking points. The community members contributed periodically, largely following the bereaved couple’s lead. Justin was quiet and appeared irritated, as he expressed in his SCI that he had already shared everything he wanted pertaining to their community support. The conversation at times, trailed off to recount factual details, which seemed to also be a way to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 80 fill the time. The conversation remained largely cognitive and focused mainly around discussing what Andrea brought up in relation to their shared grieving. The primary investigator met with the community to present them with a summary of their shared grieving at the MCI. The researcher read aloud each paragraph giving the community time to comment on each paragraph summary of their shared grieving. The community was quiet and reflective throughout the reading. At the end the community agreed together that it represented them well and they did not want to add or change anything. The agreed-upon community grieving process for this community can be described as: Dropping everything to come around the bereaved when needed to show practical care, helping maintain the normalcy of life, hope for the future, and remain emotionally strong in the wake of loss. Analysis summary. The community grieving process was analyzed from the actiontheoretical perspective. The following section will outline more specifically the breakdown of analysis from action theory. Intentional framework. Given the bereaved parents previous relationship with the researcher, one of their first intentions in volunteering was to be helpful to the researcher. The community largely functioned in a manner where they see needs and meet them if they are able to. In this case the bereaved parents saw the advertisement through Facebook, felt they had a fitting case, and offered to be involved. The intention of the bereaved couple was to not only show support to the researcher, but also to thank their community for the ways they carried them through that time of their lives so flawlessly, which was stated at several points in the NIC and discussed in the CC. The intention of the community was to be supportive and to show their ongoing support through participating in the research. The intention of showing support was a main intention that framed the way this community grieved together. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 81 As the NIC began and following in the CC, another implicit intention seemed to emerge, which was to remain “strong” in discussing the loss. Andrea expressed that she had previous losses and the thought of re-engaging the emotions of grief felt like “too much”. Therefore, she felt fine to discuss the loss in a more cognitive, removed manner, but did not want to revisit the emotions associated with grief. Andrea also discussed in her SCI how emotionally raw Justin was after the loss, and wanting to be “strong” for him in the conversation. At the end of Andrea’s SCI, she expressed that there are many good things in her life that she wants to enjoy and engage with, and she sees grief and the sadness that comes with it as taking her away from enjoying life. This intention of emotional distance emerged from Andrea, as stated in her goal for the CC, and was reciprocated by Justin and the community members. This intention was clear to Andrea, but remained implicit within the CC. The community seemed to be organized around helping Andrea to achieve this goal in remaining emotionally distant from the loss. The community used different strategies to achieve the intention of showing support and remaining distant from the pain of grief throughout the CC. They explained their different perspectives of why they did what they did and helped to affirm one another’s different styles and capacities within grieving. They acknowledged one another’s inputs and perspectives and discussed differences in grieving, such as being more social or insulated, and talking about the benefits of differences. They talked about how helpful the show of practical support was to affirm the ways they felt needs were met. They talked about the extended community and the various people involved to further expand on the ways they felt cared for through practical support. They also expressed together the ways they have moved forward from the loss and the positive aspects that have emerged from their loss. The community did this through discussing how they re-engaged with life through fun activities, and how they encouraged other people as a GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 82 way of giving back and making meaning of their loss. They discussed what they are grateful for today, with having their daughter in their lives and had and an overall tone of positivity and lightheartedness, making jokes and laughing in the CC. The bereaved couple talked about the ways they preferred to talk about the loss by not making it a big deal, and how they did not want to make people uncomfortable. The bereaved mother talked about the walls she felt she had up and not wanting to engage with many people, which the community affirmed as reasonable. They all talked together about communication around the loss and how they preferred to talk about it in a factual manner. They recalled many details of the memorial services to acknowledge the support that was around them and the people who contributed to supporting them. The manifest behaviours throughout the conversation demonstrated the community’s strategies and overall intentions. Andrea initiated the conversation throughout and elicited responses from the community. The community described different situations or events about their shared activities, and Andrea and Justin encouraged reflections from the community about things they noticed and descriptions of one another. All community members expressed opinions and perceptions about how they grieved together and individually. They affirmed one another through agreeing with one another and explained their actions by describing themselves and past actions, and providing information. Other manifest behaviours throughout the conversation included acknowledgement of differences in grieving styles and expressing appreciation and gratitude for the ways their differences helped one another. The community expressed humor and laughter to lighten the mood throughout the conversation. At times there were also expressions of uncertainty, as Andrea could not recall many details from the time following the loss. They communicated together by elaborating on what one another shared, GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 83 asking for clarification, and suggesting and confirming information. In moments there were also disagreements in perceptions of what occurred, and partial agreement with things shared, sighs, and expressions of ambivalence. In moments when they shared about their gratefulness, there were expressions of connection. Assertions. This community provided insight into how it is that communities grieve together with bereaved parents after the loss of a child. The community engaged with the bereaved with an offering of practical support. Their grieving together was a natural extension of a pre-existing community, which was built upon reciprocal, ongoing, practical care for one another. The community members gave themselves selflessly to the task of supporting the couple in the wake of loss, caring for their household while in the hospital, making food, and keeping their business running so that life tasks were managed for the couple in the weeks after the loss. The bereaved couple felt ease in being able to rely on their community, not having to ask for ongoing for support, but feeling cared for until they were able to manage again. The bereaved couple also felt the selflessness of their communities support in that they did not require a “thank-you” and were not looking for anything in return. Community one highlights the immense support that comes from community through practical care and helping ease the burdens of life tasks in the wake of loss; practical care of communities can be a significant way to join together with bereaved couples and support them in their grieving. The traumatic loss of Andrea and Justin’s son had a significant impact on the community, and particularly on Andrea. Given Andrea’s previous experience with the loss of both of her parents, the weight of loss felt unbearable. She wanted to remain more insulated in her grief and was open to practical care and support, but did not desire to get into the emotional aspects of grief within community relationships. As a result, the community seemed to be organized GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 84 around Andrea’s desire to remain emotionally distant from her grief and helping protect her from re-engaging with the emotions of loss. Justin and Andrea expressed wanting to move forward and for life to go back to normal, and therefore, the community came around to provide practical support to sustain this normalcy and keep life in motion when they could not themselves, until they could take over again. The community also seemed to be organized around talking about the loss in a more factual or controlled manner to maintain the emotional distance or face-to-face management of emotions with others. The couple focused on maintaining hope for the future and finding positive meaning in giving back to others from the loss. In this way, the couple helped one another to cope and move forward from the loss. It seemed that this may be how this community defined grieving – how to move forward from loss, find meaning in loss, and regain hope for life. This case highlights that not every bereaved couple desires emotional support and connection in their grief, but may actually prefer community to help them to remain “strong” and hopeful about the future. This community also demonstrates that support is received by the bereaved based on what they need and desire from their community, which shows the complexity of grieving in community and offering support. Reflexivity. Through the research process, I was invited in and became part of these communities. Community one was the first interview and a time when the research became real on a new level. Being the first interview, there were a few logistics to work out and the process felt less comfortable not knowing what to expect. This was also the first time for me that I had sat down and asked a family to tell me about the story of their child who died. Up until this point, although not a parent myself, I somehow related more to bereaved parents and felt this sense of advocacy around why community experiences have to be so horrible and communities GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 85 fail at being present with people in their suffering. Yet, as I entered into this community, I suddenly found myself relating much more to a community member and for the first time in the research felt significant discomfort myself. Watching this interview back was difficult for me as I watched myself do what I criticized communities for doing: I failed to create as much safety and warmth as I would have liked, remained largely silent, responded only with “thank you for sharing”, and moved on quickly from the only show of tears in the whole interview. Although I think part of this was navigating this new understanding of what it meant to do research, I also think this discomfort emerged from my own discomfort with this topic that I was previously unaware of. It also seemed connected to the communities discomfort with this topic, which was also felt in the interview. This was a very humbling process for me and for the first time, I found myself standing in the shoes of the community members asking myself, “How do I respond here?” I felt afraid and this fear took away my words. For me, this fear seemed to be connected to not wanting to hurt the bereaved parents. I did not want to say something stupid, too empathetic, or sound like I thought I could relate. As a researcher I felt that I needed to remain removed rather than feeling permission to enter into the community. But I also did not feel invited into emotional connection with the topic of loss. As I reflected on this interview, I felt an increased compassion for community members of bereaved people. I realized I did not know how to grieve together either and it was actually a lot more difficult than I thought. I also felt confused about how this community wanted to engage with this topic. I wondered if for me, my difficulty was actually holding the discomfort felt in the room. I was preparing myself for some tears in this interview - I had the tissue boxes ready, but there was nothing. We talked about the death of their son in a matter of fact way and I felt a bit surprised by this. I felt myself trying to navigate how to respond, given that it did not seem they wanted GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 86 empathy, but yet they were talking about something painful. When they talked about whether or not they mention that they have one or two kids, as two will lead into overly sympathetic responses, I found myself wondering, what is the appropriate response to someone who tells you they had two children, but one died? I felt that shock and empathy seemed like the only appropriate response, because responding casually suggests the loss was not a big deal. Yet they talked about being annoyed and uncomfortable when people responded this way and talked about the awkwardness of the moment. I felt confused when I thought about how I would respond to this statement and not knowing what they wanted from me. Before the research began, I felt angry thinking about bereaved parents not being able to talk about their children, but then I found myself asking, “What do you say?” “How do you respond?” “What do the bereaved want from you?” As a counsellor, I feel good at empathizing and joining people in pain, but that is not what was wanted here. I realized that community grieving is so much more complex. What the bereaved want determines how supported they feel in community. In this case, I was surprised that no one really shared explicitly in the pain of grief together, but their community was experienced as hugely supportive. Throughout this process, I have always been biased in how I think communities should grieve together, but I never saw it so clearly as when analyzing this community. I understood the things that create distance from the pain of loss (such as remaining more cognitive/factual, emotionally distant, using humor to lighten things, focusing on the future, and staying positive) as oppressive and silencing and figured that they stemmed from the community toward the bereaved. Yet in this case, the desire for emotional distance seemed to be coming from the bereaved parents and guiding and organizing the community in how to engage together in grieving. This was surprising for me and I realized it is not just about the community influencing the bereaved; they are all joined together GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 87 creating this community and the bereaved parents receptivity to emotional connection also directs and is reciprocated by the community as a whole. In response to how this community grieves overall, I then felt myself asking, “Who am I to say this is not the way to do it?” “Who am I to say there is a better way to grieve in community?” Particularly when I myself have never lost a child. I do not know how I would respond and whether or not I would want community to be that close to my pain. Not only did the bereaved mother lose her son, but also her mother and father. They responded to their grief in the way they needed to, and what help carry them through. Yet I still felt sad that there is not an emotional openness and the lack of emotion felt like an elephant in the room. Community one also helped me to see the embedded nature of community that created the sense of practical care and support they felt through this time. The community talked about how there is always giving and receiving within the community and they are always asking for and offering help. My life is busy and I often decline any extra responsibility or involvement with people as I feel I do not have the time. Furthermore, I sometimes like the insulated feeling of having my nuclear family unit and this being the main focus of my life. This community reflected to me an actual community lifestyle. They are connected to the practical ins and outs of one another’s daily lives. The bereaved parents openly ask for help, invite people to things, open their home, offer their help, and the community responded in a similar fashion. This community helped me to see that when you embed yourself in a community they will be there for you when you need them. Although this concept may seem simple, it caused me to examine the way I live my life and why I may suffer from feeling a lack of community at times. It requires opening my life and being willing to step into other’s lives. This community modeled this openness beautifully to me. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 88 Community two. Community two included a married couple, Richard (45), and Heather (42), and their community member Jessica (42). Richard and Heather are both born Canadian citizens and speak English as their first language. Heather is in a helping profession and Richard works in business. Heather and Richard described their cultural heritage as Canadian and describe their faith as Christian. Richard and Heather have two living children, Crystal (15) and Nathan (13), and one deceased child, Julia. Jessica is a born Canadian citizen and described her heritage as Eastern European and her faith as Christian. Jessica works as a nurse and is married with two children, Elizabeth (12) and Brianna (9). On January 18, 2007, nine years prior to the interviews, Richard and Heather’s youngest daughter Julia, who was 1 year old, died in a hospice setting due to ongoing health issues. In volunteering for the study Heather indicated that her community member was Jessica, and Richard indicated that he did not feel he had community who could grieve with him. He reported, however, that he felt Jessica was their community as Heather was his main support and could not have been this without Jessica. As such, the shared grieving involved mainly Heather and Jessica. Yet during the interview, Richard seemed to enter into community with them, sharing with them his own grieving over the lack and loss of community. In this way, the shared grieving described the ways that Heather and Jessica engaged together as well as all three of them together newly in this interview. Detailed description of the community grieving process. The NIC started with community two introducing Julia to the research team. They told the story of Heather’s pregnancy, Julia’s health complications, her death, and their ensuing grief. The story began with Heather’s sharing about difficult decisions they were faced with from early on in their pregnancy, knowing Julia would have health challenges. The story then unfolded into her GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 89 miraculous birth. Both Richard and Heather are Christians and their faith was interwoven with their story around the miracles they felt occurred in their daughter’s birth story and throughout her short life. Richard and Heather shared photos of Julia and brought mementos, such as her blanket; these pieces brought their story to life. There were many tears of both joy and pain as they shared about Julia. They then shared about Julia’s increased health complications and her life in hospice, and eventually her death. Richard, Heather, and Jessica all shared about their process leading up to Julia’s death and just after her death, which was filled with expressions of painful emotions, but also what they described as the grace they felt from God during this time in their lives. The community then moved from there into the CC. Giving and receiving support through shared pain. The CC began with a lot of emotional momentum from the NIC, during which the community shared deeply about their grief. Richard began the CC by expressing his realization of the impact of Julia’s death on Jessica and gratitude for the ways that she cared so deeply. Although Richard had been aware of Jessica’s support, through the NIC he learned of Jessica’s grief for their daughter, the pain she felt for them, and the way Jessica’s husband and Grandfather supported her. Ri.SCI.2: “…In this whole process just listening to what particularly Jessica was saying…what struck me was she said she came in and collapsed…and that she actually had a little meltdown [the night our daughter died]. And I remember that night very clearly, but it was all from my perspective…I didn’t even once give thought to what other people were and the grief they were feeling… Just so overwhelmed with gratitude. Yeah. Just fact that there would be people who were feeling the death of grief as well.” Witnessing Jessica’s grief and learning about the support around her evoked in Richard a strong sense of support and gratitude for community that was around him. Jessica’s grief also seemed to evoke a sense of togetherness with her; he talked about gratitude that someone else felt the pain of grief, which was new, as he had felt alone in his grief. Richard’s new awareness brought strong emotions of gratitude and connection. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 90 Ri.CC.4: I had no idea how much it affected you guys (looks at Jessica and shakes head) He.CC.4: Mmm. Ri.CC.5: (eyes welling with tears). I think it might be because I was so lost in myself... (crying) that I never understood how it affected those around me. He.CC.5: Yeah (nods, tears in eyes) Ri.CC.6: So I never opened up to those around me (looks at Jessica). Thank you so much! Je.CC.6: (Stands up and hugs Richard) I love you! From the bottom of my soul! (Richard big sigh) (Jessica hugs Heather). Richard’s intention was to share his realization of the support around him and to thank Jessica. This moment was powerful and connecting for everyone in the room, filled with tears and expressions of love for one another. Heather expressed gratefulness to see Richard realize the support around him and two people she loved connecting. He.SCI.1: “…it was just a tender moment that he was able to not only appreciate Jessica, because I think he knew she was that support for me…but I don't think he realized the impact it had on [her husband] and in particular her Grandfather who since has passed away…I was just feeling really happy that he came to that realization he did have community around him even though he didn't think he did…I'm sure, it kind of opened his eyes to…other people who supported indirectly (right, like that webbing). Yes, absolutely (yeah). It was obviously really powerful for him in that moment because I think it was that big aha...(like feeling that support).” Jessica talked about how she always knew she was supporting Richard through her support for Heather, but this moment was especially meaningful to communicate that directly to Richard and have him receive it. Je.SCI.2: “…in terms of like having personal moments with Richard...about the grief...we never really had that because of…how personal it was for him…but that was huge! Because for him to... just acknowledge that there...(sigh)...I don't know how to put it into words, but just for him to acknowledge it and for me to be able to hug him like I've always wanted to...that was amazing! Not because I needed to hear anything from him, but because I've always wanted to give back to him in a way that I would do through Heather. But to have the interaction with him by myself...was...like another piece. Like here we are 9 years later, but that's another piece of the grief journey for me, that's just been completed (wow, hmm), right? Like, so it's (wow), yeah, so it's pretty special!” It seemed that the community grieving was alive and continuing in this moment. Not only was Richard able to receive a new sense of togetherness, but Jessica was able to connect with him in a new way through sharing in grief together. Through Jessica displaying her grief GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 91 for the couple and their deceased daughter, it evoked a sense of felt support – to know that someone was feeling pain with them and on their behalf. The felt support was received with gratitude and created a deeper connection. Having mutual sensitivity. The conversation then shifted to Jessica and Heather talking together. Jen shared about her desire to be the best friend she could possibly be and the struggle she went through knowing she could not fully understand Heather’s experience. Je.CC.6: “I think for me through the journey, I just wanted to be the best friend I could be (everyone moves chairs closer)…I felt sad that I couldn't be where you were because I loved you so much and it pained me so much that I couldn't be like (Heather crying) ‘I know how it feels’ because I don't! I don't! (Heather: no, no)…” He.CC.7: “You've always been the best friend you can be.” Je.CC.8: “(wipes tears from her eyes)” Jessica expressed that not having the shared experience of loss felt like it hindered her from being as close to the experience, and thereby Heather, as she desired to be. Jessica’s intention in sharing this was to express her desire to be more intimately connected to Heather, her desire to care, and her hope that her support was what Heather needed. Heather responded, stating that Jessica has always been the best friend to her. Heather’s intention seemed to be to affirm Jessica’s friendship and support and to alleviate any sense that Jessica should have done anything differently. Jessica then talked about how she had a new baby around the time Julie was ill and how she treaded carefully around this topic. Je.CC.8: “…And the hardest part too was not, you know, because I had [my first daughter] then too! (Heather wiping tears) And then it was like, oh my gosh, like you know, I was also trying to like, maybe I shouldn't talk about it! Like your own battles in your own head, right? (Richard nods) (Heather: right). Very aware of what you guys were going through. Very aware of all the things you said, you're a nurse and then your up all night and it's like, ok yeah, I might have been up all night with a little one crying, but maybe I shouldn't talk about that, but even when I did, it was like you (reaches out and puts hand on Heather's knee) were there for me! (Heather: Of course! Yeah. (Crying and nodding head)). You know? And, and not that I expected you not to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 92 be, (Heather: yeah, yeah), but it's just this selfless... (Heather: yeah (nods)) love that you have, you know that...it's just incredible.” He.CC.9: “Well, it's reciprocal.” In her SCI, Jessica talked about how she wanted Heather’s support, but also wanted to be sensitive to Heather’s situation with Julie. Je.SCI.6: “She's always there for everybody else. Always! So there was a battle for me to say, like, be super respectful and aware of, like her battle is so much bigger than mine, but I'm a first time Mom, and you just have your own vents about what that is…[and] she was always so (sigh of relief), like it was a two way…Like she would still always be supportive and be like 'have you tried this?' like 'have you done that?' Yeah, so that's what we were talking about there, just you know, me being mindful of that and not overstepping, but also knowing that she's still my best friend! And I can still talk to her about life.” Heather expressed in her SCI also being very aware that Jessica was in a different and special season of her life, and never wanting her to feel guilty. He.SCI.4: “I was also worried about her because she had a new baby as well. And I was always trying to be really sensitive to support her and not make her feel guilt. Not that she'd be guilty that she had a healthy child, but you know you can't help but, as she was even saying (right), I'm up in the night with my baby, but my baby's not dying (yeah) right? And so, um, as she was talking, I was thinking about how I was sensitive to that too, but on the flip side (hmm)….Just really wanted Jessica to feel...supported (wow) as well. Because I didn't want her to feel, how I knew she was feeling! Right? (aww) Like, we never had this conversation, but (yeah) umm, as she's trying so hard to be my support, I on the flip side was also trying to be her support. Heather and Jessica talked back and forth about the sense of selfless love and reciprocity they felt in their relationship. As they talked there were tears and a profound sense of care for one another. He.SCI.6: Yeah! Just so thankful for her, you know, and her selfless love. And just yeah, overwhelmed (crying) (hmm)...by the gift I have in her (yeah). Jessica and Heather had a mutual concern for sharing space in their friendship by honoring the unique seasons of life each of them were in, while also desiring to remain connected to the support they have in one another in these different seasons. It seemed the mutual concern and desire to connect brought balance to their interactions and conversations to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 93 navigate and share the space between them; this was important in how Jessica grieved together with Heather. Turning together toward pain. Richard then shared about how he was more insulated in grieving and his immense gratitude for Heather’s support to draw him out. Ri.CC.10: “And for me Heather (looks down) like, I just went into me (Heather crying and wiping tears). I went into my books, I went into my work…I didn't know how to (pushes hands outward), you know I would have, I would have got crushed if I was alone, I would have been crushed, except for you (Heather crying and nodding) (Jessica crying). (Crying) Always called me out. Always encouraging me. Always just drawing me. Things you say, you probably don't even know half the stuff you did…I just insulated myself so much because it was so painful! And I didn't know what to do (looking down). So I wouldn't have made it through (looks at Heather) without you. (Heather smiles and extends hand and touches knee) (crying, looks down). Richard talked about his intention to express his gratitude to Heather for the ways she drew him out of himself and helped him face the pain. Richard also wanted to apologize for the ways he relied so heavily on Heather. Richard’s reflections were filled with thankfulness, but also guilt regarding his isolation and reliance on Heather. Ri.SCi.10: “…there's a mixture of [emotions], again, gratitude...that God gave me her as my wife. Um, but also, there's also a little bit of guilt...there in that…I didn't grieve very well… I would have just, uh, gone into myself. I would have done all...things that wouldn't have been helpful except that she kept encouraging me and challenging me. And loving me through the whole thing. Yeah. So the guilt that I should have been able to, feel like I should have been able to do those things on my own, but I just didn't have the strength. That I needed. I needed her to, to be that strength for me, which is, is unfair.” There was a sense from Richard that the way he internalized his grief and isolated himself was not beneficial. Richard grieved in this moment over the ways he wished he could have grieved differently. Richard talked about how Heather helped draw him out of himself and turn toward his pain. There was a strong sense in this community that there is a better way to grieve that involves turning toward the pain and allowing others into the pain; this is not just an ideal that the community held, but something that was experienced as the most healing for each individual and the most painful when absent. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 94 Heather had compassion and understanding in this moment as she talked about how difficult it is for couples to lose a child and how they were able to make it through. Heather wanted to acknowledge the difficulty of grieving and encourage Richard for making it through the loss with her. Richard talked in his SCI how Heather and he turned toward one another in their grief and how he felt they grew in love and commitment through that time. Jessica also reflected in her SCI how their ability to stay together through the loss spoke to the strength of their relationship. Ri.SCI.15: “Yeah. We just turned towards each other…as much as we could and supported each other as much as we could. That was just always a part of who we are...” Je.SCI.19: “…just acknowledging their journey as a couple was a very challenging one…Like, you lose the child, couples get divorced and they don't come out of it…because of the love and support they have for each other, and they are so Christ centred they did make it through.” In response to Richard’s expression of gratefulness, Heather expressed sadness in her SCI that Richard did not have extended community support, while also holding sadness for herself in having to be the strong one in their relationship during that time. In remembering back, she realized how much she truly carried during that season of her life. He.SCI.13: “...I wanted to help him in his journey, but I think while he's talking...the reality of...how strong I had to be (crying) for everyone...was overwhelming. Looking back, I think it's like survival (you just plug away). And, and that's just the role I've always been... As he's talking, and he's already asked forgiveness and you know. I wasn't resentful or thinking anything of it at the time because it was just survival (yeah). But (sniffles) looking back now of just how much fell on me…The weight of being the strong one. The weight of making sure the kids grieved well. Making sure Richard grieved well. Making sure I grieved well (yeah!). Like...I always felt like it had to come from me.” Heather reflected later on, that caretaking tends to be a part of her personality and the role she has learned to play in her family. This theme of caretaking was evident in Heather’s words and actions in moments of the conversation together. Although she appreciates this about herself, Heather also reflected that at times it causes her to neglect her own needs in caring for or GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 95 managing others. As she reflected on her experience just after the loss, there was grief for herself, wishing she did not have to carry all that she did. Even at this point in the conversation, both Heather and Richard turned toward the losses that were present for them in this moment over having wished things could have looked different. Although painful, this also seemed healing to acknowledge these aspects and allow them to inform areas they want to look different in their lives. The expressions of tears, pain, and vulnerability in both the NIC and the CC also spoke to the emotional openness in their shared grieving. Grieving together in this community meant turning toward the pain of loss and toward one another in the pain through this openness. Relying on the scaffold of community. The reflections on how Heather was a source of strength to Richard brought Heather to reflect on how Jessica was her source of strength. He.CC.11: “…when I think of community, there were a lot of people on the outskirts but really in the inside…(looks at Jessica) you were my rock! (crying) (Jessica wipes tears).” Heather talked in her SCI about how Jessica was the only person she could fully rely on and how she always felt “uplifted” after conversations, rather than helping others. He.SCI.16: “And how Jessica really was...strong for me. And, even though when [we just talked on the phone]...I always felt…uplifted (hmm), while other people...I still felt like I was in that caregiver role (wow, yeah). So I felt like, every other role, I felt like I was still (managing?) in my own very hard grief, helping other people! And Jessica was the only one that I could think of, where I finished a conversation with her and I felt edified. And I felt (hmm)...like I wasn't having to dole out.” This reflection touched on a theme that seemed to implicitly emerge in this community, that in grieving together, there was a relationships where it was safe to lean on the other. Just as Heather was the sources of strength to Richard and her family, Jessica was her source of strength and someone she could rely on to be there for her. Jessica also seemed to have this type of support in her husband whom she relied on in her own grief. This created a relationship in someone where the other was there mainly for the griever and their needs and, although GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 96 reciprocal, there was no expectation to offer something in return or manage the other. This reliance seemed to be in a scaffold around the bereaved with community supporting community. Later in the conversation Jessica talked about an instance of whether or not to take Heather out for a hair appointment and her husband’s role in helping her move beyond her fears into action. Jessica talked about her intense toiling and how her husband gave her perspective and encouraged her to trust her intention to care for Heather. Je.SCI.43: “So that's like again, the extension of community that my husband wasn't in the midst of their grief…but he was my support system…He knows me well enough to know when he needs to nudge me to make the decisions.” Jessica talked about how if not for her husband, her own fear and analytic nature may have hindered her support. Jessica shared this to bring attention to the ways her support was possible and sustained because of the people supporting her. In hearing this, both Heather and Richard responded with gratefulness at the way Jessica’s husband supported them through her without their awareness. He.SCI.57: “Yeah…the role that [her husband] played. Right? (mmm) Very indirect role, but indirectly direct! Right? (yeah!) Being the support she needed, so that she could be the support that I needed (yeah!) Right? (Yes) That realization (yeah!). Because he came out, he met [Julie] a few times, and he was there the last day, he said goodbye. But I don't think I realized how fully he supported her, so that she could support me.” Ri.SCI.36: “I just remember feeling thankful…(Mm) That he was her community that helped her help Heather… (Mm-hmm) Which helped me, right? So even though we weren't that close, just kind of gave me a new perspective. (Yeah) Felt thankful again that...and just, um, in awe of all those that, that supported us in ways we didn't even see.” In this way, the community extended outward, with those closest to the bereaved being supported by others who were indirectly supporting the bereaved. This allowed one person to draw strength from another to be the support someone else needed. Jessica also commented later in her SCI, that although she was not a direct support to Richard, she was thankful for the ways that her support reached through Heather to Richard. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 97 Je.SCI.18: “...but knowing that people like my Grandfather or the love I showed through Heather poured out on her husband are all the things connected that help to reach in, you know reach him, is really encouraging to hear.” Throughout the CC, the reflections on community seemed to frequently open up to the extended community around them, specifically the people who supported Jessica, and through that support, allowed her to support Heather. They talked about the value of direct and indirect support, and how although some people never met with them in their grief, they carried them nonetheless through others they supported. As such, they grieved together through reliance on one another in interwoven communities in a scaffold around the bereaved. Learning from children about grieving. Heather then shifted the conversation back to the topic of community. Heather brought up their children as a significant part of their community and helping them grieve. At this point, the conversation had a joyful tone at the thought of their children. The shift between emotional intensity of pain to joy and laughter also seemed characteristic of the community’s way of grieving together. This ebb and flow between intensity and lightness was evident throughout the conversation and even felt simultaneous at times. Both Heather and Richard talked about how their children were central to their grieving. Heather, Richard, and Jessica talked about how the emotional openness and unfiltered nature of children created a model of how they could grieve. He.SCI.38: “Richard says he doesn't know what he'd do without me, I don't know what I would have done without my kids (hmm). Because they forced me to reconcile that I can be happy and sad at the same time (wow)…Because if I was too sad and guilty, then I wasn't present for my family (right). And if I was too present with my family, then I wasn't present in my grief for [Julie] (yeah). So I was always in this like...horrible limbo (yeah!). And so umm...coming to that realization that I could be happy and sad equally. And that it could, that I could feel two emotions at once, was huge in my grief process.” Ri.SCI.24: “And Heather says it, I think right next, is that, I think they would grieve so hard ... (Mmm) and, but then they'd go off and play…They would help me to think, I just got to embrace [the grief] right now and then I need to move on. It'd be okay to move on. (Right) Because GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 98 sometimes you feel guilty…(Mmm) You know, um, and so you, you learn to live with that pain. Now it just becomes a part of you.” Je.SCI.28: “…the beauty of children having no filter. Normally we see that as a fault (yeah). But in moments like this...that's the things that's the most needed. Because they're the most true to...connect…they're just going to say what they're going to say and there going to (mhmm)...emote! (laughter). And kids can emote really well! When they're mad they're mad. And you know it! When they're sad, they're sad (their sad?) and you know it! (and you know it, laughter - adults a little different hey?). Yeah, like they have the ability to mask (mmm) their feelings or manipulate their feelings into something else (mhmm). Heather and Richard talked about how their children’s ability to move back and forth between sadness and happiness created a greater capacity to hold these differing emotions at the same time. They also talked about how their children created permission for them to experience joy in life again. Jessica talked about how children’s unfiltered nature allows them to feel and express their emotions in grief. All of these aspects of children seemed to create a model for how they could grieve. Heather and Richard’s children also gave them a reason to engage with life amidst grief and both Heather and Richard referred to them as an anchor during the intense grief. Ri.SCI.24: “But, because, through it all, they're like, our anchor…they helped us through a lot, partly because we had to, we had to come out of the pain. We had to come out of the sorrow in order to be there for them. So we can embrace the pain for a while, and then we could, then we had to ... (Mm-hmm) move on and, and pick up the pieces. He.SCI.38: “So having the kids…and just having to get out of bed because I knew they were waiting for me and needing me…And there were days where I could see how easy that would be (yeah). Right? To just stay in your room, keep the door closed (not go there), and just sleep or, right? But having [my children] like I had to get up for them, right? I had to push on for them. I had to be...present for them (hmm). And so, they were hugely instrumental in my grief and my grief process (hmm).” For Richard and Heather, children not only demonstrated how to engage with the emotions of grief, but helped them learn to re-engage with life again admits their pain. It seemed they needed to both slow down and create space and time, just as their kids did, to feel all they were experiencing, but then to also be present with life in front of them. Both were required and GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 99 children seemed to demonstrate and require from them, engagement with their grief and with life, which became part of their shared grieving. Taking initiative to show care. Jessica then shared how children lack a social filter that allows them to feel and say things adults often have difficulty with. This brought the conversation to a reflection on how adult’s social filter often creates barriers to grieving in community, as many people are too afraid and end up doing or saying nothing. Je.CC.22: “They have no filter…but in a really, really good way! I think as adults, we are so conscious of the filter (Heather: Yes!). You know, like, ‘should I say that’, ‘should I not say that’, ‘maybe I should call’, ‘maybe I shouldn't’ (Heather: Yeah), ‘I'm really scared!’ ‘Ok, I won't!’ (Heather and Richard laugh). ‘It's better if I don't’ (Richard: Yeah). We question so many things and put up so many filters and at the end of the day... the community that we seek, they might even be there, but they’re too scared!” The conversation then led into the overwhelming and all encompassing nature of grief and how initiative from the community was needed, as it was difficult for the bereaved couple to identify their needs during this time. He.CC.24: “I was, right, like it was so all consuming that it was [Julie] and after [Julie] it was [the children] and after [the children] it was Richard. And, it (points hand to Jessica), you know, if it wasn't for you calling, like it it's, or checking in, or coming and visiting, like it was so all consuming… Ri.CC.24: “You had, I mean, it's true to, like that you said, like, they had to call us or because you're just so in it right? (Heather: Oh yeah!) And you’re not...” Je.CC.24: “…I just felt like...it is, it is going to be all consuming, it is going to be those things, so...how I looked at it was just like ‘well, I'm going do this (Heather nodding), and then do this action (Heather: Right), and I'm gonna do this, and if it's not the right thing (Heather: sure), I will be told!’ (Heather: Yeah, really) (laughs). Umm...” He.CC.25: “And, and the reality is it, it was never the wrong thing!” Je.CC.25: “Yes, but you guys wouldn't know what you need (shakes hands and body) (Heather: Often) and so often what happens is, you know so it's like well ‘anything you need, give me a call!’ (Heather: Yes, right) ‘Anything you want give me a call’. It's like ‘I don't know what I want (Heather: Right) and I don't know what I need (Heather: Exactly) because I'm too busy...in the moment (Heather: Yes!) (Richard: Mhm) with what I have’ (Heather: Absolutely) So you would never make that call! (looks at Heather) (Richard nods)” He.CC.26: “Right, yeah, because…” Je.CC.26: “And then the person on the other end is like ‘well, they must be ok!’ (Heather: For sure!) ‘They are not calling’, ‘they would if they could’, right, like that's how I see it!” He.CC.27: “Right, right!” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 100 Jessica’s initiative to see and meet Heather’s needs and offer emotional and tangible support seemed to characterize a significant theme of what it meant for this community to grieve together. It involved the community member pursuing, and moving toward the bereaved despite her own fears or worries in not knowing specifically what Heather needed or wanted at that time. Heather commented on how the initiative of Jessica and other community members was so helpful as it was difficult to reach out. He.SCI.48-49: “And I think Jessica said that really well, where it's like, I didn't know what I needed (laughter) (yeah, yeah). Right? And…it's hard for me to ask for help (hmm). Because I'm used to being the strong one. I'm the one that helps! So...if someone were to say, if you need anything (hmm). Like, I so appreciate the gesture, but it would be VERY hard for me to actually take them up on it…Because, even though she's my best friend (yeah), it's still hard for me to be the one...not helping…because it was Jessica...it was safe to.” In this reflection there seemed to be two important aspects of taking action in support for this community. Firstly, the grief seemed to take up so much space it was difficult to identify their own needs and the ways Jessica stepped in seemed to help meet needs they could not see. Secondly, the vulnerability of asking for help at any point, and particularly in such a raw place of grief, is extremely difficult. Receiving help also required vulnerability. When the help was given without having to ask for it, it made it easier to receive. Furthermore, safety in the relationship was required to receive help and not feel like a burden or as though the help needed to be reciprocated. Therefore, having someone see needs and take initiative to meet them showed support in this place of overwhelming grief. Richard also reflected on how the active pursuit was needed, particularly for him and how the lack of it added to his isolation. Ri.SCI.28: “…Some of [my friends] called once or twice or...but I didn't, I mean. I, probably didn't really open up when they called. (Mm-hmm) Like I needed somebody who was gonna push me and who was gonna...engage me and I didn't really have anybody like that in my life. (Mmm) So, kind of feel a little, um, a little gypped…That people didn't, you know, didn't keep coming after me. They didn't keep calling, didn't ... (Mm-hmm) ‘hey, let's get together, let's…’ (Yeah) So, yeah.” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 101 Ri.SCI.34: “…I think…she brought up a really good point is that...we didn't really know what we needed. And I, like I'd have people say, ‘Oh, give me a call if you need me.’ Like, well…(Right) ‘I don't feel like I need anybody.’ (Mm) ‘I probably do, but I don't feel like it.’ (Mm-hmm) ‘I feel like I'm fine, in fact I like being alone.’ So... (Mm-hmm) You know, and then I would spiral down if I stayed alone like that. (Mm-hmm)” Richard talked about how he wished he had someone who pursued him because he often did not know what he needed or what he felt he needed was not helpful for him. Richard talked about the vulnerability of sharing his grief and how he needed someone to push him to talk about it for him to actually open up. For Richard, this initiative from community members was missing and something he expressed longing for. Jessica talked about how she also had many fears of doing the wrong thing, but dealt with those barriers to stay engaged beyond her fears. It seemed Jessica’s intent was to express her own uncertainty of what to do and the importance of staying engaged with the bereaved in the uncertainty. This pursuit of the bereaved and the initiative to show care was a significant way that this community grieved together. Engaging in and honouring vulnerability. Jessica then reflected further in her SCI on her challenges to grieve and know how to support Heather. Although her desire to support was abundant, the way to show that and the uncertainty of what was needed contributed to a sense of trepidation. She described how this caution seemed to slow down her actions toward the Heather, but how she did not allow the caution to paralyze her or stop her actions all together. Je.SCI.36: “…It was just wrestling with...'am I too present?' 'Am I not present enough?' (right, yeah!) 'Am I identifying with their feelings?' (yeah) 'Did I overstep myself?' Because your so...conscious of what they are going through. And like I said it can either paralyze you to the point where you just do nothing! Which is worse! Or you just do, you just do and you just go for it and let…those who are grieving, like in the midst of that process the most, umm, guide you. But that took time for me to understand.” It seemed that in the same way receiving care required vulnerability, so did the offering of care and joining in grieving. There is a sense in Jessica of not knowing, the fear of getting it GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 102 wrong, and the awareness of the damage that she could cause if she got it wrong. At the same time, she held a desire to connect with Heather in this tender place of grieving and there was a willingness to engage in vulnerability to pursue connection. In hearing from Jessica about her struggles to know how to best support them, Heather and Richard reflected in their SCI about their increased awareness of what it is like to support the bereaved. Heather had felt the ways Jessica supported her were always what she needed and had not perceive the difficulty. He.SCI.54-56: “…I think of anyone where I could accept the help from, it would be Jessica (hmm). Right? And so...umm...I don't think I thought of that as a struggle for her (hmm). Whether or not to ask me (hmm). It's...interesting to hear that she went through so much turmoil, just to ask me! (hmm)…I would have, being honest with her isn't hard for me (hmm)...but I can appreciate...the angst behind it. Not, not that she didn't think I'd be honest, but that I had so much on my plate, and (mmm), she didn't want to over-step...(right), right? My boundaries or, you know, leaving her if I was ready, she didn't want to push me too soon, it was (right), right? Super grateful (crying). Humbled.” In hearing about Jessica’s turmoil, it evoked a strong sense of gratitude in Heather for Jessica’s level of care in her actions. Both Heather and Richard also reflected on this new awareness of what it is like to be the community around the bereaved. He.SCI.44: “Yeah, I think just...clarity (hmm). Like, I was starting, you know seeing, seeing that role from the other side right? Instead of being on the inside looking in. Because I wasn't on the inside looking out mostly! (right) I was on the inside looking in.” Ri.SCI.26: “…I was just kind of thinking, wondering if, um, maybe that's why some of my friends didn't call me.” R.SCI.36: “Mm-hmm. Hmm. Just seemed like they...” Ri.SCI.27: “Didn't know what to say.” In this moment there was a new awareness of the difficulty community members have in knowing how to support. For Richard, it seemed that this awareness created perspective as to why his community may have failed to pursue him in the ways that he needed. Although still GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 103 painful, it seemed to provide Richard with more understanding that his community may have cared, even when their actions failed to show that. Jessica also reflected further on her own challenges to know how to support Heather with an example of a time when she wanted to take her out for a haircut. Although Jessica desired to support Heather, she had concerns regarding the suitability of her actions to meet Heather’s needs at that time. She described further in her SCI how her concern made her actions more cautious, but did not paralyze her action altogether. Je.SCI.30: “I mean [Julie] was the first time in my life that I've experienced that sort of grief journey (yeah) …and it made me realize...exactly that, people are just scared (mmm). And what happens is they become...paralyzed (yeah) in their fear of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing…[but] the intent that I have with this wonderful couple (yeah) is always one out of love and support (yeah). So guess what, they are going to tell you if it's not what they need, but they aren't going to know. You have to do the action (mhm) and then receive so that you know where to go, and how to do. Because if you just say, 'well just let me know what you need!' You're not going to get the call…You have to be fearless, you have put away your filter and your worries about their response. Because it was always 'how are they going to respond?' I don't own their response to my actions, but I own my actions…So at the very least, do! And once I understood that, it made it a lot... easier to engage…and not to be scared.” Je.SCI.43: “…for me it was an internal struggle to know whether it was the right thing to do…it just goes back to... you just got to drop your fear at the door...you've got to do the action for them to know whether they need it or not. Or whether they feel like it's the right thing. But unless the action is presented right in their face how will they know?” Jessica expressed how she had to move from fears into action and trust her intentions would be seen or she would be told if it was not suitable. Jessica shared how action needed to precede evaluation, as what was needed also needed to be felt by the bereaved in the moment. It seemed Jessica’s desire to support and connect with Heather overcame her fears of not knowing exactly what was needed. There was a great sense of vulnerability in this, risking the possibility of getting it wrong. Jessica held a sense of accountability, that she could not own someone else’s response, but her own action or inaction. The openness to this vulnerability shaped this community’s shared grieving by being willing to step into vulnerable spaces together. The GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 104 safety of their relationships also seemed to sustain them and created a trust in honesty if they got it wrong. The community grieved together through also honouring vulnerability. Jessica expressed in her SCI her gratitude for being allowed into Heather’s grieving journey. Je.SCI.34: “…the word that comes to mind is, gratitude. Just a lot of gratitude. Gratitude for the moments I had with [Julie]. That I made the most of all of them. Gratitude for this couple [and] being part of their journey…allowing me to be part of their journey.” Jessica experienced being let into Heather and Richard’s grieving journey as a privilege and felt grateful. Jessica talked about how communities can be hurtful when they fail to engage with the bereaved, but also miss out on precious moments of connection. This attitude from Jessica was present in many moments throughout the CC. Jessica shared throughout her SCI how honoured she felt to share in the tender moments of grieving, particularly with Richard, who had previously not shared his grief openly. Je.SCI.24: “And so listening to this...it's like an open side of him that I've never been able to be a part of...he just internalized, he'd been hurt by other people…it was just better to keep it shut down...so just to be part of this...(wow) is really emotional and sensitive. Like I was very sensitive. I don't have anything to add. I don't have anything to say! But the fact that he is sharing that openly in front of me…including me…I felt like it brought our relationship to a deeper level. He's allowing me to be a part of it...it kind of renders me a bit speechless actually. So...and I'm super grateful for it! (hmm).” Jessica seemed to treat these moments of vulnerability in the bereaved with great tenderness and respect, almost as if on sacred ground, and experienced them as deeply connective with the bereaved. It seemed this attitude of honour and respect cultivated connection in this tender place of grieving. Choosing to engage vulnerability beyond fears and honouring vulnerability in one another was a significant way this community grieved together. Sharing about poor community experiences. The conversation then shifted as Richard expressed gratitude for the ways Jessica helped him see that community was around him even GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 105 when he did not feel it. Richard expressed that until this interview, he had not been able to see the support around him, but this had opened his eyes. Ri.SCI.48-49: “…a lot of this has brought up, just memories of thinking of what people had done who I actually did have around me, and just not recognizing it… I said, ‘I don't think I had community around me at all.’ But going through this process, I had a lot of community around me. It wasn't maybe what I was looking for, or what I expected, or what I thought it should be. But it was helpful and it was there. I just never recognized it or understood what it was…Yeah, it's been a very helpful process actually.” Although there seemed to be a new awareness that support was around him, this was held in tension with grief that the support was not what he felt he needed. In this moment of the conversation, Richard seemed impacted by Jessica’s intentional care toward Heather and shared vulnerably about how he wished he had someone like her. Ri.SCI.28: “…Because I think that deep down... you know, I say I like to be by myself, but I really wish somebody...that I had somebody like you [Jessica] (Heather: Mhm) (Jessica wiping tears from her eyes). But it seemed all my friends were busy with their own lives at the time and I didn't want to bring it up. I didn't want to be a downer. So I would just put it all on Heather. Right or wrong. (Heather and Jessica nodding).” In this moment, tears filled everyone’s eyes and there was a sense of gratefulness for Jessica, but also a deep sadness and longing for someone to have shown that level of care toward Richard. Jessica and Heather joined Richard in this place of hurt, allowing sadness and anger to emerge. Jessica expressed in her SCI the anger and sadness she felt with Richard in this moment. Je.SCI.56: “…I'm really feeling mad on behalf of Richard. Because it makes me sick to my stomach to know that there is someone so close that has access to you (mhm)...and nothing! So honestly, listening to this and seeing how hurt he was...It just makes me mad…I'm sad that those people couldn't be there for you…I'm sad that, and these are influential roles and people in your life (uhuh) that couldn't step up (hmm) for their own reasons…sad that they couldn't be that person for you.” Richard expressed his grief at the absence of community and talked about people who hurt him and how he isolated himself further in response. Richard expressed this earlier in the GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 106 conversation too when they talked about how different family members failed to support them. It seemed Richard was grieving the lack of community, having the space to do so now in the presence of this community that he longed for at the time. In his SCI, Richard shared further about the sadness and confusion around why people were not there in his life. Ri.SCI.38: “…I felt sad. Um, that maybe…I didn't invest enough in people that that they would want to invest in me. (Mm) Kind of like that. Yeah, so I don't know. Yes, there was definitely sadness there, but also sadness too that, because of that, I put it all on Heather…She'd always say, ‘Well that's what we're there for, each other.’ But yeah, a little bit sad that I didn't have any friends that really, uh, felt the need to call me once a week… (Yeah) to see how I was doing…They just were busy with their lives. But then, I didn't have anybody really that was enough in my life that they would know that there was stuff going on. (Mm) I mean, obviously, even the ones that I, friends that I had in [the town] at that time…just…didn't know what to do.” In his reflection, Richard seemed to grapple with the tension of his part in pursuing relationship and allowing closeness with others, but also wishing people sought more connection and care for him. In the follow up interview, Richard remarked that this part of the analysis was the most difficult for him to hear. He commented that through the interviews, he came to recognize some of his own walls that had been up and prevented people from being as close to him as he would like and how he is working on this area of his life. Ri.MCI.1: “I think this is the hardest paragraph. (Researcher: Yeah) Yeah.” Re.MCI.1: “In what way though?” Ri.MCI.2: “It just makes me realize the lack of that I have in my life. I’ve been trying to build it a bit more. I’ve been going to spend more time with [Jessica’s husband] and...” Je.MCI.2: “And he loves it. (laughter)” Ri.MCI.3: “And I do too. (Jessica: He talks about it, all the time.) I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it…it’s just I never, friendship was never something that I saw, as significant in the sense of like I never had what these two [Jessica and Heather] have, that friendship. I have lots of friends and acquaintances but not close friends. Partly that is because I’m aloof. You know I don’t pursue that relationship. I was told I want people to pursue me, but I don’t go out of my way to pursue others. And so part of this process, that started with those interviews, just kind of highlighted that for me because I want that for my kids. But I also even like for me I need to take steps to... because if I go through hard times again in the future I don’t want to have to put it all on Heather again. I want to have guys that I can go to. And I’ve talked to my guy friends about the need for this. And they all say we need this, right? But so anyways this is hard for me because it brings up a lot of regret and pain and anger and hurt still that I still deal with, but that still puts those walls GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 107 up automatically (Researcher: Yeah) even when I’m trying to reach out so. But it’s good, it’s good. It’s a good pain but it’s definitely the hardest paragraph. In the moments of the CC, Heather also gained awareness of how significantly the lack of community around Richard impacted him and contributed to the role that she ended up playing in his life at that time. He.SCI.63: “I think it gives me a little bit of um...umm...understanding, maybe a little bit more as to why he isolated himself (hmm) as much as he did. And um...(teary) I think I always just felt, like I had to be the strong one, but I think umm...he didn't have...anyone else. Like I had Jessica. Right? So I think it's just...a little bit of understanding...for why he acted the way he did and...(yeah). Yeah (swallow).” In sharing about the poor community experiences together, it seemed to help Richard to process the different facets of his grief and brought awareness to himself and the community. The sharing of these poor experiences seemed to be a painful, but also healing, which was another way that this community grieved together. Joy in giving and receiving. The conversation then wrapped up with Richard again expressing his gratitude for how Jessica and her husband gave up their apartment for them to be close to the hospital. Heather and Jessica shared their internal process with one another at the time of this event. This moment was filled with laughter as Heather shared her fear Jessica would think she was fishing for her to offer her place. Jessica expressed her own internal worry that Heather would say no to the offer out of pride. This moment brought relief and joy to both Heather and Jessica to realize the joy and willingness of the gift Jessica gave and how helpful it was to receive. Ri.CC.47: “And I mean I said before and I go back to you guys giving up your house. I still can't believe that you did that with your house. But that, that took so much stress off. And then just so close to the hospital (Heather: Mhmm). I just feel so grateful.” He.CC.47: “Mhmm, we were feeling so stressed! Like, what the heck are we going to do?” Je.CC.47: “I remember, like for us, honestly, like it was the easiest thing we had (Richard: Yeah, yeah), like ever done!” Ri.CC.48: “I still couldn't believe how, I think it's like a whole month!” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 108 He.CC.48: “…And then I felt bad because I was like, calling…after when you offered, I remember thinking ‘oh my gosh, I hope she wasn't thinking I was like fishing.’” Je.CC.48: “No and that's where it was like ‘she better say yes!’ (laughter from Heather and Richard). I was like ‘if she says no and there's any pride involved, I'm going to freak out!’…Because I knew it was the right thing!” In recognizing she had something to offer that could so practically meet the needs of Richard and Heather, there was great joy and a feeling of alignment or rightness in being able to offer that and joy in it being received. In their SCI’s Heather, Richard, and Jessica each shared about how grateful they were to receive and give in this season. He.SCI.90: “I was just, sharing with her the worries and, you know, she read through, my words and um...filled the need (yeah). So...(yeah). Just really thankful for her! And for [her husband] (yeah). And her Grandpa! (yeah) (Heather laughs).” Ri.SCI.60-61: “Well, she said how easy of a decision it was for her. Like this is how much she cared. It was just like you need to know like there was no…I didn't feel coerced. I didn't feel manipulated. This is just something we're gonna do no matter what…I mean, cause you feel guilty. Like a whole month they were out of the house and there's no way you can repay that. So, yeah…for them, it's just like no big deal.” Je.SCI.72: “...I always knew they were grateful. Part of me always felt like maybe it still wasn't enough. Like, was there more I could have done with that? But just to hear like it was enough. It was more than enough. It's just validating. To say like, I'm glad! I'm glad that that is what you guys needed, and I'm glad it worked (mhmm). Jessica gave in a free manner, without any expectations and there was an excitement and honour to be able to support Heather and Richard. It seemed to lift any wonderings associated with taking the support to hear how joyfully and freely the support was given and the honour of having the support received. In this way, the community grieved together through giving and receiving and experiencing the joy and connectedness that came in this. The conversation then ended sharing funny memories that Jessica had during her stay at her Grandfather’s place. The overall tone at the end was one of connectedness and ease in being together. Community grieving summary. The overall tone of the CC was one of connectedness and comfort in being together. The community shared together about the ways they felt they GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 109 shared in grieving together, sometimes elaborating on or finishing one another’s sentences. The community flowed back and forth between emotional pain, tears of joy, and laughter and lightness. There was a sense of aliveness in the CC, including not only reflections about past grieving, but also current turning towards each other and grieving together in new ways. The community expressed the ways they drew closer together through the interviews and Richard expressed a new sense of connection in his grieving. The safety that they shared together as a community seemed to be created by the longstanding friendship of trust and deep connection between Heather and Jessica. They had been friends since childhood and their friendship remained through many different seasons of life (e.g., one single, one married; one in school, one working, etc.). It seemed this friendship had already weathered many seasons of life, creating a foundation for them to connect and share in Heather’s grieving. The researcher met with the community at the MCI and read aloud a summary of their shared grieving. The community listened and responded with comments, thoughts, and reflections. The community cried as they listened and expressed gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the research and the increased awareness of what they have in one another as a community. The community agreed together with the researcher on the following summary of their overall shared grieving: The community grieving project can be described as engaging in vulnerability to pursue connection through turning toward one another and the pain of loss together and unselfishly initiating care to meet needs; and through this encountering the unexpected depth and joy of relationship together in all seasons of life. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 110 Analysis summary. Action theory was used to guide the analysis of the community’s grieving. The following section includes a summary of the actions of the second community, including the intentional framework guiding their actions, strategies used to achieve those ends, and the manifest behaviours. The intentional framework that guided the second community can be described as seeking connection; pursuing intentional actions to communicate care and togetherness and to walk with one another through all of life’s changing seasons. This intention emerged mainly between Jessica and Heather and seemed to encompass Richard in this interview, allowing him to open up his grief to be cared for and connected; this intention also seemed to model to Richard relational connection in life’s pain and create a deep desire in him to form these connection with his male friends. This deep desire to remain connected in relationship guided the actions of the community and the bereaved toward one another, even amidst uncertainty and vulnerability in grieving together. No one knew concretely what the other needed, but their desire to connect to the strength and support they had in one another allowed them to engaged in vulnerable moments together. Within this larger intentional framework, there were strategies that helped them to achieve this. They shared space in their relationships together and navigated their desires of both giving and receiving support with a mutual care, which put the other’s needs ahead of what they wanted in the relationship. The community honoured vulnerability in one another and viewed it as an opportunity to see the other and connect to one another. They allowed one another into expressions of emotions including anger, hurt, sadness, fear, to happiness, joy, and laughter through giving one another space, validation, and sharing in these emotional states together. In the expression of pain, there was sometimes a desire to protect one another from the weight of GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 111 pain, particularly for the poor community experiences. At times, they sought to lessen pain through providing different perspectives to see other people’s intentions and capacities. The community also sought to remain connected through expressing their gratitude for one another and acknowledging how they were a support to each other. The community member expressed joy and gratitude for being let into the bereaved couple’s grieving journey and their lives, and the bereaved expressed the safety they felt given the open-handed nature and willingness of the community member’s support. The community also pursued connection through being honest about their own uncertainties or areas where they fell short. They openly expressed their own fears around not knowing what was needed and the vulnerability their actions involved. They responded to one another’s honest expressions with compassion and understanding, trusting and validating the truest intentions of love and care. They also honoured one another’s own differences and capacities, seeing one another within the context they existed in, and how this created different challenges in grieving. The community also humbly acknowledged their limitations and the reliance on other extended community members to gain the support needed to face the pain and to support the bereaved. The community as a whole also expressed humbly the ways they helped one another to see themselves and community more clearly. The manifest behaviours seen throughout the conversation included crying, thanking each other, hugging, and expressing love and connection. They expressed a wide range of emotions including pain, sadness, hurt, anger, disappointment, dissatisfaction, guilt, regret, ambivalence, desire, realizations, uncertainty, love, connection, surprise, joy, appreciation, and gratitude. They described themselves at different times in the conversation and also provided information, described the past, certain situations, and others. They expressed different opinions or perceptions and acknowledged different aspects about themselves or others, agreed together, GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 112 expressed understanding, and affirmed and encouraged one another. They expressed humor and laughed together at many points throughout the conversation. They had moments of silence, they reflected the affect of the other, and paused at many points allowing extended expressions of emotions or reflections on thoughts. They reflected one another’s thoughts, invited and elicited responses from one another, and completed one another sentences at times. At certain moments, they partially agreed and advised differently about their own perceptions or reflections. They asked and answered questions together and asked for confirmation about their different perspectives or experiences. All of the community members participated together in answering the research question and there was engagement and dialogue among all members. Assertions. Community two provided insight into how communities grieve together with bereaved parents after the loss of a child. In this community, they grieved together by turning toward the pain of loss together and helping one another to face the pain; there was a shared openness toward the pain and one another. It seemed that pain was something they wanted to embrace in honouring their daughter and the loss and allowing it to guide them in the process of grieving. Yet at times, the weight of pain was too much to bear or face alone. By sharing in it together, and empathizing with the other, it allowed the weight to be held together, alleviated a sense of isolation, and brought deeper connections in the relationships. This community also provides insight into the vulnerability required to turn toward the pain of loss and the attitudes that support this shared turning towards. Letting community into the tenderness of their pain was vulnerable and the bereaved talked about many instances in other relationships where they felt the need to assist others in managing their sorrow. What seemed to create safety to allow this community member to grieve with them was the sense of honour, respect, and trust toward the bereaved and their grieving process. Pain was not feared, GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 113 but something sacred for all it represented. Being let into the bereaved parents’ grief was something that was treated with tenderness, respect, and experienced as deeply connecting for all. The community member honoured and respected the bereaved and their grief, as did the bereaved toward their own grief. Jessica allowed grief to show it up in whatever ways it needed to and she trusted the bereaved knew what they needed and allowed them to lead. There was an allowance of many diverse emotions and they allowed each other to be as they were. The community member also talked about the vulnerability of engaging in grieving together and fear of doing or saying the wrong thing in the tenderness of grief. This fear was overcome by the desire to connect and by trusting the intentions of love and care toward the bereaved. This community highlights how safety can be created to grieve in community through openness to pain, capacity to hold pain, coming alongside the bereaved, and honouring grieving and the bereaved. This community also portrays how vulnerability is not something to be overcome to grieve together, but something that must be engaged with. The initiation of support from the community was another important way this community grieved together and communicated care for the bereaved. The community member saw the allencompassing nature of grief and took action to identify and meet emotional and practical needs. Identifying and meeting needs came with immense vulnerability around not knowing what the bereaved wanted or needed specifically, but this community member pursued careful action, rather than remaining frozen, afraid to do the wrong thing. This careful, but intentional pursuit and movement toward the bereaved was what allowed the community to share in this season and was not only received as immensely helpful, but deeply connecting for all. The actions were also selfless, in the sense that they were for the benefit of the bereaved without any expectations, strings attached, or need for appreciation. This type of action also created freedom and safety for GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 114 the bereaved to receive the help and to engage together in community. This community highlights that to grieve together action is needed and this requires engaging vulnerably to initiate care, with tenderness and the willingness to get it wrong. Lastly, this community highlights that to grieve together in community, the community also needed to be nested in a wider community. The community member talked many times about the people who supported her making her support possible, pointing to the ways that community supported community. Reflexivity. Meeting with this community felt like a transformational experience for the research team. Talking with the research team, we all reflected on how this did not feel like research, in the sense of gathering information, but that we were drawn in to something sacred and transcendent. This interview opened my eyes to how studying something relational draws you in to become part of it and for it to become part of you. This community has become part of me and I part of them – I carry and feel transformed by their story, their grief, and their presence. In this community, I experienced a safety in the pain. The pain and tears did not feel like something to be feared, but was embraced. They did not try to push it away or cover it up. There was an emotional openness and in this, I felt myself open up more. I was also allowed to share tears with them in their grief and these were welcomed. In this openness, I saw the beauty of pain. I sometimes fear pain of this gravity and wonder if my heart could handle it. But with them, it felt that engaging with the pain had opened their hearts wider. They felt like richer, fuller humans because of their experience. In their emotional openness they invited me into their pain, the beauty of it, and what it had taught them. In this way, the interview felt sacred. In this emotional openness there was authenticity. There was a flow between pain, depth, and lightness. This was not forced, but felt like a river that flowed with strength and calmed at GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 115 points. They felt connected to allowing this river to flow, and in this, allowing all the different emotions emerge throughout our time together. They did not hold back or try to hide their pain, but allowed it to touch and impact us. There was honesty to their presence. I felt an ease and trust in their presence – that they knew how to navigate the river, trusted the river, and I was invited into it with them. This created allowance for whatever was there to emerge and to bring it into the relationship. The friendship between Heather and Jessica was also moving for me. They had told me on the phone during our screening calls how their friendship had extended over their lifetime and how they had shared in many different seasons of life together. They had always remained connected in these different places of life, and this was no different regarding the grief. Heather was grieving the death of her baby and Jessica just had her first child. They were not threatened by one another’s place in life, but desired to remain connected. This was moving and challenging for me. I often feel more disconnected from people when they are not in a similar place in life. Witnessing this friendship helped me to see how two people can remain highly connected even in the midst of such different life seasons – a new baby and a dead baby! To me, that speaks of such strength in their friendship. There was something so much deeper connecting them; this seemed to be the love and care that they had for one another and they talked about it being a selfless love for one another. This selfless love seemed connected to the ways that they were not looking to get something from the other, but rather give something to the other. This community challenged me to look at what stands in the way for me to deeply connect or allow myself to connect with someone in a different place in life. I do not want community to only be those who share my experience. I want to share in others’ experiences no matter where they are GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 116 and for them to be able to share with me wherever I am. To celebrate with the other, without being threatened, and allow the other to hold whatever my place in life brings up for them. The way Jessica engaged in vulnerability also challenged me. She talked about her internal struggles to know what she should do and how she often wondered if her presence was what Heather needed. She talked about how this fear often felt paralyzing, but how she took a risk to support Heather. I often feel like I move away from things when I am afraid of them. Jessica kept moving toward supporting Heather, even in her fear. It helped me realized there is no perfect way to be with those who are grieving, but rather a willingness to engage in vulnerability. Fear will be a part of it, and we cannot wait for it to go away before taking action. The fear creates caution and thoughtfulness, which seems necessary, but not allowing it to silence or stop action altogether. Many times since this interview, I have found myself in a situation where someone is suffering and I want to move away out of fear of not knowing how to respond. I have thought back to this community and tried to take a step toward the person instead. The way that vulnerability cultivated a depth of connection also inspired me to continue moving toward those suffering. These moments of connection were so rich in the pain. This community challenged me to embrace the fear and pursue connection. Community three. The following represents a summary of the community grieving processes of the third community. The community included a married couple, Ella (45) and Jonathan (47), and their community member Cassidy (40). Ella and Jonathan have three living children, Michelle (20), David (18), and Sally (15) and two deceased children, James and Anna, who died as a result of miscarriage. Cassidy is married to her husband Martin and has four living children, Anita, (22), Kim (18), Bethany (15), and Charlie (9), and two deceased children, Judah and Max, both of whom died in stillbirth. Ella was born in the USA and has lived in GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 117 Canada around 30 years; Jonathan and Cassidy are born Canadian citizens. All of them speak fluent English. Ella and Jonathan describe their faith as Christian and Cassidy describes her faith as progressive Christian/Agnostic. Both Ella and Jonathan and Cassidy experienced the loss of two children each through stillbirth and miscarriage. On February 18, 2003, Ella and Jonathan’s son James died at 19 weeks of age, and on July 23, 2004, Anna died at 14 weeks. Cassidy’s son Judah died on January 15, 2000, at 24 weeks and her son Max died on October 22, 2002, at 20 weeks. Ella and Cassidy have been friends for 15 years. They met at their husbands’ work function and connected over Ella’s recent miscarriage. Ella, Jonathan, and Cassidy all indicated that they wanted to participate in the study to contribute to educating communities on how to better support those who are grieving. During the screening calls, Jonathan indicated he did not grieve as intensely as Ella or reach out to community members around him. He did, however, feel that Cassidy was their community; he indicated that she supported and grieved with Ella, which in turn was a support to him, particularly because he did not share the level of grief with Ella. Detailed description of the community grieving process. The NIC began with Ella, Jonathan, and Cassidy sharing about their friendship together and how their relationships formed. The community was then invited to share the stories of their children who died. Ella and Cassidy took turns sharing about their pregnancies and deaths of their babies. The stories were recounted with detail and periodic tears. The overall tone was somber, with moments of lightness and laughter. Near the end of the NIC they shared memorabilia of their children including handprints and footprints, pictures, things they had collected, and poems they written for their children; this was a special and sacred time together for everyone. The community was then invited to discuss their shared grieving in the CC. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 118 Navigating different loss experiences. The community conversation began with Ella and Cassidy both inviting Jonathan to share his experiences of grieving and community. During the NIC, Ella and Cassidy primarily talked about their pregnancies and ensuing grief with Jonathan mainly listening and adding in details. Ella and Cassidy wanted to ensure they included Jonathan and understood his experience of grieving and community as the conversation began. Cassidy asked Jonathan about his experience and his community connections with her husband. Jonathan described his experience of grieving as less pronounced, more individual, and more about his wife’s pain, which was quite different from Ella and Cassidy’s grieving. As Jonathan reflected on this moment of the conversation, he expressed caution and chose his words carefully as he answered Cassidy and Ella’s questions. Ella and Cassidy had grieved deeply and shared their grief together, which was very different from the way Jonathan processed the loss. In his SCI he shared his desire to not say anything hurtful, but to also be honest about his different experience. Jo.SCI.2: “…just the different ways that guys, I guess, experience grief and especially because these losses were miscarriages it was a very different thing, and especially the first miscarriage I didn't know how you’re supposed to feel, how that works and so a lot of my grief feelings were kind of reflections of what Ella was going through. So we’re talking about Cassidy’s husband and myself. I was trying to remember did he and I talk about this? I’m sure we did, but I don’t have any real memory of that. Which kind of goes to whether that was really a deep conversation that stuck with me…I just don’t want to say the wrong thing. That’s a lot of it. Like, I don’t want to say something that would be hurtful, so I find it’s not quite unnerving but that direction like just a little uncomfortable…try and think before I speak instead of the other way around.” Jonathan seemed to share cautiously as he navigated how to communicate his different experience of loss. In this portion of the conversation, there was some frustration from Ella at the lack of Jonathan’s recollection around community connections and his level of pain in grieving. She expressed in her SCI about how she felt more alone in the experience and how she longed for him to share her pain. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 119 El.SCI.7: “... you know, men are different (mhm)...and...Cassidy is giving credit to how men grieve differently…and umm...it frustrates me more then...(mmm) um, I don't know I think...maybe that it should be ok for dad's too. Men to express too (mmm)….” Re.SCI.9: “Like frustrated at him or just that he wasn't able to have the same permission to do that as you were or?” El.SCI.9: “Well, I mean when you're young, you kind of think, my way is the right way (mmm)… And so…this was our first REALLY hard (mm) stuff...life is real at this point and it's raw, and it's awful (hmm) and (sigh)...you kind of want to be in it together and not to feel like, ‘oh well, you know, well why isn't, why isn't it that big a deal for you?’ And yeah, he was supportive of me, but he was supportive of me...sort of from that um caring about me perspective, not because he felt the loss like I did (hmm). So...” Re.SCI.10: “Kind of a longing that he could join you in it?” El.SCI.10: “Yeah...? More similarly maybe. Because I know he did grieve in his own way...I don't think he gave it as much credit as happened at the time (mhm). Because I know he did grieve in his own way, but...he definitely felt a very strong response to my grief (right).” There was tension for Ella of wanting to acknowledge and allow for Jonathan’s experience of the loss to look different, but also disbelief that it could be so different. Ella’s frustration about Jonathan’s grieving being different was connected to the ways that it caused her to feel alone. She wanted someone to join her in her pain and share in it with her rather than just someone to support and it felt their different level of pain regarding the loss hindered that. Ella’s frustration toward Jonathan and his experience was also echoed by Cassidy and she wondered if the difficulty to make sense of Jonathan’s different style came from projections of her own different needs in grieving. Ca.SCI.10: “I feel sad for [Jonathan and my husband].” Re.SCI.10: “You're sad? Sad and that...” Ca.SCI.11: “Yeah, I just feel like...Yeah, I'm frustrated…And then I'm also trying to negotiate, like is this a personality type? Or is this one of those gender constructs that they're raised to not share emotionally, and support. Or is this simply just, I'm projecting? I was grieving so deep- But I needed someone so badly they must've needed each other.” There was an intention from Cassidy and Ella to allow Jonathan to have a different loss experiences, but confusion and frustration in doing so given the way his experience stood in contrast to their own. In this community, someone having the same event of loss, but processing it very differently seemed to create disconnection; this was because of the way it threatened to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 120 invalidate their own experience of suffering and process with the loss. This appeared again later in their conversation when discussing a mother who positively framed the experience of a miscarriage. The difference in experience elicited a lot of confusion, anger, and frustration. Yet, at the same time, tension emerged in wanting the individual to be able to grieve the way they needed to, but feeling that it was somehow wrong, given the stark contrast to their own values connected to the loss. Given their level of pain and their deep need for one another, it was difficult for them to accept that someone would not feel similarly or need that too. As a result, the different loss experiences made it more challenging for Ella and Cassidy to connect and share their grief with Jonathan or others who experienced the loss differently than them. Sharing similar experiences. At this point in the conversation Cassidy shared about the differences between herself and her husband’s grieving after the death of their second son. Jo.CC.16: “…as a guy…how do you deal with this, like how because you want to help and protect your wife...you know. There wasn't a child there that was running down the street, got hit by a car that was taken away from you, and so it's just a different, I don't know, it's a really different experience then losing that.” Ca.CC.16: “Yeah. It's like a grief over a dream or an expectation as opposed to grief over a, you know...” El.CC.16: “Well that was my dream. And he didn't dream like ‘I want to have more children.’” Jo.CC.17: “That's true! (C: Yeah). Yeah I was never…” Ca.CC.17: “Yeah, well that was a huge part for [my husband] the difference, like, you know, you guys didn't know him when we lost [our first son] (Jonathan: right). He grieved deeply! And still didn't talk to his guy friends about it. I'm absolutely sure. At all. But he still was really grieving. But with [our second son] it was, you know, it was my thing (Jonathan: nods). And for him it was more like, you know, he's sad because I'm sad (Jonathan: Yeah!). He's worried about our family and, but not...yeah, I'm sure, I know he felt some grief, but it wasn't anything remotely like...so I know he was grateful that I had Ella and a couple other friends that were, like my grieving friends (chuckles).” Jo.CC.18: “Right. Able to walk through it with you.” In this moment, Cassidy highlighted the ways that grieving can look different and how the grief can be related to the different values around children. In hearing this similar experience GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 121 of how Cassidy and her husband felt differently about the loss, Ella shared how she felt validated in the different experiences her and her husband had. El.SCI.27:” I feel like Cassidy is validating our marriage experience (hmm). Because it was so different…So it kind of validates the experience of... ‘No, you know, it's Ella's thing’. I really deeply, deeply wanted more children (yeah). And umm...Jonathan would have been happy (with [the three we had]). Yup (yeah)…I think Cassidy was just being Cassidy and because of who she is I feel validated (hmm). She's honest and…she is so much like me, I feel validated (hmm, yeah). Mhm (yeah).” In Ella hearing Cassidy’s marriage experience and the different levels of pain, it created a sense of being allowed to have the deep pain she felt and for her husband to not experience the same level of pain. The sharing of a similar experience that related to both Ella and Jonathan seemed to validate both of their experiences and created allowance for their experiences to be different. Jonathan also shared in the experience of being validated in this moment. Jo.SCI.27: “Feeling kind of understood. I mean, Cassidy is definitely explaining how I really was either feeling or not feeling about the situation at the time…I guess it’s kind of comforting to feel like I mean it’s always helpful to have somebody else that understands. You know, Cassidy is here but also looking back at what Cassidy’s husband would have, we’re both facing a very similar situation and handing it in a similar way which makes it… makes you feel a little more normal about the way you’re handling that it’s kind of okay to not have that grief. I mean anything that you do that you’re feeling kind of alone or like one-off and you just kind of wonder like is this natural is this how I should feel…” In this moment, Jonathan reflected that hearing a similar experience gave him permission to grieve the way he did and to feel normal. When no one was going through the experience similarly, it seemed to call into question whether or not they were allowed to go through it as they were; alternately, when someone went through the experience similarly it seemed to create permission and ground to stand on in their experience. This theme emerged again shortly as Jonathan, Cassidy, and Ella reflected on how it was important to have someone who just “got it”. Ca.CC.20: “Yeah, I mean, I think that was, it felt safe to have a friend I could spend time with, and, and if I fall apart, or if I was unreasonably terrified, you would get it!” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 122 Jo.CC20: “I think that's a lot of it, it's the getting it. It's the under, like the, having that (hand motion outward) connection…” Ca.CC.21: “It's the unspoken…” Jo.CC.21: “Yeah! And I know you understand what I'm going through, I don't have to sit here and talk about it for hours and hours, but I know you get that underlying process…” El.CC.23: “Yeah, so I think...specifically in community it's the...'normalizing'. Like it's people who have been through it who say, ‘yeah, this is how it is! It's ugly and hurtful and...’ (Cassidy: Yeah)...And thinking, ‘oh, I'm not weird because I want to see my [dead] baby’ and...so that's what you gave me (looks at Cassidy) was...umm, yeah, ‘It's a thing! And that's a horrible thing! And let's do it together and...’ Yeah…” Ca.CC.24: “Validation.” The phrase “someone who gets it” seemed to capture what created a sense of safety in grieving together. Sharing similar experiences was a way to communicate someone “getting it”, creating a feeling of normalcy, validation, permission, and togetherness. Ella and Cassidy talked in their SCI about the uniqueness and importance of the shared experience in their grief. El.SCI.49: “Just that, that's what I think community grief is! This is, this is, the gift of community grief is somebody gets it! (Hmm). So the normalizing, I think it's more complex then normalizing, but it's "I'm not alone!" (hmm) "This is suffering" (hmm) umm..."it's not weird!" I don't know, but it's just so, so painful. Because the other things, because if you don't understand them, just add different layers of pain (yeah). So...” El.SCI.55: “Yeah, I think it's the essences of being...instead of trying to muster up...’I should be this’, or ‘I should be that’. It's just, ‘this is where I'm at!’ And it's safe to be… Ca.SCI.42: “Yeah, I think I'm kind of just trying to explore that whole- The whole draw of people with the similar experience, like that special support. (Okay. Hm.) Um, you know, there are people outside of, you know, the shared circumstance that can be supportive, but it's just not quite the same. (Yeah. Mm-hmm.) And it's rare.” Sharing similar experiences seemed to create permission for them to grieve in the ways that they needed to and to not feel alone. For Ella it also demystified some aspects of her grief; someone having a similar experience helped her better understand her own experience, which for her, took away confusion that could have been stacked upon her pain. In this way, the sharing of similar experiences was a way they grieved together, creating a sense of validation and understanding. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 123 Seeing one another’s truest intentions. The conversation then shifted as Jonathan shared feelings of guilt about not understanding and supporting Ella sufficiently at times. Cassidy responded compassionately to Jonathan, explaining, with Ella’s agreement, that grief is messy and supporting someone during grief is difficult. Jo.CC.19: “Yeah, yeah! And at times I felt worse about that...then almost anything else...is that I couldn't... (Cassidy: you weren't feeling the same…) I didn't have the understanding, didn't feel the same way, and probably acted really inappropriately at times toward Ella in that because...I didn't know what to do with it!” Ca.CC.19: “Right. Well and grieving people are...messy. And...I don't know, I was anyways, I was messy and ugly and just...a wreck and a lot to handle. So...” El.CC.19: “Me too.” In this moment, Cassidy validated Jonathan’s difficulty in not always knowing how to support Ella given the chaos of grief. Jonathan talked in his SCI about feeling relieved and grateful for Ella and Cassidy understanding the difficulty of supporting those who are grieving and talked about feeling understood in this moment. Jo.SCI.32: “…so both feeling understood and especially when Cassidy talks about like grief is messy and it was and I know that caused conflict at the time because we had both experienced the same loss. We’re dealing with it so much differently that I know I would find that frustrating if I had experienced the same loss as somebody and I’m really upset about it and life is kinda going on for them…” Re.SCI.33: “Yeah, yeah. What kinds of emotions were you experiencing at this point?” Jo.SCI.33: “Not really sure, I guess relief is not an emotion really…” Re.SCI.34: “Yeah, but feeling relieved…” In this moment of the conversation Jonathan seemed to relax and from that point forward contributed with more ease. The feeling of being understood emerged and was connected to them seeing his effort to care within the context of the messiness of grief and his capacity. In this moment of the conversation, both Cassidy and Ella shared in their SCI empathy toward Jonathan realizing the weight he carried in wanting to care, but not always knowing how. Ca.SCI.32: “…And I didn't say this, but I don't remember...I remember a few times Ella being frustrated with Jonathan…But I don't remember that being a huge factor in her grief journey, and GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 124 yet he seems to feel a lot of guilt about it…Like, he really said the wrong things or did the wrong things a lot…I feel bad about that cause...That felt like a burden he shouldn't have had to carry.” El.SCI.34: “(Pause). Um, his body language caught me, just in watching it now! It was a big movement uh...you know, I feel compassion...recognizing this guy that loves his wife, and cares about his wife, and just doesn't know what to do (aww). It's hard (yeah).” Re.SCI.35: “How do I join you? How do I care for you? How do I make it better?” El.SCI.35: “Mhm. With the emotional capacity he has, or doesn't have, right? And just that big body movement was like, ‘but I don't know what to do!’ (whispers it) (yeah, hmm). That'd be really hard to...try to journey with someone and just have no idea.” Ella and Cassidy saw Jonathan’s deepest intention to care for his wife, even if not done perfectly. Being seen in this intention and in the context of what he was facing, brought Jonathan a sense of relief, which lifted the weight of guilt he was carrying. Responding compassionately was characteristic of how this community grieved together. They met one another’s honesty and vulnerability with empathy, seeking to see the person within all the nuances of their life and context to understand their truest intentions. Providing safety to experience pain, joy, and the fullness of life. As Ella and Cassidy talked about the safety they felt in their relationship, Cassidy shared about her experience to feel not only pain, but also joy with Ella and Jonathan. Cassidy shared about her fear that she would lose permission to grieve if she let herself experience joy with other people. Cassidy expressed that she felt she had to wear her grief constantly to protect it and her child whom it represented. Ca.CC.26: “…I don't know, this is so weird, but for some reason, because you were people that I cried about around...it was easier to have fun with you too because...I don't know, like...you feel like, almost protective of your grief. Like you have to, like you know, you don't want to be that, you don't want people to think you're just ok (Jonathan: Right) in the early days…” Jo.CC.26: “You want people to know that you're hurting!” Ca.CC.27: “Yeah! (Jonathan: That you really want to…) Like I wanted to wear the shirt that's like ‘my baby died, by the way!’ And you know…but then you still want to, you know to have some times where you're laughing or...talking about something totally different or whatever (Ella nods). So to be around people that have embraced your grief makes it safe to like also...live life and like, set it aside and know that it's not…being overlooked.” Jo.CC.27: “Well and again it normalizes it in a way that people have experienced the grief so now you can both experience joy in other ways without it being something that is wrong.” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 125 Ca.CC.28: “Or like unspoken. Or like this is just life! (Jonathan: Yeah). Here we are! We're just living life! And grief is part of it and our babies are a part of it.” Cassidy talked about how having the depth of her pain acknowledged, permitted, and honoured allowed her to feel joy again, knowing that her pain would not be overlooked. Cassidy talked about how this allowed her to enter life more fully and for pain to become a part of life. Ella and Cassidy provided a space for one another in which they were allowed to express a wide range of emotions and experiences honestly to each other. Even in the CC, the discussion flowed in and out of pain, frustration, anger, and laughter together. Ella shared in their SCI how the safety of their relationship also added to her ability to experience joy and pain simultaneously. El.SCI.65: “Without losing the permission to have sorrow (I love that). Because it's, and this is where I learned in life that I always kept waiting for this sorrow to end so I could experience joy (hmm). And I realized there are two lanes/lines? in the sand, highway? And I missed a lot of joy because I was waiting for the sorrow to end (aww). And that's the whole expansion I talked about earlier (huh). I had the capacity to experience these joys, but I was missing it (hmm), because I was waiting for the sorrow to end. So, like...” Re.SCI.65: “So they can go together!” El.SCI.66: “They do! They, it's not that they can, and it's that they do! Umm...that we need both. And that we need to be able to be both happy, sad, or anywhere in between (hmm). And just...without losing the option of, ‘no I still hurt people’. Yeah.” For Ella, she felt joined by Cassidy in her pain, which seemed to create a sense of safety for her to allow Cassidy into the pain and to also allow joy to emerge. Experiencing a relationship where both sorrow and joy could exist created a capacity within Ella to experience these emotions together. In having the allowance for any emotion within their relationship it also created permission to enter the relationship wholly – with all of their experiences and feelings – and to be as they were. For Cassidy, the reflections on the space and safety in their relationship brought her to reflect on how it cultivated her ability to be honest about her needs. Ca.SCI.64: “Yeah, yeah. Of being around people where you can be yourself, where you can feel what you feel (hmm) without explanation, (yeah!) without apology. Yeah, that's great!” Re.SCI.64: “Yeah, that is great! And is there any feelings attached to it for you? It's, it, it sounds like a lot of different things in what you're saying!” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 126 Ca.SCI.65: “Yeah! It's like a freedom (there's a freedom, even when your…) yeah, and it's empowering to…and it certainly...that's helped me, like as I've (hmm), I've, like you know I was raised to be submissive, to be...(right), you know put everyone before myself, all the time! (Mhm) Like to be, to not cost anyone anything ever! (mhm). So to when, you know when I was grieving, I had, I had needs! Like I NEEDED `things! (right, hmm) And I had to, you know (hmm), so I found people that were willing to (yeah) accept that about me and (wow), not only accept it, but like appreciate that, and it, it, helped me to become more (hmm) empowered I guess? (wow) Yeah! Yeah, it was good! (Beautiful, huh).” Cassidy felt that she was able to take up space in the relationship, to need things, and to rely on another. Cassidy talked about how this freedom she experienced in the relationship created a feeling of freedom in her and empowered her to live life more connected to her feelings and needs and to express these in relationships. As they talk about the different ways that they could be together, it seems to capture a sense of generous space in grieving together between Ella and Cassidy to be as they were in connection with another. They talked about how this expanded their capacity to enter life in ways that connected them to themselves (their feelings and needs) and all the experiences of life (both sorrow and joy). Using names and remembering dates. The conversation then shifted out of joy and dipped back into grief. Cassidy talked about how her and Ella connected through using their baby’s names and remembering important dates. They talked about how using each other’s baby’s names keeps their memory alive and honours their value. Ca.CC.28-29: “…I mean Ella the whole, you know, using...my boy's names. Like that...is a big deal! It's a big deal! Not many people do that, right? Like, that you know their names and remember them (Jonathan: yeah (nods)). Like in a world where, you know, nobody ever met them...to know that there are people who kind of miss them! You know, like…I mean for my Aunt who died, it's always nice to talk to other people that knew her too and miss her and you, reminisce, or whatever, and you don't have that about your baby, so...” Cassidy shared further in her SCI about how impactful it was to have her babies’ names remembered and used by Ella. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 127 Ca.SCI.67: “…I was thinking too, like now...I think Ella is one of the only people outside of my family that ever say [my son's names] (huh). I'm like, which, just because it's not a huge part of my everyday life (right). So people don't have a chance too and (right), but it's just nice! She’s one of the only people that still says their name out loud and that is always (hmm)...it's always nice to hear! (wow) Like (wow), yeah…especially, you know, 18 and 14 years later (yeah!)…Still a big part of my life though! (Yeah!). But yeah, this like, hidden part. So it's nice to have people that still (who know about it!). Yeah!” Cassidy talked about how she appreciated hearing her children’s names and how it acknowledged this hidden but significant part of her. For Ella and Cassidy, they discussed in the NIC that once they were pregnant, their babies were for them, children and full human beings. For them, it was important to use names to honour their grief and to claim their babies lost in pregnancy as children and their loss as the death of a child. Ella talked about the how in using their names it gave ongoing value to the child that is gone from their lives and their grief. Later in the conversation, Ella and Cassidy also talked about remembering significant dates around their pregnancy complications and their babies’ deaths. Ella and Cassidy talked about how this not only honoured their child, but also helped them understand and embrace ongoing grief that may be present in their bodies, but not within their conscious awareness. Ca.CC.37: “[Ella’s] the best at it because I know a couple times over the years I've had, like just can't figure out why I'm having a shitty week. Right? And I just feel gross and I'm grumpy and don't know what's going on, and she'll be the one that reminds me! [Jonathan: Right! How you doing today?] Max’s birthday is coming up (Jonathan: Yup), or Judah’s birthday, like it's happened, a few times! Where I forgot, but my body remembered. Like, and it just, and then... (Jonathan: That's really weird!)” El.CC.37: “Mine does that, mine does that too!” El.SCI.95: “…Because umm...it's so, so true! The first couple years, it's like, ‘Uh! What is this?!’ (yeah). And then you realize it's memory time (hmm). So...yeah. So, the fact that, and she's done that for me before too. She's like, ‘how you doing with the Anna?’ and I'm like, ‘Uh! That's it!’ (huh, yeah). And just that, that recognition and again being seen and known, and validated, and (hmm), and knowing. I think what she's saying, I think what we're expressing is...being in the journey with someone who knows enough to say, ‘Hey! I know it's a hard week’. Yeah (yeah).” Re.SCI.96: “Creates a lot of permission...whatever that equals and…” El.SCI.96: “Mhm.” Re.SCI.97: “Yeah. I can hold you here.” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 128 El.SCI.97: “Well and it solves part of the mystery of (hmm)...right? This really does hurt! Cassidy shared how Ella helped her identify when grief was emerging in her body through remembering and acknowledging significant dates. Ella talked about how having someone acknowledge something that she could not initially name, validated and gave voice to her ongoing pain that she had not consciously understood. Ella also talked about how it helped to demystify why she felt like she did and created understanding and permission to feel that way. Cassidy expanded on how helpful it was to have someone to remind her of ongoing grief, and remind her it might need attention. Cassidy also talked about how they engaged together in ongoing grieving through preparing for upcoming dates and debriefing any rituals afterward. Ca.SCI.86: “Yeah, yeah. So...we kind of do our own thing on the birthdays, but we always remember beforehand and talk about it (mhm). And then afterwards debrief about it (hmm). So kind of a...(cool), she's my, personal, unofficial counsellor! (laughter). And I am a little bit for her! Yeah!” Not only did Cassidy and Ella acknowledge and honour their children through the remembering of names and dates, but also helped one another to face and engage with their ongoing grief. In the Member Check Interview (MCI), both Ella and Cassidy talked about how there were aspects of their grief they felt they needed to engage with alone, but they drew strength from one another to face these moments of deep grief. The preparation and debriefing of significant dates captured how they helped one another and held one another in their awareness even in their individual grieving. Remembering names and dates was a significant way that Ella and Cassidy honored one another’s children and their ongoing grief. Understanding and riding the changing waves of grief. The conversation then shifted to Cassidy and Ella discussing the ways their grief has changed, being more or less intense in different seasons of life. Ella and Cassidy talked about how their relationship has been important to allow grief to evolve and change, sometimes being more or less painful. Ella shared that grief GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 129 has been more difficult for her recently and how this has been surprising. Cassidy met her with understanding and helped Ella piece together some of the reasons. . El.CC.39: “Yeah! Like this year’s been so hard for me this fall! I think, with [our one child] getting married, and Anna would be 13 and James would be going into high school. I think all those milestones. And then threw me into an emotionally provocative time of life with work (Cassidy: Right!) and what we're going through with [our other kid] it just stirs up the whole, ‘this really is not how I thought this would be’”. Ca.CC.39: “Yeah, well plus I mean, I know even in the complications of your grief was the no more babies thing (Ella: Yeah). Right? So to empty nest brings that into play.” El.CC.40: “Yeah! Big time (nods). Yeah, and [daughter's] graduation for sure too.” By Cassidy helping Ella make sense of the difficult year Cassidy created space and allowance for Ella to feel what she was experiencing and validated the rationality behind her feelings. Both Cassidy and Ella reflected on this moment of the conversation. Ca.SCI.91: “…I was just remembering (yeah)…that she really, really wanted more kids! (Yeah) So, so to end that ending on a bad note and (hmm) feeling like she still had this yearning for more kids (yeah). So that was a huge part of her grief (yeah, totally)…I just wanted to affirm that part of that grief…this being a difficult year grief wise (mhm), but also that especially as (sigh) it kind of brings that back I think.” El.SCI.109: “I feel understood (hmm)....because...of what we're going through with our youngest (hmm), who, shouldn't have been our youngest (huh)…We've been really hurting as parents (aww)...And it's really, I think, intertwined with the loss of the babies, the milestones, which I'm acknowledging here…” Holding the complexity of the grief and seeing the connections to so many other aspects of life helped one another to understand how these changes in their grief could occur just as the pieces of life that the grief is connected to change. As Cassidy brought her understanding of Ella’s current experience, she helped Ella see the pieces of her life that are contributing to the feelings of loss being more pronounced currently; this helped Ella to understand herself further and to also feel understood and validated in her current pain. Later, the topic of the changes in grief emerged again relating to the ways they helped one another embrace the changes and grow with their grieving. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 130 Ca.CC.46: “…Like...it's nice to have someone to remember, but it's also nice to have someone that gives you permission to like, that, you know, the birthday wasn't a big deal this year and…” Jo.CC.46: “And it's ok too, just like it's ok when it wasn't ok!” El.CC.46: “And five birthdays later, it's a HUGE deal!” Ca.CC.47: “Yeah, out of the blue. Yeah, like that part of it. And to like...like it's not, like it's ok to let some of those traditions go. Like, you know, where we always were buying, collecting every year or whatever, like...” El.CC.47: “I don't need to anymore. And to not need to, it's ok.” Ca.CC.48: “Yeah, it's a good thing. And it's healthy and it's...” Jo.CC.48: “Healthy, yeah.” In having one another allow the other to be in their grief, just as they were, it allowed them and their grieving to evolve and change with time. Ella and Cassidy reflected on this moment of the conversation in their SCI and the impact of allowing grief to change. Ca.SCI.113: “…And yeah, Ella is always the person who gives you permission (yeah). Because…you feel a little guilty...because you have to keep...getting permission to move on! (Right. You give each other that almost). Yeah! Yeah, and the knowledge too! Like that ok, you're moving on, but you're not forgetting…(right), you're not going to forget...your kid. You're going to just grow into a new phase of grief that is less intense and…more (yeah) integrated I guess into your life.” El.SCI.137: “Just reflection on how the needs of grief change. I think that's very, like a really important insight (hmm). Um, because...uh, the need to talk about your baby, the need to collect the items to have a tangible memory. It's a big need! For us! (Mhm). And, it shifts and changes and that's ok (hmm). (Big sigh) Yeah. Acknowledging that we met the needs at the time and adapted and the needs changed and we grew in that together. And (yeah), to be connected and validated in that, it's good.” Instead of needing to fit their experience to a pattern, they helped one another to make sense of their individual grieving journey - to feel and ride the waves of grief and to be aware of the changing needs in differing seasons of life. Cassidy reflected on this moment of the conversation on what this community relationship was for her. Ca.SCI.114: “…And I think…that's the beauty of community that you let people need what they need (hmm, right) and let them do it their way and…like the [researcher] was saying too, holding space, I LOVE that concept! Yeah! Because it's not pushing someone in any direction, it's just giving them space to let it unfold (yeah, just to breathe it in and let it be). Yeah, and sit with it and move on! Like, if you need to! Whatever you need to do! So...yeah….And then you know Jonathan too was acknowledging it's never just that, it's never just one thing! Like it's all these GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 131 intersections of...Yeah! Which is why all grief is unique, not just between people, but in your experience, like (yeah). Cassidy captured an important part of what it meant for this community to grieve together. There was no set prescription of how to grieve, but rather allowing space for the other to be wherever they are in their experience. To grieve together meant to seek to understand the unique experience of the other and to trust the person in their process, allowing them to experience whatever emerged in grieving. Sharing negative community experiences. The conversation then shifted as Ella talked about how Cassidy was someone she could run to when she had negative experiences in community to find support. El.CC.41: “…I think you and I meant more to each other because when the bad community said the stupid, dumb, mean, not mean-hearted, but definitely still hurtful things, we could, I ran to you. ‘Guess what she said to me?!’ (gasp tone) And you're like, ‘Oh my goodness!’” Ca.CC.41: “I really felt it (touches heart)! Like, that was, yeah it was good for me [too]…because I love my husband dearly, but he is not like...(motions hands out) he's not emotionally the same level (Jonathan nods). Like, this is my emotional (motions between Ella and herself) sounding board I guess. And because he would be like, ‘oh, you know...’ logically thinking it through, like why they would say something. And it all makes sense! People are uncomfortable.” El.CC.42: “They are stupid” (laughter from everyone). Ca.CC.42: “Yeah, well that too right?” (laughter) Jo.CC.42: “Sometimes I can be dumb too” (Jonathan and Cassidy laugh and Ella smiles and looks at Jonathan) Ca.CC.43: “Yeah, so... yeah so, it's nice to have someone who gets mad on your behalf, right?. That like really, REALLY gets mad!” Ella and Cassidy talked about how in sharing the negative community experiences they gathered support and strength from one another, which came through sharing their anger together. Sharing in anger seemed to be a way to back one another up and to take back the space they needed to grieve in the ways they needed. In their SCI, Ella and Cassidy shared about the support they felt from one another. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 132 El.SCI.124: “Yeah, I think here, we are taking up each other's cause (hmm)…knowing I've got my people in my corner, my person and... (huh), she's got my back and she knows what I need and (hmm), I feel validated in the journey (yeah!). Because STUPID people say STUPID things! (laughter). And then we can laugh, right?” Re.SCI.125: “And remembering this...what kind of feelings are there?” El.SCI.125: “Yeah, we can totally be like...umm villainize that woman for saying that! (laughter) Which is cathartic. Yeah. And then you feel lighter (yeah?). Mhm.” Re.SCI.126: “Yeah, and feelings at this moment in the conversation for you?” El.SCI.126: “I feel like I'm Cassidy's champion (yeah, yeah).” Ca.SCI.101: “(laughter) Yeah, that's the, that's the best part! Just say, ‘Oh they're stupid!’ (laughter). And then you've got each other to say, ‘What a bitch!’” (laughter)”. Re.SCI.101: “The honesty of that right? This is what you're saying?” Ca.SCI.102: “Yeah, and you know, tongue and cheek too! To exaggerate a little bit, right (laughter). Like, ‘I'm going to beat them up for you!’ (laughter). ‘Let me at ‘em!’ (laughter). Umm...that's kind of nice.” Re.SCI.102: “And Ella brought it up, what do you feel like Ella's intention or goal was in bringing this up, to uh, in, in relation to your grief as a community?” Ca.SCI.103: “Yeah, yeah, I think that that was her, you know, she needed people to say, you know, be on her side! And to say, ‘No, they're wrong!’ ‘You're right!’ ‘She's a bitch!’ (laughter). Yeah, ‘Fuck that! That's not ok!’” Re.SCI.103: “And you needed that too it sounded like?” Ca.SCI.104: “Yeah, yeah! Totally! Oh, yeah, like just like camaraderie. And yeah, a little bit of humour and (laughter)...kind of uh, us against the world kind of thing…” In sharing the poor experiences in community and sharing their anger, frustration, and laughter together Ella and Cassidy took up one another’s cause and became fellow champions. The shared anger seemed to validate one another’s way of being and helped them feel someone was on their side and fighting with them to grieve in the ways they needed to when that had been threatened in community. The anger seemed to also create some power when shared toward the poor community experiences and also often erupted into laughter, creating distance and lightness from the intensity of the poor experience. Holding complex tensions of grief. As the conversation wrapped up, Cassidy and Ella talked about longings to have all their children and wonderings of how life could have been, but also thankfulness for the way life is and who they are today. They held these tensions together of longing and acceptance, not trying to simplify or fix it. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 133 Ca.CC.58: “…I think I wouldn't...like I want my boys back, but I also think it's precious that I don't have that simple outlook on life anymore. Like I'm not that...I feel like I'm a deeper, better person. Because of, because of them.” Jo.CC.58: “It matures us.” Ca.CC.59: “Yeah.” El.CC.59: “So one thing I've really struggled with more recently is just feeling...relieved... at the life stage we're at.” Ca.CC.60: “Ok. Like empty nest you mean?” El.CC.60: “No. Umm, not empty nest because I wasn't ready for that, but umm...not having to parent another teenager and not having to go through...” Ca.CC.61: “Like independent kids and?” El.CC.61: “Yeah, like...” Jo.CC.61: “Well there's like no way we could be doing all this career related stuff, like if now we had a kid in middle school and a kid in high school...” El.CC62: “Exactly! And so feeling relief that I'm excited about my future and I wouldn't be this, what's happening, if we had those babies, (a) because the grief sent me on a trajectory to care about people in a different way and, (b) a Mom of five kids doesn't go back to work as easily as (Cassidy: right) I did.” Ca.CC.62: “Right. So there's like (Ella: So then there's guilt). It's that integrating that loss into your life and making a good thing out of it.” El.CC.63: (Jonathan laughing) “But then feeling guilty that you have a new...” Ca.CC.63: “Right. Yeah. Without saying it was a good thing! Right, like it's like the, like embrace how the good that came from it...without...” El.CC.64: “But we'd change it if we could?” Jo.CC.64: “Yup!” Ca.CC.64: “Yeah.” In this moment, Ella, Cassidy, and Jonathan go back and forth holding the tensions of grief; gratitude for the way life is, and also a longing for the children they lost. The community had a capacity to hold tensions in their grieving together – allowing joy and suffering, change and consistency, gratefulness and longings. In her SCI, Cassidy shares about her effort to make space for two seemingly conflicting experiences. Ca.SCI.121: “…I understand that struggling over feeling relief. Like, that push and pull (mhm, so another tension like). Yeah! Grief and joy and (yeah). And finding a way to somehow integrate that! (Mhm, mhm). Yeah, like you say make space for both seemingly conflicting feelings (mhm. Let them both be held there). Yeah! (Hmm, yeah).” Cassidy also opened up about her experiences of guilt imagining how her life might have looked different if she had not lost the children she did. All three of them are struck with the GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 134 complexity of grief and shared about this in their SCI, holding the tensions of paradoxical feelings. Ca.SCI.126-127: “...grief changes that simplicity of (yeah), you know, A, then B, then C. Like no! (Right, it's not linear all of a sudden). Yeah! It's all these paradoxical feelings all at once and they are all true. And yeah, you can want both things at the same time (wow) even though they conflict (right, right)…Yeah, that you want to be this better person that you've become because of it, but you want it to never have happened. Right!” Jo.SCI.107: “I think…she's trying to love both her kids, realizing she wouldn't have had both because of the time frame…I think she's trying to imaging how would life be different with one or the other…but then you can’t imagine not having the child that you have so I think it’s a little bit of trying to come to terms with that in her own mind.” El.SCI.152-154: “Complexity, like a real ambiguity. I feel guilt and relief at the same time (hmm). And it's very complex! Because I'm REALLY glad I don't have a 13 and 14 year old (right), and…I feel terrible, because I WANT my 13 and 14 year old so badly! And I feel a sense of relief that I've been able to find myself, and my voice, (hmm), and my umm...self! (hmm). And mid-life! That would be different if… (yeah, you wouldn't be in that stage right now). Yeah. And I like where I'm at. And I like who I've become (yeah!). So that's a lot of what's going on is very, very ambiguous…I think that's, there's a lot of mystery (yeah). And you can't resolve it (No!). Yeah. (Ok.)” Ella, Cassidy, and Jonathan were able to hold this tension together of feeling gratitude and longings, not trying to simplify it. At the same time there is a sense of unfairness at having to hold these tensions and feeling that they can no longer live within just one experience, but have to exist in this space of complexity – all at the same time no longer wanting the simplicity. Ella seems to capture this in her final comment in the SCI. El.SCI.155-158: “So I think this captures the beauty of our relationship! (Hmm). Between Cassidy and I. Because she's verbalizing my feelings (yeah!). And, so beautifully done! (yeah). And validating, and connecting, and (yeah! Like she's joining you!) and I don't feel as guilty (Like it takes, lifts some of that?). Takes the edge off (wow). Mhm. Jonathan seems to be doing that too (yeah, yeah)…I feel like, you know, were just back to life is shitty and you just can't win (hmm). Which kind of makes it a little bit lighter (hmm). Umm...(big sigh). Yeah. I feel a deeper connection watching all of this and processing all of this tonight (yeah?) with both of them (yeah).” The final comments also seem to capture a larger sense with this community, that due to the suffering they have encountered there is this feeling that life is, as they put it, “shitty”. They GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 135 talked about the ways the loss of their children has stripped away the simplicity of life and thrown them into living in a place that is complex, mysterious, and challenging. Yet there is gratitude for the deep connection and the personal changes that have emerged from this suffering. The conversation ends on this note, of holding these significant tensions of grief and joining one another in this space of suffering. There is an allowance to not having to make sense of it all or needing to feel one thing, but an understanding and allowance to be in the middle of it all. Community Grieving Summary. The CC had an overall tone of authenticity, rawness, and connection. The participants not only shared about their past shared grieving experiences, but engaged with current aspects of their grieving together. The conversation had a natural flow to it and they allowed whatever was there to emerge. There was an emotional openness, but the conversation was not emotionally intense. Although Jonathan’s grief had been less pronounced, he agreed to participate in the research as he felt supported by Cassidy for them as a couple, particularly in the ways that she was able to support Ella where he could not. At the beginning of the conversation, Cassidy and Ella included Jonathan, but he shared more tentatively. After Cassidy validated his experience of having less pronounced grieving, Jonathan seemed to open up and offered more validation to Ella and Cassidy throughout the conversation. All of the members were involved in the conversation, responding to one another and expanding on the points each other made, but the conversation seemed to revolve more around Ella and Cassidy’s shared grieving together. The similar grieving process seemed to underlie the connection that Ella and Cassidy shared and their ability to grieve together. Their friendship was built through Ella sharing about her grief and Cassidy validating her grief. The friendship continued from that point and they GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 136 both experienced subsequent deaths by miscarriage and stillbirth. As a result, their friendship was built on and further deepened through their shared experience of loss and similar grieving process. The conversation flowed in and out of a range of emotions including expressions of pain, confusion, laughter, frustration, and joy. There was a sense between Ella and Cassidy of being allowed to be as they were and to bring many experiences honestly into the relationship The principal researcher presented a narrative summary to the community members at the Member Check Interview (MCI). During this time the community reflected together with the researcher about the narrative summary and agreed together that it represented their shared grieving. The community had two suggestions, which were added to the analysis. The agreedupon community grieving process for this community can be described as creating a safe and generous space of validation to share in the ongoing and changing grief of the absence of their babies through sharing similar experiences, de-mystifying emotional experiences, seeing one another’s truest intentions, and holding complex tensions; helping one another to face the pain, to be as they are, and enter together into the breadth of all of life’s suffering, joy, and complexity. Analysis summary. Action theory was used to guide the analysis of the community’s grieving. The following section includes a summary of the actions of the second community, including the intentional framework that guided their actions, the strategies they used to achieve those ends, and the manifest behaviours. The intentional framework for this community was to validate one another in their grieving. This intention included offering one another permission to be as they were and experience their feelings, cultivating a sense of normalcy and togetherness in their grieving. The GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 137 intention of validation created a sense among the community of being seen, known, understood, and together in their experience. The community used many strategies to achieve this sense of validation. They often shared similar experiences as a way of letting the other person know they are not alone and that their experience was also a part of their grieving; this created a sense of permission to have their experience and normalized the experience as a part of grief. In their intention to validate one another, they discussed experiences of other people who grieved differently to allow for alternate experiences. They also talked about the complexities of grieving and the values tied to grieving as a way to understand the uniqueness of grieving and the changes in ongoing grieving. To validate the intentions of the other, they highlighted the difficulty and uncertainty of grieving and talked about the difficulty of knowing how to support those who are grieving. They talked about the safety they experienced in the relationship in having their pain acknowledged, which allowed them to set it aside. They used their babies’ names and dates as a way to honour and validate the importance of their deceased children and the ongoing grief they experienced. They shared in anger and defended one another to validate their unique grieving styles. They allowed one another to express longings, wonderings, and wishes and empathized together about the sense of loss. They shared similar feelings of guilt and gratitude, change and consistency, joy and sorrow and held these in tension, validating and allowing for paradoxical emotions. The manifest behaviours included acknowledging one another, their differences, their uniqueness, values, and complexities. They agreed together about experiences in grieving and observations about one another. They answered one another’s questions, asked for clarification on each other’s perspectives, and asked for more information. They partially agreed at times and disagreed when someone understood them incorrectly, clarifying perspectives to answer GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 138 honestly. They described themselves, past situations, others, possible or hypothetical situations, and expressed opinions or perceptions and thoughts in telling about their experiences grieving together. They expressed humor together and laughed at many points throughout the conversation as well as crying and showing tears. They expressed a wide range of emotions including guilt, ambivalence, uncertainty, appreciation, connection, understanding, relief, gratitude, desire, joy, humor, sadness, anger, realizations, fear, doubt, love, and surprise. They talked together with ease, paraphrasing, encouraging one another, suggesting understandings or perspectives about one another’s grief. They continued one another’s statements, elaborating, confirming, and at times allowing space through pausing, and showing empathy, reflecting affect, reflecting cognitions, and sighing. Assertions. Community three provides insight into how it is that communities grieve together after the death of a child. This community was unique given that Ella and her husband Jonathan, and Ella’s community member, Cassidy, both shared the loss of two children through stillbirth and miscarriage. Ella and Cassidy talked about the ways this joined them together and allowed them to share in grieving. It seemed there were specific aspects within the shared experience that created safety and space to grieve together. One of the specific ways this community grieved together was through validating one another. Validation was offered not just through the shared experience, but also through processing the grief in a similar way and sharing similar values. Processing the loss similarly and sharing about these experiences created a sense of seeing oneself in the other, which contributed to the feeling they were allowed to have their experience, that it was normal and part of grief, and also that they were not alone in their experience. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 139 Validation was also provided through noticing and providing understanding of the complexities, nuances, and uniqueness of grief for each person. This allowed the uniqueness and changes with their grief to be seen in context and helped them to make sense of these aspects of their grieving. This highlights the ways that communities can provide understanding to the changes of grief and create space for ongoing grieving. These aspects of support in the shared experience are not inherent to sharing an experience, but to feeling a sense of validation and allowance, which seems to be an important part of shared grieving in this community. This community also grieved through honouring and remembering their children’s names and important dates associated with the death of their children. This was an important shared activity that gave space for ongoing grieving and allowed their deceased children to be part of their life. This highlights the ways that communities can grieve together with bereaved parents by remembering deceased children through the ongoing use of their names and remembrance of important dates. This community also grieved by being able to express a wide range of emotions and for each person to be as they were, rather than needing their grief to fit into any mould. This allowance for things to be as they are allowed them to bring their feelings and thoughts honestly into the relationship to be further felt and understood. It seems that these aspects of validation created safety and space to open up one’s grief with another and feel that the pain will be acknowledged, understood, normalized, and honoured. This points to the importance of openness in grieving together for all of one’s grief to be understood and held together. Reflexivity. Being with this community was a gift to me. My process with this community felt a bit like a slow cooker, in that I felt that it continued to impact and change me on different levels over time. Initially, I found myself struck by their presence. There was GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 140 potency to their rawness and authenticity. It almost felt as if someone was looking right through me, and there was a sense of no bullshit. At first this was difficult for me as I struggled to bring myself as authentically to the interaction. I am used to people having somewhat of a face or filter, but with this community, there was no fluff. Yet in this, there was also lightness and their authenticity created a comfort and safety together. They had such depth together, but also erupted into laughter and jokes frequently. The more time I spent in their presence, and even after watching back the interviews, I found myself laughing and resting more into their way of being. It struck a longing in me for more of this authenticity in my own life and modelled for me what this could look like. The more time I spent, I felt a freedom in the way that they were together and in their friendship that I longed for. In the second interview with this community, I noticed that I was excited to be in their presence. At first their presence felt intimidating, but over time it allowed me to just be myself, which felt like such a gift. Another aspect of this community that created a lot of reflection for me in the analysis process was the concept of the shared experience. This was the only community where the community member also shared the experience of losing children. I kept asking myself, what is it about the shared experience that connects them and allows them to grieve together? It seemed to be that seeing someone else feel and experience the same things gave permission and validation in their experience. I do not know if it is so much the same experience as it is that someone else made it ok to feel what they felt and to allow their experience to stand as it was. I reflected on my own relationships and the people I usually gravitate toward in community. I often want to be around people who are like me, particularly with pieces of my life that feel less secure or easy. I remember times in my life where I felt like I was the only one feeling a certain way and it made me feel like something must be wrong with me. When GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 141 someone reflected to me that they experienced a similar feeling, it brought a huge sense of relief and connectedness; I no longer felt so alone and felt allowed to feel the way that I did. It seemed to be having a similar effect here in this community. I also reflected on the ways that I drew strength from those experiences of being around people who were like me or experiencing something similar. The validation I experienced in those places gave me strength to then be with people in different places. When I stood alone, I did not feel alone; I still felt that those who shared my experience were with me and I had them to run to when I need it. I imagine when grieving in a society that is largely death denying and emotionless, it is difficult to give yourself permission to grieve. Having someone else with the same experience seems to create this permission to grieve and to fight for the space to grieve just by being in it together. It seemed to provide some ground to stand on. This ground could be established without the shared experience, but it seems to happen here in a powerful way through seeing one’s own experience in someone else, making it more acceptable and giving it more ground. This community also evoked reflections around the suffering of life. This community has not only had the death of four children, but also many other aspects of suffering to walk through in their lives. They seemed keenly attuned to the suffering of life and this sense that life is “shitty”. Part of their view toward the world and suffering of life felt connected to their sense of life being unfair to them, but at the same time it seemed connected to the reality of life. To be honest, this induced a lot of anxiety for me, feeling a sense of impending doom – when will it be my turn? Although I have walked through my own sufferings, life has, at large, been fairly good to me. The thought of life being about suffering made and often still makes me afraid. There is a sense of not knowing if I would survive whatever suffering comes my way; if I would make it to the other side and fearing that it would in fact swallow me up or wound me beyond repair. I GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 142 noticed my own death anxiety, and particularly the anxiety around losing the people I love. How do I live with this reality that I will mostly likely encounter significant suffering at some point in my life? How do I prepare myself for this? How do I take in the joy of right now not knowing if I will lose all this goodness I feel in my life? I began to live, and even work to bring to my constant awareness, the reality that my life, as it is, could at any moment, be ripped from me. My response to all of this was, and often still is, one of control and grasping. I want to hold things closer to try and do the best I can to not let them out of my sight, or to worry insistently about them as a means of control. Yet, this feels like no way to live my life. Do I shut myself off to the suffering and pretend it is not there? Or that it will not happen to me? This also does not seem like a way I can live. So then, it came to this place for me – how do I exist in this tension of knowing that at any moment my life could change so drastically and be filled with such suffering, and still embrace and live my life today? I honestly do not feel I have mastered this by any means and I often gravitate still to the side of anxiety. It feels incredibly vulnerable to live life, taking in all the goodness, but holding it with an open hand. This community lived in this openness though and gives me courage just by witnessing the ways they have made it through suffering. Not just that, but also the richness and depth that has emerged from their lives through suffering and the people they have become. They helped me to see transformation and hope at work admits the realities of suffering. Between-Case Analysis As outlined in the protocol of the QA-PM (Valach et al. 2002; Young et al., 2005) and instrumental case design (Stake, 2005), the second part of the analytic procedure involved a between-case analysis, comparing and contrasting the individual communities with other communities that participated in the study. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 143 To provide an overview of the community demographics, all community participants were middle aged, between the ages of 37 and 50 and were grieving a post loss of 7 to 15 years. The deceased children were between the ages of 14 weeks gestation and 13 months old. All communities included a married parental dyad and between one and two community members, who were all female. The cause of death for all the children was related to medical issues, some unknown and others diagnosed during pregnancy. The faith backgrounds of the communities were primarily Christian except in the first community where one of the community members did not identify with a religious group. Each of the bereaved parent couples had relationships with their community members that spanned between 10 and 30 years of friendship. In the communities, the bereaved parents mainly talked about their children who died, with the community members talking about the ways they grieved together and supported them. In each community everyone engage in the discussion, but there were varying levels of involvement. All three communities engaged in shared grieving activities and portrayed relational dimensions of grieving in community. The following section will outline the common categories that emerged as well as the unique grieving processes of each community. Lastly, key assertions that emerged will be outlined regarding shared community grieving after the death of a child. Commonalities in the community grieving process. The between-case analysis revealed the following seven categories of similar shared grieving actions among the grieving processes of each distinct community. They included, (a) including the deceased child in the family mosaic, (b) showing reciprocity and mutual sensitivity, (c) experiencing joy and pain simultaneously, (d) offering practical support, (e) engaging and honouring vulnerability, (f) sharing about poor community experiences, and (g) learning from children. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 144 Including the deceased child in the family mosaic. One commonality among the three communities was the way that the deceased child was included as part of the family and honoured by the community through the use of their name, remembering important dates, and visual displays or memorabilia of the child. In this way, the deceased child’s memory was kept alive and a connection to them sustained within the community. This was more explicit in the third community and more implicit in community one and two. In community one, Andrea talked about mentioning to people that they had two children when people asked how many kids they had. Although they talked about the difficulty of answering this question, they discussed a desire to talk about their deceased son as part of their family. Andrea talked about how they shared about their deceased son with their daughter as one of the ways to process their grief. Their community member, Christine, talked about an open visual remembrance of their son within their home, which was a way that they included him in their family. Andrea and Justin also talked about how their daughter will now correct them if they answer people’s question about children by saying “one” and will talk about her brother who died. In this way, the bereaved couple and community grieved together by the ongoing inclusion of their son and maintaining a connection to his memory. In community number two, the inclusion of the deceased daughter was not discussed explicitly, but she was integrated naturally and there was evidence of this throughout the NIC, CC, and SCI interviews. In the NIC, the family talked about how they take every opportunity to tell the story of their daughter, Julia. He.NIC.51: “…then it became her legacy (points to Jessica) and I think that's a beautiful way of saying it. It's like how do we move on, how do we, transition into being a family of four, after being a family of five? How do we live our lives in a way that honours all that she taught us? And umm... I promised that I would always share her story so when there's opportunities to speak or other families that contact me because of grief or a grief study (hands up), I promised I would always share her story, so yeah...” GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 145 Heather and Richard brought pictures and memorabilia of their daughter that they showed to the research team in the NIC, including their daughter’s blanket, a piece of jewelry that memorialized her, and journals, which they referred to often, signifying an ongoing and open connection to their deceased daughter. During the NIC and the CC, the community member, Jessica used their daughter’s name openly and talked about memories she had with their daughter. Jessica talked in the NIC about how she wanted to help carry on the legacy of their daughter from the time that she died. Je.NIC.51: “...at that point when I had received their call that she had passed...for me it became about her...legacy (deep breathe). And that was really the only word that resonated in my heart, in my soul at that point…I knew how many people [Julie] had touched in her journey... and I knew the impact...that would come from her passing... so for me it just became about how do I support these amazing people as they watch the legacy of their daughter unfold? (crying) (Heather crying). And that's what became important to me (crying) at that time, so...” Jessica talked about her personal commitment to keeping their daughter’s legacy alive. Jessica also talked about Heather giving her clothing that belonged to Julia that she used for her daughters, which was another way to honour Julia’s memory. Je.NIC.52: “…so I remember after [Julie] passed, Heather gave me a box of Julie's clothes...because my daughter was... (wiping tears) close in age...and I felt so honored to have those…and there's a specific little dress, a white one, and it's got all these coloured polka dots on it (crying) and I just love that. I had my daughter in it as much as possible and it's one of the things that I'll never ever give away. And the fact that Heather could give something like that to me...(crying) knowing what it meant (Heather crying) to her, so... so my daughter could wear it. Like it was really hard for me to process that (Heather wiping tears) and feel like it was ok for me to do it. But I'm so glad and thankful because it brought so much joy. Joy to watch her wear it and what it meant…” At the MCI, there were also photos of their deceased daughter hanging in their home signifying an open remembrance and inclusion of her in the family. In this way, they grieved together by having their deceased daughter as an integrated part of their lives and community. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 146 In community three, Ella and Cassidy talked about the use of their babies’ names together as a significant way they shared in their grieving together and supported one another. They talked about the use of their children’s names as a way to honour their children’s lives and their ongoing grief. Cassidy talked about how because their babies died before birth, no one else knows them and so they are not talked about. Ella also talked about how often with miscarriage or stillbirth, babies do not have names, and in naming the babies it gave voice to their grief being the loss of a child. In remembering their names together they were able to honour their memory and give space for the ongoing grief of their babies in their lives. Ca.SCI.85: “Yeah! Oh yeah! Totally! (Yeah) Like because we do, around dates and stuff, we phone each other, or send emails and cards (yeah, yeah), to like, ‘Oh hey, it's Anna’s birthday coming up, how are you doing about it? How are you feeling?’” They talked about the ways that remembering dates also helped to acknowledge ongoing grief that may be present in their bodies but not within their conscious awareness, and through recognizing this they could help one another to engage in their ongoing grieving. Including the child’s name and remembering dates were significant ways they grieved together, continuing to remember and honour their children and their ongoing grief. Showing reciprocity and mutual sensitivity. Within all three of the communities there was a culture of giving and receiving support. Each of the communities navigated the space within their relationships and although the support was directed more toward the bereaved, there was still a sense among the community of being cared for and/or the bereaved being sensitive toward their needs/life situation. In community one, they often talked about their community as having a culture of reciprocity. The bereaved couple talked about the ways that they freely offer their support to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 147 others and how they expect others to do the same. As a result, they surrounded themselves with community who shared these values and quickly offered help. Ch.SCI.70: “…they are supportive people too...I think Justin had made one comment about, how they give and they just expect... And I think they have surrounded themselves with people that have that similar kind of attitude or (yah) giving aspect to them…” Andrea also talked in the CC about the ways that she would ask Chloe about her family members when she came to visit her in the hospital. Chloe talked about how she felt Andrea showing care for her and her family too, even in her grief. Andrea also talked about the ways she was able to encourage other mothers and help them not to worry. Andrea’s way of giving back was also how she found meaning in loss. In community one, the culture of reciprocity was one of the ways in which they grieved together that was similar to other communities. In community number two, Heather and Jessica talked about wanting to remain connected and supportive of one another in very different seasons of life. They talked about being very aware and sensitive to the fact that each of them was in a different place and neither of them wanting the other to feel guilty or burdened. He.SCI.4: “I was also worried about her because she had a new baby as well. And I was always trying to be really sensitive to support her and not make her feel guilt… Just really wanted Jessica to feel...supported.” Je.SCI.6: “She's always there for everybody else. Always! So there was a battle for me to say, like, be super respectful and aware of, like her battle is so much bigger than mine…just you know, me being mindful of that and not overstepping, but also knowing that she's still my best friend! And I can still talk to her about life.” They wanted to connect to the support they had in one another and shared the space together in their relationship through the awareness of their different seasons and being mutually sensitive to one another. Heather and Jessica talked back and forth about the sense of selfless love and reciprocity they felt in their relationship. This shared support was one of the ways they grieved together and walk through this season of life. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 148 In community three, there was also a shared sense of space and support. They did not discuss this explicitly but this could be seen throughout the CC. Throughout the conversation one of them would share and then the other would respond back to what they shared or expand on what they said with a story to validate the point they had made. Ella and Cassidy both had moments where they talked about their grief and the other would support them and empathize and then the other person would share and they would join them in their emotional space. In this way, there was reciprocal care throughout the conversation, each sharing their thoughts, feelings, and experiences and feeling mutually heard, understood, and validated. Experiencing paradoxical emotions simultaneously. In communities two and three, the members talked about how in grieving together involved being able to experience paradoxical emotional states of joy and pain and the profound understanding that these emotions can occur together. In both of these communities, the conversation also moved with ease between joy and pain and could be felt simultaneously at times. In community two, Heather talked about learning to embrace joy and pain and how her children were an instrumental part of her community in teaching her this. Heather and Richard talked about children’s emotional openness and unfiltered nature that allowed them to move back and forth between the intense pain of grief into playing again. Heather also talked about how the joy her children brought was something that forced her to reconcile pain and joy going together. He.SCI.38: “Because they forced me to reconcile that I can be happy and sad at the same time. Right? Like…when [my son] is doing something so darn cute, you can't not laugh, right? And so umm...coming to that realization that I could be happy and sad equally. And that it could, that I could feel two emotions at once, was huge in my grief process.” At many moments in the CC joy and pain emerged together. For example, there was immense gratitude for Jessica, while also holding pain at the lack of community Richard felt. There was acceptance for both of these differing emotions to be held throughout the CC. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 149 In community three, joy and pain were also held together throughout the CC and in their relationship. Cassidy talked about how she felt safe to not only experience her pain with Ella and Jonathan, but to also allow joy to emerge. Cassidy talked about how in many other settings, she felt she had to wear her pain to protect it and her child whom it represented. Cassidy talked about how having the depth of her pain acknowledged allowed her to let her guard down to experience joy again and for pain to become a part of life along with joy. Ca.CC.28: “Or like unspoken. Or like this is just life! (Jonathan: Yeah). Here we are! We're just living life! And grief is part of it and our babies are a part of it.” Throughout the CC, the discussion flowed in and out of expressions of pain, frustration, anger, and laughter together. Ella expressed how the space to be as she was and experience all of her emotions added to her ability to experience joy and pain simultaneously in her grief. In community three, children also seemed to play a role in this; Ella shared about embracing the joy of her living children, while still holding sadness and longing for her deceased children. They also held complex emotional tensions together in the CC. They talked about the longings they had to have all their children with them, but also a sense of joy and relief at the way life has turned out and who they have become because of the loss. They held these together, understanding that they could be grateful for the way life is, while also wishing their children were alive. The capacity to hold joy and sadness and complex emotional tensions allowed them to embrace the complexity of grieving and enter life more wholly. Offering practical support. In communities one and two there was a consistent theme of practical support in how the communities grieved with the bereaved parents. This entailed tangible supports such as caring for animals, meals, giving the bereaved a place to stay, etc. Through practical action, the communities joined with the bereaved in their grief and showed their support to alleviate the pressures of life and meet needs. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 150 In community one, practical action was a main way the community grieved together with the bereaved and showed their support. The bereaved couple talked about the ways their community stepped in to take care of their household, animals and business while they were in hospital after the death of their son. They also talked about the many other extended community members that brought meals, provided parking at the hospital, and offered free services for their son’s memorial service. Andrea and Justin talked about the ways they felt supported by their community through these actions and how help was given until they asked them to leave. This allowed Andrea and Justin to rely on their community without feeling like a burden. An.SCI.44: “And I know with both of them that...there doesn't have to be a thank you. Right? I would know that and...some people need to have acknowledgement to be ok with helping out. They need the thank you. And I know that they don't. So…I wanted them to recognize that...that I value your friendship in so much that I know that I can depend on you without even thanking you! Right? If that makes sense?” Through the practical support of the community for the couple, the community was able to communicate their care, and this was well received by Justin and Andrea who felt carried through this time of their lives. This was a significant way that this community grieved together. Community number two also talked about practical action as a way to show support and grieve together. Jessica shared her perspective that grief was overwhelming and allencompassing and the bereaved were often not able to identify or ask for their needs. She talked about the responsibility she felt to perceive what they needed and take initiative to meet needs. Je.CC.25: “Yes, but you guys wouldn't know what you need (shakes hands and body) and so often what happens is, you know so it's like well ‘anything you need, give me a call!’ (Heather: Yes, right) ‘Anything you want give me a call’. It's like ‘I don't know what I want’ (Heather: Right) and ‘I don't know what I need’ (Heather: Exactly) because I'm too busy...in the moment (Heather: Yes!) (Richard: Mhm) with what I have (Heather: Absolutely) so you would never make that call!” Jessica also talked about the vulnerability of taking action, as she was not always sure if her actions would be what they wanted or needed. Jessica took the risk nonetheless and trusted GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 151 they would tell her if she got it wrong. Richard and Heather also pointed out the way that Jessica and her husband gave up their apartment for their family to be closer to the hospital. Richard and Heather talked about how this gesture was a huge sacrifice and something that not only showed such support, but was also so practically helpful. Jessica talked about her joy to be able to help them and the ease with which she offered up her apartment knowing it would be such a tangible way to help them. In this community practical support was a significant way that Jessica was able to grieve with Heather and Richard and communicated care. Engaging in and honouring vulnerability. In communities two and three, they grieved together by entering into many vulnerable moments together, sharing their fears, regrets, guilt, longings, and sadness, and openly cried in one another’s presence. Both the community members and the bereaved couples revealed intimate parts of themselves to one another and they met one another with compassion, understanding, and empathy. There was honour and respect within both communities toward vulnerability and a desire to understand the other more fully. In community two, throughout the NIC and the CC, there were expressions of sadness and many tears together as they recalled the story of their daughter and her death. There was openness to expressing emotion and when one person cried, they were joined in their pain through shared tears, creating a sense of togetherness in their pain. Jessica talked about her awareness of the tenderness of grieving and her to desire to be there in the way that Heather needed her. She talked about the uncertainty of not knowing what the bereaved needed and how this could paralyze her actions, but at some point taking a leap and allowing the bereaved to guide her. Her awareness made her actions and words more cautious, but she ultimately had to let go of doing it perfectly and enter in. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 152 When Jessica was let into vulnerable places with the bereaved throughout the CC, she joined with them and honoured their vulnerability, feeling privileged to be let into their grief. Jessica seemed to treat these moments of vulnerability with great tenderness and respect, almost as if on sacred ground, and experienced them as deeply connective with the bereaved. Heather also talked about the vulnerability of receiving care. She talked about how she is often the one to help and how it was difficult to receive, as she did not want to burden others. Heather shared about the safety in her relationship with Jessica, but the vulnerability that was still involved. Vulnerability was also present in less explicit way through the CC. Richard shared about many pieces of his grief that he had not previously shared and cried openly. He was met here with compassion, empathy, and respect. In engaging vulnerability there was a sense of turning toward the pain and one another, and helping one another to face the pain. He.SCI.20: “I felt like...the grief I was experiencing was valid and real and for a purpose and I didn't want to waste the pain (hmm). So, so I wanted to lean into the pain…I truly felt the pain was my friend (hmm). Like, like I needed to embrace it, I needed to um...run towards it as opposed to away from it because I was determined to grieve well (wow!)." In community three, they also grieved together by sharing in vulnerability. Cassidy often joined with Ella and Jonathan in their vulnerability through sharing similar experiences to create the sense they were not alone. Early in the conversation, Jonathan shared vulnerably that he did not share the same level of pain as Ella regarding the loss, nor did he reach out to other people. He talked about the caution in sharing this, as he did not want to hurt anyone because of his different experience. In hearing this, Cassidy shared about her own husband’s grief for their second son who died of stillbirth and how it was not nearly as pronounced as hers. In hearing this, Jonathan shared feeling understood and validated in his level of grieving. Vulnerability was also shared between Ella and Cassidy. There were many moments where Ella shared vulnerably about mixed emotions that she was experiencing and a sense of GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 153 guilt for feeling the way she did. Ella shared about feeling a sense of relief regarding where she is at in life, knowing that she could not be here if her children were alive. Cassidy held these tensions and affirmed both of the emotional experiences. Cassidy also joined Ella in this moment, sharing her own sense of guilt when she wonders what life would be like if there son had lived and they did not have their daughter, who has special needs. Ella shared feeling validated in her complex feelings and the courage it took for her friend to admit those tensions. El.SCI.158: “She really expressed a lot there (yeah). There's days (yeah), she wonders how much easier life would be if [her son] were with them and not [their special needs daughter] (yeah). It's a big deal to admit that! (yeah!). So I feel sad for my friend. I feel validated in my own struggle (yeah).” As they shared back and forth in this way, they allowed one another to enter into these vulnerable emotions and thoughts and feel validated in them. In this way, community three grieved together though engaging in vulnerability and creating safety together. Sharing about poor community experiences. Communities two and three grieved together by sharing about poor community experiences. It seemed sharing about these experiences created space to grieve them and to be validated in their needs for grieving. In community two, Richard felt that he had lacked community outside of his immediate family and felt hurt by how certain people responded to him in his grief. Richard was able to express feelings of disappointment regarding people’s responses or disengagement. It seemed in sharing, Richard was able to express and let out a secondary level of grief around the sense of aloneness in his grief. Sharing together about these poor experiences allowed Richard to engage with the emotions he felt in response to his community experiences and have space to process. It seemed that Richard needed to have the anger and pain around his negative experiences voiced and acknowledged and that part of grieving together meant having the space to do that. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 154 In community three, they talked explicitly about how part of their grieving together was running to one another when they had negative community experiences. Ella talked about how she would go to Cassidy when people said hurtful things and that in Cassidy sharing her anger she felt validated in the ways she needed to grieve. Ella talked about the importance of having someone share her feelings of hurt and anger, which seemed to create a sense of togetherness and an ability to fight back for the space she needed to grieve in her own way. Ella and Cassidy both shared the ways they felt defended and bolstered up by sharing anger on each other’s behalf. El.SCI.124: “I think here, we are taking up each other's cause…I’ve got…my person and...she's got my back and she knows what I need…I feel validated in the journey.” In sharing about the negative community experiences and being joined in their anger they felt that someone was on their side, helping them to take a stand, and fighting with them. This occurred during the CC when Cassidy shared about a mother who had a full-term stillbirth and did not have significant grief over the event. They talked about the sense of invalidation and how this woman’s lack of grief threatened their level of pain and the value they placed on their children. As they shared in the anger together, it helped them to affirm the values they held in their grieving. In this community, sharing negative community experiences was another way that they engaged in grieving together. Learning from children. All three communities mentioned their living children as part of their communities and their shared grieving. The way that children engage with death and emotions seemed to create freedom to talk about the death and/or feel the emotions of grief. Furthermore, children seemed to provide a source of joy in the midst of pain. In community one, they talked about the difficulty to answer the question of how many children they have, given their discomfort with people’s overly sympathetic responses. Andrea and Justin talked about how their daughter will now answer that question for them if they do not GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 155 mention their son, talking openly about how she had a brother who died. They laughed as they talked about how easily she mentions not only their deceased son, but also many of the other losses she has had, such as the death of her dogs, cat, and fish. Andrea talked about how her daughter opening up this topic would often lead into further conversation with people about her deceased son. Although this was uncomfortable for Andrea, it seems to speak to the ways that their child invited and opened up conversations of death and loss. Andrea also talked about some of her grieving process being related to explaining the death of her son to her daughter. Andrea and Justin have an open remembrance of their son in their home and Christine talked about how accustomed their daughter is to him being a part of their lives in a matter of fact way. In this way, their young daughter helped them integrate the loss into their life, keeping his memory alive within their family, and to engage with community about the loss, whether or not they wanted to. In community two, Heather and Richard also mentioned their children as central to their grieving. Heather, Richard, and Jessica talked about the emotional openness of children and their ability to engage with whatever emotions emerge. Heather and Richard talked about the ways this helped them to see where they needed to engage with emotions they had suppressed. Jessica also talked about how the unfiltered nature of children can be beneficial to grieving. Jessica talked about how adults have a social filter that hinders them from engaging with others in grief, whereas children can openly talk and engage in the emotional aspects of grief. Richard and Heather also talked about the significant way their children allowed them to embrace joy amidst their ongoing pain. They talked about the joy their children brought into their lives and how they learned to allow themselves to embrace moments of joy with their children, while still holding pain there daughter was not there. Richard and Heather’s children GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 156 were an important part of their community and their grieving and helped them to embrace the fullness of their experience In community three, they did not discuss their living children explicitly, but Ella mentioned her living children as part of her grieving. Ella also talked about how her children taught her to embrace joy and pain together. Ella talked about how after the death of her two children she kept waiting for the pain to end in order to experience joy. She realized that she could take in the joy of having her three living children and embrace all they brought, while still being able to hold the pain of missing her other children. In this way, children seemed to teach her to embrace the fullness of life, of both joy and pain. Unique processes. The communities that participated in this study also had unique processes. The differences between community grieving processes included the foundation of relationships, the types of child deaths, differing levels of emotional connection, the use of social media, mentions of the memorial service, sharing emotional pain without a shared loss experience, and sharing similar loss experiences. In the following section, each community will be listed and their unique processes defined. Community one. A unique feature of community one was their community members were part of their local club, which was organized around engaging in a sport together. Therefore, their relationship with the community members was formed around their shared activity and this was the basis of their ongoing connection together. It is unclear how the connections they shared shaped the grieving process, but the foundation of friendship being a common activity was unique to this community. In terms of the grieving process, family one was unique in their implicit culture of emotional distance in relating to the loss experience. The community seemed to be largely GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 157 organized around protecting Andrea; she had experienced two major losses previously in her life and felt that engaging the emotional aspects of her loss would be “unbearable”. She described emotional walls toward her community and not wanting to engage in people’s sympathies. As a result, the way the community came together in support was mainly an outpouring of practical care. Furthermore, the way the community talked about the loss was mainly factual, cognitive, and light-hearted. This was different from the other communities that expressed varied emotions and tears together throughout both the NIC and the CC. As such, it is worth discussing whether or not this community engaged together in grieving as defined in the current research. It is important to mention that there are more broad and inclusive definitions of grieving. For example, in the Handbook of Bereavement Research, Stroebe et al. (2008) defined grief as “primarily [an] emotional reaction to the loss of a loved one through death…[that] incorporates diverse psychological and physical manifestations. It is a complex syndrome, within which a variety of symptoms may be apparent” (p. 6). Community one did grieve when looking from this broader framework, but according to the more narrow definition used in the current research, of sharing in turning toward the loss, they seemed to be helping one another cope more than grieving. “Coping refers to processes, strategies, or styles…of managing (reducing, mastering, tolerating) the situation” (Stroebe, Hansson, Stroebe, & Schut, 2001, p.9). The focus in coping is about getting through the experience of loss rather than engaging with it; the ways in which community one distanced from the pain, focused on the future, and sought to keep the pace of normal life resembled this way of relating to the loss. It is important to mention that this is not an evaluation, but observation, and that coping is an adaptive and sometime necessary means to deal with overwhelming emotions and life situations, particularly if there are past experiences related. Yet, coping is not grieving, in the sense of actively and decidedly turning towards the GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 158 loss and allowing oneself to be touched and honestly respond to the ways the loss has impacted life. This community, however, was important to include as the differentiation between coping and grieving is not always clear and this represents one of the ways that communities engage with the loss together and how they define grieving together. Another unique process for community one was their re-engagement with the hopeful and fun aspects of life as a way to grieve or deal with the loss. Justin and Andrea talked about how they discussed having more children as a way to cope with the loss and stay hopeful for the future. They also talked about engaging in fun activities happening around them to get back into the normal rhythms of life again. The other communities did not talk about the ways they tried to remain hopeful or positive in the wake of loss. This unique process seemed to be connected to Andrea’s desire to remain emotionally distant from the loss. The future focus seemed to provide them with hope and the engagement in fun activities kept life moving forward. Another unique process was the use of social media as a part of community grieving. Justin talked about how he reached out to his community through social media and the support he felt through the amount of responses. Andrea and Christine talked about how posting on social media seemed to help Justin not only feel supported, but to also process his experience. Justin, Andrea, and Christine also all commented on how social media provided a method to communicate about the loss without having to deal with numerous face-to-face interactions. Social media seemed to provide an outlet for processing and a means to gain support in the wake of loss. The mention of social media as part of grieving together was unique to community one. The last unique process to community one was their mention of the importance of the memorial service as a marker of community grieving. Justin and Andrea talked about the support they felt around them given the number of people who attended. They also talked about GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 159 the engagement from their community to provide resources for the event. Justin, Andrea, and the community members talked about this event as one of the most significant markers of the community coming together after the loss to show support and grieve together. Community two. The first unique aspect of community two was the foundation of friendship that formed the community relationship. Heather and Jessica’s parents were friends before they were born and they recall being friends since age 5. In the screening calls, Heather and Jessica mentioned that they had often been in different seasons of life (work versus school, living in different provinces or countries, being married while the other was single), and they had always remained connected. It seemed the deep bond in their friendship provided a foundation for them to connect in Heather’s grief and for Heather to receive Jessica’s support. There was also a longstanding friendship between Heather, Jessica, and Richard. Jessica also had known Richard since he met Heather when they were around 14 years of age. Therefore, there was significant history in their relationship that seemed to contribute to the ways they were able to grieve together in community. Richard did not consider himself to have had community outside of Heather, but felt that through Jessica’s support of Heather, she supported him too. Therefore, the community relationship was more specific to Heather and Jessica, but Richard was supported through Heather’s support. The significant length of friendship was unique to community two. Another unique feature in community two was the age at which their daughter died. The other two communities lost their children before or just after birth; however, Heather and Richard lost their daughter after her first birthday. Therefore, Heather and Richard had many memories of their daughter as a part of their family. This seemed to impact the grief they experienced in having to relearn life without their daughter and her extensive medical care as GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 160 well as Jessica’s grief being connected not only to Heather’s but also her own, as she had her own memories with their daughter Julia. Another unique grieving process in community two was their faith as a significant source of strength and encouragement in their grief journey as a community. Heather, Richard, and Jessica shared the same faith and talked about this as a significant part of their lives and friendship. Although they did not explicitly mentioned faith as a part of their shared grieving, in the CC, in the NIC they talked about how they grieved together through prayer and sharing encouraging scriptures, which was unique to this community. Another unique process to community two was the sharing of pain between the bereaved and the community member. Jessica did not share the experience of losing a child, yet seeing their pain evoked pain for her and she allowed herself to experience and express her tears on their behalf. She also had her own grief regarding the loss of their daughter as she was significantly involved in their lives and connected to their daughter. The connection that Jessica had to their deceased daughter Julia and to the bereaved couple’s pain was unique in this community’s grieving. The first community was not engaged emotionally together and in the third community their emotional engagement was undergirded by their shared experiences of grief. In community two, Jessica’s connection and expressions of pain were a powerful way that she was able to enter into grieving with the community and a significant way in which Richard was able to experience community support in a new way in the CC. In witnessing Jessica’s emotion, Richard experienced community caring and being with him in the pain, which he had not previously experienced in community. This type of emotional engagement and support from Jessica without any similar experience was unique to their shared grieving process. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 161 Community three. A unique feature of community three was the way their friendship formed. Ella and Cassidy met at their husband’s work event and what connected them was Ella sharing about her recent miscarriage. Cassidy empathized with Ella and shared her own experience of her son’s death due to stillbirth. Cassidy’s created a feeling of safety to share and validated her grief. Their friendship was formed over the loss of their children and their shared grief. Ella and Cassidy also both lost another child through miscarriage and stillbirth shortly after their friendship formed. As a result, their community was formed around the shared experience of loss. Ella and Cassidy’s grieving process was also shaped by similar values. This shared experience and similar grieving process was unique to this community and significantly shaped their shared grieving. As a result, a process unique to community three was sharing similar experiences in their grieving. They would often share about similar experiences, emotions, and thoughts in response to what the other expressed in their grief. In this sharing, both Ella and Cassidy talked about an immense sense of validation and normalization that came through hearing someone share the experience. For Ella and Cassidy, this created a sense that they were not alone and created more permission for them to grieve. In a similar thread, a unique process in this community was the difficulty to connect with people who had different experiences of grieving. In the same way that sharing a similar process created a sense of validation, seeing someone with a different experience, particularly less pain, seemed to create a sense of invalidation. This was evident in the CC when Jonathan expressed less pronounced grief over the loss of their children through miscarriage. Once Cassidy expressed that her husband’s level of pain was similar to Jonathan’s the tone in the CC shifted and Ella and Jonathan were more accepting of this difference. The challenge to navigate GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 162 different experience was unique to this community and seemed to be connected to Ella and Cassidy having a shared experience and grieving process. Another unique way they grieved together was through helping one another to understand and allow the changing waves of grief. Ella and Cassidy talked about how grief seemed to change with each year, sometimes being more difficult and other years feeling easy. They talked about how this often felt mysterious and one of the ways they helped each other was to make sense of why these changes may be occurring and connect the dots. Ella shared about a more recent season of pronounced grief and Cassidy helped her to see the significant milestones in her life that could be contributing to her grief. Ella talked about feeling understood and validated through Cassidy helping her to see how her grief was connected to her life situation. There was a shared understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of grief with all of life that helped them guide and remind one another. This was a significant and unique grieving process. Key Assertions The community grieving processes of the three communities were analyzed through within-case and between-case analyses. After thoroughly reviewing the analyses, considering both each unique community and all three communities together, the primary researcher brought together the following four key assertions; these outline the most salient findings related to how it is that communities grieve with bereaved parents after the death of a child. Assertion one. In this study, communities grieved with bereaved parents by selflessly and freely offering emotional and practical care to the bereaved by identifying needs and initiating care. Communities often gave support in the form of practical care, helping to alleviate and manage life tasks in the wake of loss. This allowed the bereaved space to engage in their grief and showed support for grieving by understanding the all-encompassing nature of grieving GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 163 and the need for life tasks to be carried. The community members initiated the support through sensing needs and meeting them. The initiative was necessary as the bereaved were often unable to identify or ask for their needs to be met given the overwhelming nature of grieving. It required the community members to sense what was needed and to follow this in their actions in meeting needs. The support offered was selflessly and freely given, in that it was focused on the bereaved, rather than on what the community member needed or wanted from the bereaved. Support was in tune with one’s self, however, in that it involved the community choosing what to give and offering themselves or their resources. The community members offered care without any expectations, asking any questions, or having any strings attached. This selfless support created safety for the bereaved to rely on their communities, not feeling that they were burdening them, or that they needed to manage them, or pay them back. The free offering of selfless support for the bereaved was a significant way that communities engaged in grieving with the bereaved and showing their togetherness with them. This was received by the bereaved as immensely supportive and connecting. Assertion two. Communities grieved with bereaved parents by engaging in and honouring vulnerability, intentionally turning toward the pain of loss and one another. Grieving together was vulnerable for both the bereaved and the community members and it required a willingness to step into vulnerable territory that is painful and uncertain together. Grieving together also required engaging in vulnerability through taking risks. It was often difficult to know exactly what to say, or what was needed, and yet taking action, rather than being paralyzed in fear. Taking risks required trust in themselves and their intentions and that the bereaved would be honest if the community members got it wrong. What guided the communities’ actions to engage in vulnerability was a deep desire to remain connected to the bereaved. The GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 164 communities also grieved through an attitude honouring vulnerability. When the bereaved shared about their pain, anger, sadness, longings, and regrets, it was not viewed as something to be solved or fixed, but was seen as a privilege to hear and treated tenderly and sacredly. There was a deep honour and trust toward the bereaved and their grieving process. This attitude of honour created safety for the bereaved to let community into their pain and share in it together. Assertion three. Communities grieved with bereaved parents by holding the complexity of grieving together with them; this was done through seeing the ways that grief is connected to all aspects of their lives, allowing for paradoxical emotions, and changes in grieving over time. In the communities, they helped one another to see how their grief was connected to the many aspects of their lives and contexts – their families, roles and responsibilities, values, hopes and dreams, faith, and relationships. This not only helped the bereaved to see themselves and their grief more clearly, but to allow the uniqueness of their grieving process, given all of these interwoven aspects of their lives. Communities also grieved with bereaved parents by helping them to hold paradoxical emotions in grief – joy and pain, longing and gratitude, hope and dismay, thankfulness and regret. They did not try to simplify these seemingly opposing emotions, but allowed them to exist together and created space for all of them to be felt and validated. Communities also held complexity by allowing grief to change over time, sometimes being easier and other times being more difficult; they did this through helping the bereaved to connect their grief to the contexts of their lives, demystifying the reasons grief felt easier or more challenging in certain seasons. In seasons where it also did not make sense, they allowed the bereaved to be there and validated the ways that grief changes unexpectedly. In this way, they helped one another to ride the unforeseen and sometimes mysterious waves of grief. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 165 Assertion four. Communities shared in grieving together with bereaved parents by engaging in and fostering remembrance of the deceased child within their community. Fostering remembrance took on many forms, such as using names, remembering important dates related to the deceased child, and having memorabilia of the child (clothing, blankets, photos, etc.). Connections to the deceased child were fostered and nurtured within the community. The communities’ openness and engagement with remembering the child honoured the importance of the child to the bereaved and shared their grief by valuing the child within the community. In remembering the child it also allowed for the bereaved parents to have an ongoing connection to their child that could be shared in community, rather than having to be kept private. Lastly, remembrance of the child created space for ongoing grieving and changes in grief over time, acknowledging the ways that their child would always be part of their lives. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 166 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION The purpose of this study was to understand the ways that communities grieve with bereaved parents after the death of a child. The discussion in this chapter will expand upon the findings in chapter four, relating them to the literature on interpersonal and community grieving. The chapter will begin with a summary of the research problem, including the gaps in the current literature on community grieving. Next, a summary of how the findings are consistent with existing literature will be provided followed by novel findings of the study. Theoretical and clinical implications will then be provided. The chapter will conclude discussing strengths and limitations of this research and directions for future research. Summary of the Research Problem The death of a child is a painful and life-altering experience (Oliver, 1999). Bereaved parents’ psychological and physical health is significantly impacted as well their sense of self, identity, and the being-in-the-world (Attig, 2004; Cacciatore et al., 2013). Bereaved parents face life-altering questions and during all of this, their relationships with one another and family can become strained often resulting in conflict or even dissolution (Fletcher, 2002). During this time community relationships can become distant or conflicted, often resulting in bereaved parents feeling unsupported or isolated (Vandecreek & Mottram, 2009). Although grieving is an inherently relational activity, it has mainly been studied as an intrapersonal process (Archer, 2008; Shapiro, 2001). More recent research has examined relational aspects of grieving between bereaved parent couples and families, but the research on community level grieving is limited (Archer, 2008; Bartel, 2017; Bentum, 2017; Klaassen, Young, & James, 2015; Nadeau, 1998, 2001). Researchers have acknowledged the impact of communities on the bereaved and the benefits community support can have for bereaved parents, GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 167 but much of the research on community is focused on negative experiences of community support (Arnold & Gemma, 2008; Giannini, 2011; Wilsey & Shear, 2007). The research that does examine positive experiences of support is mainly collected from the retrospective reflections of the bereaved parents and fails to describe and understand the relational dynamics of community level grieving through examining bereaved parents’ and communities’ experiences together. The current research sought to fill this gap in the literature examining, through shared interviews, how communities grieve with bereaved parents after the death of a child. Contributions and Implications This study contributed to a gap in the literature and adds to bereavement knowledge, theory, and research methodology, and has implications for counselling psychology regarding relational grieving at a community level. The specific novel contribution of this research is the in-depth understanding of the relational process of community grieving with bereaved parents and their community members. Within this, there are three important and novel findings regarding an understanding of relational grieving in community. Firstly, grieving in community involves what I will refer to as reciprocally sensed harmonizing, in which the bereaved and community members reciprocally discern how to meet one another moment to moment. Secondly, understanding how relational grieving within community involves vulnerability and the actions and attitudes that facilitated vulnerable engagement together. Lastly, the ways that relational grieving in community involves holding complex tensions, including viewing one another within the context and allowing simultaneously emotional states. Before outlining these novel findings further, we turn to the ways the research confirms existing research and theory regarding community grieving. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 168 Connecting with previous bereavement research and theory. The findings of this study are consistent with earlier grieving research and theory in four specific areas: (a) confirming previous research on types of community care and interactions that are experienced positively, (b) supporting continuing bonds theories and the importance of allowing and sharing these within community relationships, (c) highlighting how the social context is intertwined with grieving in ways that both facilitate and inhibit/complicate grieving and relationships, and (d) the scaffolding of community with closer and further types of community support. Community care and interactions supporting the bereaved. Much research examining community-level grieving has studied types of interactions and forms of communication preferred by the bereaved that are experienced as supportive in their grieving. The current study was consistent with these findings in the following ways: (a) the value of practical support, (b) specific forms of preferred communication, and (c) the special support experienced with those who have a shared experience. Practical support. Shapiro (2001) suggested that “without practical help, [bereaved] families become too burdened with real life problems to afford the luxury of exploring the enormous shifts in image of self, relationships, and meaning precipitated by the death” (p. 318). This type of instrumental support sustains the practical aspects of daily functioning and allows the bereaved to engage with the larger questions and emotions in grieving. Gear (2014), Benkel, Wijk, and Molander (2009), Breen and O’Connor (2011), and Hunt and Greeff (2011) all examined social support for bereaved parents and individuals and found practical support as a significant theme of positively experienced support. Gear (2014) found that bereaved parents reported often having a difficult time knowing what they needed or asking for that, and the importance of communities initiating and providing specific offers of support. Benkel et al. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 169 (2009) found the bereaved expected and received practical support and felt immensely supported by the shows of practical care and Breen and O’Connor (2011) found that practical support helped to strengthen relationships between the bereaved and community members. Practical shows of support often included preparing meals, helping with chores, life tasks, assisting with funeral arrangements, and offering financial support (Breen & O’Connor, 2011). The aspects of practical support that were deemed most helpful included initiating to meet possible needs, providing specific offers of help, respecting parents’ decisions around receiving or declining support, and being generous with finances (Gear, 2014). The value of practical care from community for the bereaved within the existing literature is consistent with the findings of this research study. A significant way that the communities came around the bereaved and grieved together with them was through practical support. Bereaved families shared about the sense of care and togetherness they experienced with their communities through the show of practical care, which included things such as caring for their household tasks, bringing meals, offering them places to live, providing services for the memorial service, and covering costs. Community two discussed specifically the importance of the community members initiating practical support similar to Gear’s (2014) findings, given the overwhelming and all-encompassing nature of grieving that made it difficult for the bereaved to know their needs or ask for them to be met. Community one spoke extensively about how they felt carried by their community in the wake of loss and felt that all of life’s tasks were cared for until they could take them back themselves. In this way, the findings of this study were consistent with the existing literature. Specific forms of communication experienced as helpful. Much of the research regarding community support has examined helpful and unhelpful supports, specifically with respect to GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 170 varying types of communication (Breen & O’Connor, 2011; Christensen, Segerstad, Kasperowski, & Sandvik, 2017; Gear, 2014; Giannini, 2011; Hunt & Greef, 2011; Rack et al., 2008; Swartwood et al., 2011; Wilsey & Shear, 2007). The findings within the existing literature have pointed to helpful communication involving the following consistent characteristics: a willingness of the community member to engage with the pain of loss, having authentic communication that involved sincerity and directness, allowing the bereaved to talk and/or simply being there for the bereaved, listening with acceptance, understanding and care, not attempting to know more than the bereaved or trying to offer advice, and validating the grief experiences (Breen & O’Connor, 2011; Christensen et al., 2017; Gear, 2014; Giannini, 2011; Hunt & Greef, 2011; Rack et al., 2008; Swartwood et al., 2011; Wilsey & Shear, 2007). Another specific type of communication that was experienced as supportive that will be discussed further below was the inclusion of deceased children that facilitated continuing bonds. These types of communication styles were found helpful in the ways they allowed the bereaved to be emotionally open, to grieve without time constraints or expectations, considered the uniqueness of the person and their grief journey, and were consistent with their values (Breen & O’Connor, 2011; Gear, 2017; Hunt & Greef, 2011; Rack et al., 2008). All of these types of communication were evident in the findings of the current study. The community members were willing to turn toward the pain of loss with the bereaved and to hold this together with them. Many different emotions were expressed together in the second and third community and they honored painful emotions in one another. The community members made themselves available, listening to the bereaved and often just allowed them to share, without feeling the need to respond. There was a general sense in the communities of authenticity and honesty, communicating in ways that were gentle, caring, and down-to-earth. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 171 The community members had an attitude of acceptance toward the bereaved and allowed them to lead, trusting their grieving process and their ability to know what they needed. The community members validated the bereaved parents’ emotional experience and grieving journey in all of the uniqueness and complexity for each person. They did not place any expectations of timelines on the bereaved, but allowed their grieving to emerge, change, and transform. The communities did not try to fix the bereaved, but were there to be with them and to meet them in their place of pain. All of these important aspects of communication in the findings are consistent with the existing literature about supportive communication for the bereaved. Special support experienced by those with a shared experience. Within the literature on helpful communication, many of the communities studied were made up of fellow bereaved individuals (Benkel et al., 2009; Christensen et al., 2017; Swartwood et al., 2011). Many bereaved individuals sought out communities of other bereaved individuals as they found their existing communities unable to relate to their experience (Swartwood et al., 2011; Christensen et al., 2017). Christensen et al. (2017) discussed the ways that often in these communities the bereaved were able to express grieving that was not acceptable on the outside and helped one another to challenge norms and conceptions of grieving from society. Swartwood et al., (2011) talked about four different aspects of online bereaved communities that seemed most helpful: exchanging hope, validating the grief experience (including normalization and permissiongiving), offering resources and information, and lastly, offering psycho-social support in the form of acceptance and understanding through acknowledging difficult emotions. The type of special support experienced by communities of fellow bereaved individuals in the literature was consistent with the findings of one specific community in this study. Community three was unique in that both the bereaved couple and community member had two GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 172 children die. In this community they talked about the sense of validation they experienced from one another, specifically due to their shared experience off loss. They often shared similar experiences of their grieving process which they reported helped to normalize the experiences of grieving and gave permission for them to grieve in the ways that they needed to. They discussed the helpfulness of not feeling alone and that someone else “got it”. Consistent with the literature, in community three, they also fought on behalf of one another against social norms of grieving, that for them, were experienced as oppressive and silencing of the pain they felt. They helped one another, through anger and humor, to carve out space to allow the pain of grieving, and through this also felt safer to experience joy together. Although all of the communities grieved together, there were specific processes in community three connected to having a similar grieving experience and process, particularly the sense validation, normalization, and resistance against oppressive norms of grieving; these findings are consistent with the literature on the support of communities of fellow bereaved individuals. Consistent with continuing bonds theory. Klass and Walter (2001) emphasized that “over [the course of] history…continued interaction with people after they have died is a far more common pattern than is severing the bonds with the dead” (p 431). Much of the theory related to grieving has shifted in this direction emphasizing the importance of continued bonds with the deceased as a healthy part of grieving, rather than a relinquishing of any connections to those who have died (Archer, 2008; Genevro, 2004; Klass, 1993). Existing research related to community support of bereaved parents and individuals has also found the importance of continued bonds in the types of community support and communication with the bereaved. Gear (2014), Giannini (2011), Christensen et al. (2017) and Breen and O’Connor (2011) all examined the supportiveness from communities in facilitating the bereaved individual’s continued GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 173 connection with their loved one. In these studies, the types of community actions that cultivated an ongoing connection to the deceased loved one included: conversations regarding their loved one, sharing memories, having mementos given to them, having special places connected to the child, special events (e.g. a memorial award), remembrance of significant dates and milestones, acknowledgement of the deceased in day-to-day interactions, and donations of money toward organizations that represented the deceased. These actions supported bereaved parents by allowing them to remain connected to their child within the community. Other researchers have also discussed the importance of being able to share continuing bonds within relationships because of how talking about their child allows the bereaved to explore the significance of their lives and develop internal, ongoing pictures of their children (Davies, 2004). Yet the ability for bereaved parents to do this depends on having opportunities for continued conversations. The importance and value of continued connections with the deceased child and the ways that community relationships can facilitate and share this was also evident in the current research. Bereaved parents and community members spoke about the ways they engaged in grieving together through sharing remembrance of the deceased child. In two of the communities, the communities themselves had not met the children due to the types of death, however, the inclusion of the child was particularly important, as no one else would know to remember them. There was a desire among all three communities to continue to include the child in the family mosaic. The bereaved parents and community members shared in this continued remembrance together through using the child’s name, through remembering important dates together, having memorabilia of the child, and engaging in activities to honor their child’s memory. In this way the continuing bond between the parent and the child was facilitated, but also shared with the community so that their child and the ongoing grief could be GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 174 shared in their relationship together. These findings from the current study are consistent with continuing bonds theory and research related to the helpfulness of continued connections with the deceased and the importance of sharing these in relationships to facilitate continued bonds. Social context is intertwined with grieving. Many bereavement researchers have sought to shift understandings of grieving from an isolated, intrapsychic experience, to an interpersonal activity (Fowlkes, 1990; Neimeyer, Klass, & Dennis, 2014; Giannini, 2011; Shapiro, 2001). As such, bereavement researchers and theorists have called for grieving to be examined more fully within the context of relationships and society to understand the impact of these contexts to both facilitate and inhibit healthy grieving. (Fowlkes, 1990; Giannini, 2011; Granek, 2010; Harris, 2009; Neimeyer, et al., 2014; Shapiro, 2001). Many researchers have theorized about the impact of wider cultural scripts, how these relate to death and grieving, and contribute to social norms that are oppressive and hinder healthy grieving responses (Granek, 2010; Harris, 2009). Other researchers have studied how community relationships can hinder and complicate grieving, leading to the dissolution of relationships, as well as poor outcomes for the bereaved (Arnold & Gemma, 2008; Giannini, 2011; Wilsey & Shear, 2007). As mentioned, other researchers have looked at the ways community relationships can facilitate grieving and provide supportive contexts (Breen & O’Connor, 2011; Gear, 2017; Hunt & Greef, 2011; Rack et al., 2008). In the current research, there was also consistent evidence about the ways that social relationships and wider cultural scripts were linked and influential in the expression and process of grieving. The findings of this research highlight the ways that relationships can help to facilitate grieving and allow for the expression of grieving. Each of these communities expressed the unique ways that they shared in grieving together, pointing to the ways community relationships influence and are linked together with supporting and allowing for grieving. In GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 175 each of the communities they also mentioned instances of other relationships hindering or complicating their grieving. Community one talked about overly sympathetic responses and how they often avoided telling people about their deceased son due to people’s discomfort. In community two, the bereaved father talked at length about poor community experiences with individuals who told them they should move on from their grief, to stop sharing about their grief process, and the ways that certain people distanced, were unavailable, and/or got angry. In community three, they also talked about people who said insensitive comments, suggested they should move forward, and/or compared their grieving process. In all of these instances, the bereaved parents talked about how they felt shut down in their grieving process, hurt, and how many of these relationships ended. They also talked about how fortunate they felt to have the relationships represented in these interviews where they could run to find the support they needed to grieve in the ways they needed to. The experiences of negative community interactions in the findings of this research and the impact that they had on grieving are consistent with much of the bereavement research on community. Furthermore, these findings are consistent with more recent theories of bereavement suggesting the importance of studying grieving within the social context to understand these impacts. Wider cultural scripts were also seen within the grieving process of the bereaved parents and communities. The impact of these cultural scripts had different impacts on the communities due to the overall alignment with wider cultural values. In community one, they desired to have emotional distance from the pain of loss, wanted to move forward with their lives, and retain hope for the future; these type of grieving norms are consistent with larger cultural narratives of how people should grieve that Harris (2009) described, such as remaining emotionally invulnerable, moving on quickly from the loss, and being positive (Harris 2009). Yet, in this GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 176 community these were not experienced as oppressive, as Harris suggested, due to the internalization of these values for themselves. In community two and three, they described the ways these same norms felt oppressive to their grieving process, by rushing their process, hindering their emotional expression, and feeling they had to find a silver lining in their suffering. The community members that participated in these interviews, seemed to create for them, safe havens that helped them resists these larger cultural norms and allowed them to engage with their pain and share this with others, which was what they desired. These findings highlight what many critical bereavement theorists have suggested, regarding the ways that social interactions can police the expression of grieving and cost people relationships if they do not align with larger cultural norms (Fowlkes, 1990; Harris, 2009; Granek, 2010). These findings are also consistent in highlighting how communities that hold countercultural norms of grieving can help the bereaved resists oppressive cultural scripts and find spaces and relationships to grieve. Yet, it is important to note, that the internalization or rejection of these wider cultural messages in relation to grieving impacts the experience of them. Scaffolding of community. Research regarding community level grieving has involved examinations of different types of communities, such as friends and family, religious community, and communities of fellow bereaved parents. Within the literature, there has been evidence of different levels of community support, some being further away from the bereaved and others being closer (Bentum, 2017; Breen & O’Connor, 2011; Gear, 2014). In Gear’s research on helpful support for bereaved parents, participants talked about how helpful support often came from existing networks that they belonged to and that the depth of relationship impacted how closely they let them into their grieving experience. Bentum (2017) had similar findings in his ethnography, except that it was the community members who were assessing their GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 177 level of closeness with the bereaved and the type of support to offer. In Breen and O’Connor’s (2011) study on bereaved individuals, participants discussed smaller social circles with more meaningful friendships in which they would talk more openly about their grieving. The findings of the current study are consistent with previous research regarding the different layers of community support, with some being further or closer to the emotional process. In the current findings, the bereaved parents specifically selected between one to two community members, and these were the people they deemed supportive of them and those that shared in their grieving. It seems that this level of community comprises the small inner circle of community and the parents talked about the ways they felt they could trust these individuals and allow them into their grieving. All of the communities also discussed members of their extended community who were not present for the research study, but with whom they also found support, usually in practical ways. It seems the shared emotional grieving process was only engaged with a select trusted few, but the larger community was still involved in different ways. These findings are consistent with the literature that points to community support resembling concentric circles denoting closer and further relationships involved in grieving. In light of the small community size in the research, it is, however, important to discuss whether or not the relationships represented constitute community. Definitions of community have become increasingly challenging to define in modern society (Dervin & Korpela, 2013). In the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology (2007), community is defined as a “set of members living in a physically defined locality characterized by commonality of interests, attitudes, and values” (p. 201). In the current research, it was defined not by the locality, but the shared interests of the bereaved and what Chavis & Newbrough (1986) refer to as a sense of community (see chapter 2). GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 178 Traditional concepts of community revolve around the structured aspects of community, which involve some unifying aspects, such as location, interests, values, in which people also have norms and codes that inform their actions together. Dervin and Korpela (2013) discussed the ways that community has become more difficult to define given how many aspects of community are more transient and less structured today. Yet people still refer to themselves as being part of ‘communities’ that do not fit within traditional formats. Social network is a term often used interchangeably with community. Some researchers have differentiated it from community and describe it as the “sum total of interpersonal relations of significance in [someone’s] life” (Dyregrov & Dyregrov, 2008, p. 18). Within a social network there are degrees of intimacy described with a closer inner circle and network circles moving outwards. In the current research, community number one seemed to represent more of a traditional concept of community in that there was a physical location to their community and their engagement together revolved around a common shared activity they regularly participated in together within their club; this structured their relationships as well as the sense of connection that they shared together. Whereas community two and three seems to capture this closer, more intimate circle of a social network, in particular, female friendship, as the men were largely not a part of their shared grieving outside of the interviews. Yet, it is important to note that all three bereaved parent couples defined these friendships as their ‘community’. Dervin and Korpela (2013) also mentioned, that in studying community, it is becoming more important to understand how communities are enacted and used as they do not merely exist, but are actively created. Within the research defining and measuring communities and social networks, a consistent factor considered is the difference between the behavioural/functional/structural aspects of communities or social networks versus the GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 179 emotional/mental components involved. Researchers have suggested that the way people feel about their relationships and connections to others is often what defines what those relationships are to them. Mannarini and Fedi (2009) discussed how “people often think of a community as a very personal mental territory” (p. 212). As mentioned in chapter two, a sense of community (SOC) has been found to be an important part of what defines community. Individuals’ experience of community life “includes belonging, shared emotional connection, influence, integration, and fulfillment of needs”, which does not require a particular size or structure (Mannarini & Fedi, 2009, p. 212). Therefore, although what is represented from the outside looking in within a framework of a social network is female friendship, what is experienced between them also seems to be a sense of community, which for them seemed to define community. This contributes to what researcher’s have struggled with in changing definitions of community, regarding the ways it is becoming more defined by how it is experienced versus the form it takes. Novel Findings The relational process of community grieving. Thomas Attig stated that “we grieve as whole persons”, with an understanding that our grieving cannot be separated out from our life situations and larger wholes of which we are a part. He discussed how “the nature of the self…[is] social, permeable, and interdependent…[and] enmeshed within webs of webs encompassing our families and communities” (Attig, 2004, p. 348). This research highlights the ways that grieving is not simply impacted or influenced by the social context, but rather interwoven and shared within community relationships. Researchers have called for contextual understandings of grieving to extend beyond the social setting as merely a moderating factor in grieving outcomes and to understand the ways that our lives are interwoven together in GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 180 relationships, and as such, so is our grieving (Attig, 2004; Neimeyer et al., 2014). To date, research has mainly examined the one-way impact of community on the bereaved. Bentum (2017) explored community grieving in religious communities through a novel ethnographic study. To my knowledge, this was the first study to date that has captured the reciprocal interactions and internal processes of bereaved individuals and community members in a preexisting community setting. Yet, examining shared grieving with community members whom the bereaved selected and felt connected to in their grieving has not been examined. As such this research provided novel insight by capturing the perspectives and internal processes of the bereaved and their close community members together in their shared relational grieving. In this way, the current research does not simply capture grieving within the interpersonal context at a community level, but as a shared relational process within community. Within this new awareness of community shared relational grieving, three novel findings emerged that provide an understanding of community grieving not found elsewhere in the literature. Although these concepts themselves are not novel in their conception or application to grieving, they are newly expressed and described within the context of relational grieving at a community level. These three findings include: (a) shared community grieving as a reciprocallysensed harmonization, (b) community grieving as vulnerable engagement with the loss and one another, and (c) shared community grieving as holding complex tensions of the interconnected nature of humans and their lives as well as simultaneous emotional states. These three aspects of community grieving are separated for clarity, however, it is worth mentioning the difficulty of this task, given these processes were interconnected and overlapping in their manifestation. Shared community grieving as a dialogical sensed harmonization. The reciprocal action of shared grieving within these close community relationships can be described as a reciprocally- GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 181 sensed harmonization. This term is offered to the literature to extend and add to an understanding of the shared relational processes of grieving and suggest the ways that it involves our intuitive capacities and attention to the moment to uniquely discern what is needed. Shared processes of grieving have been examined and described in terms of meaning-making and emotional regulation, but this study highlights the ways shared grieving process, particularly in community, involves determining how to rightfully and uniquely respond to the other through reciprocal sensing (Nadeau, 1990; Stroebe & Schut, 2015). The term “sensing” comes from Existential Analytical psychotherapy (Längle & Wurm, 2016). From this perspective, “sensing is a complex phenomenological perception of the essential in a situation. It connects one’s own essence with the situation and/or grasps the essential of the situation…[so that we can] grasp what [response] is adequate or wrong” (Längle, 2011 p. 50). In this way, sensing the needs of the bereaved connects oneself with the situation and the other person in order to understand how to respond rightfully toward the other. What is right or correct is intuitively felt, rather than being guided by objective rules. Each of the components of this term and the processes involved will be described in more detail below in terms of how that manifested in the current study. Firstly, the process of grieving was reciprocal, in that it was not simply the community impacting the bereaved or the bereaved impacting the community, but there were reciprocal interactions between the bereaved and community that comprised the way they grieved together. Bereaved parents and their communities discerned back and forth what could be emotionally held or carried together and what was willing to be received and engaged in together. From this emerged the way in which they grieved together. As a result of this reciprocally-sensed harmonization there was a different sense of what support was and what was willing to be engaged with in each community. In the first community, there was less emotional engagement GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 182 and more practical support, and in the second and third community, there was more emotional openness. How each community shared in grieving together seemed to emerge from this reciprocal sensing of one another, emotional capacities, and what was desired/needed. As mentioned, research has focused on the one-way impacts of community on the bereaved, but this back and forth discerning of one another in an intuitive manner as a central aspect of shared grieving is novel to the study of relational grieving in community. Shared grieving was also sensed. Sensing the needs of the bereaved, occurred through accompaniment of the bereaved parents, which seemed to involve the community member walking closely alongside in an attuned manner oriented toward the needs of the other. Although the community members were tuned into themselves, it seemed to be for the purpose of the other, rather than meeting their own needs. The attunement involved the community members tuning into a felt sense of what was needed and best for the bereaved at that time. The bereaved also had to sense what they were willing to give, receive, and engage in with the community moment to moment. Sensing did not involve a cognitive appraisal that looked objectively at the situation and assessed what was needed, nor a co-regulating mechanism, but involved coming close to the bereaved and acting based on sensing what was needed in that moment. This type of sensing was central in how the bereaved and communities grieved together. They trusted an intuitive leading to meet each moment rather than any pre-formulated actions or ways of being. When they tried to assess cognitively it seemed to stunt or paralyze their ability to act. Yet, trusting their ability to sense and act based on this required immense vulnerability, but allowed them to share in grieving in ways that authentically and rightfully met one another. For example, in community two, Jessica, the community member discussed a time when she wanted to give Heather a break by taking her out for a haircut. Jessica talked about her GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 183 intense toiling as she was concerned over whether it was the right time and if Heather would think that she was pushing her. She talked about how she cognitively could not figure out whether or not it was the right action and this was paralyzing her actions altogether. In this place of toiling her husband pushed her to trust her intentions and a more intuitive sense about what she felt was needed and to take action and trust that Heather would tell her if she got it wrong. Jessica finally acted from this place, and found that it did meet Heather’s need. Deciding how to act required this connection to herself, a more intuitive sense about what Heather needed, and to take action based on this, rather than trying to understand cognitively what should be done. This reciprocal sensing was a harmonization between the people, the needs, and the moment. Sensing was not something that could be pre-determined, but required close attention to the person, the moment, and to oneself, with a trust to detect what was needed. What was needed, what was willing to be offered, what was willing to be received or engaged in, what did justice to the moment was all part of this reciprocal sensing to harmonize together moment-tomoment. The ways in which they grieved together was an alignment of all these different aspects together, resulting in different moments of shared grieving. It was not simply about grieving a particular way, but about grieving as a shared relational process that involved this harmonization. The concept of reciprocally-sensed harmonization is not new altogether to the literature on grieving in terms of the reciprocal processes of grieving, but is proposed to suggest the more reciprocal intuitive connection and holistic nature involved in shared grieving; the ways that the bereaved and the community connect to themselves, to the moment, and to one another. Researchers have pointed to the complexity of shared grieving and this study highlights the ways that it cannot be separated from relationships or the moments in which it occurs. Much of the GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 184 research on community grieving has captured the preferred types of support and communication the bereaved would like to receive, and although these may provide general guiding principles, it does not capture the process through which this type of support was relationally determined. Some researchers have focused on processes of grieving in relational contexts, such as Nadeau (1990) and Stroebe and Schut (2015). Nadeau examined the process through which families make meaning together of their loss experience. Stroebe and Schut (2015) studied the process of coping, which they described as a “dynamic regulatory process”; this involves regulating the emotional intensity of the loss through orienting toward the loss and restoration in their life, to achieve healthy adaptation. Nadeau (1990) and Strobe and Schut (2015) have examined these processes between bereaved parent couples, and within families. These models add understanding to the relational processes of grieving in terms of shared meaning making and emotional regulation involved in grieving and dealing with the loss. The current research adds to the literature by providing insight and proposing the ways relational process of shared grieving involve reciprocal intuitive and holistic engagement; this involves attention to oneself and their intuitive feeling about the moment and the other person with a focus on how to do justice to both. This research also examined this process occurring specifically at a community level, with those bereaved and those in support, rather than bereaved couples and families. This also captures the ways that shared grieving community experiences can differ, as those grieving connect uniquely to the bereaved and to the moment. This has important theoretical and clinical implications that will be discussed later. Engagement in vulnerability. The fact that grieving involves engagement in vulnerability is not new to bereavement research and theory. The ways in which this vulnerable engagement occurs in shared grieving within community relationships, however, has not yet been described GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 185 within the literature. Harris (2009) who provided a critical analysis of grieving in western society talked about how “death and grief signify vulnerability, which is a sign of weakness [and] in a social system based upon competition and acquisition, weakness is not tolerable, and so grief goes underground” (p.247). Harris discussed the ways that the comments bereaved individuals often receive from well-intentioned others are those that try to diminish their pain or offer distraction to help them “regain control over their vulnerability and emotionality” (p. 247). Researchers have acknowledged the ways that emotionality and suffering are suppressed in grieving because of the vulnerability they represent (Gear, 2014; Giannini, 2011; Swartwood et al., 2011). In the findings of the current study, mainly two of the three communities engaged in vulnerability together. The following specific actions and attitudes supported this vulnerable engagement in the shared process of grieving together: (a) turning toward the pain of loss, (b) turning toward one another in this pain, (c) honouring vulnerability, and (d) being willing to act. The communities engaged in vulnerability through their shared openness and active engagement with the pain of loss. There was an intentional engagement that allowed the pain to be felt and expressed. The bereaved mother in community two talked about the pain being her friend and how she felt the importance of embracing it. They did not shy away from tears or from difficult topics, but chose to express and talk about them and allowed themselves to emotionally connect. This active engagement required vulnerability, not knowing what would emerge, but choosing to engage with and allow whatever came up for them. This active engagement and turning towards the pain of loss was not engaged only in private, but was shared together. In turning toward the pain of loss, they also intentionally and decidedly turned toward one another in this pain, sharing and holding it together. The GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 186 community members and bereaved parents opened themselves up to an encounter, to meet the other person in their loss and to be touched and impacted in this place. Where the pain was not their own, they allowed it to touch them and shared in it through empathy. The community members carried a capacity to turn toward the loss and toward the bereaved parents in their loss. Likewise, the bereaved parents also had a capacity and willingness to intentionally turn toward their loss and allow others to encounter them in their suffering. When this capacity to turn toward the pain of loss and one another was shared among the bereaved parents and the community members, this intensified the emotional connection in grieving together and deeply connected them in relationship. There was variation within the levels of vulnerability in each community. In community one they did not want to turn toward the pain of loss nor share this with their community. There were several reasons for this described by the bereaved mother, yet it seemed to limit their shared grieving, so their connection remained more factual and practical. These displays of vulnerability in one another were also approached with an attitude of honour. The goal in being together in grieving was to connect and vulnerability was experienced as something deeply connective, rather than something that needed to be fixed. When someone would share their deep pain, the others would respond with gratitude at being let into their journey and treated these moments as sacred. This was described as creating safety and trust to reveal oneself and share in the pain of loss together. Lastly, they engaged in vulnerability though acting and responding without any guarantees of getting it right and the willingness to be wrong. The reciprocally-sensed harmonization between the bereaved and their community members required immense vulnerability. Sensing required tuning into a deeper intuition of how to be with or meet someone in the moment, rather than cognitively assessing the situation. This required trust in oneself and GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 187 their ability to attune to the other and the moment. They had to act based on what they sensed in the moment and allow the other to receive or decline. In sensing how to be and act with one another, both the bereaved and the community members had to bring themselves fully to one another and the moment. The existing literature on community grieving has also described vulnerability as an important aspect of support. Gear (2014) found that bereaved parents experienced helpful support from their community members when they reciprocally engaged in vulnerability and when they were willing to face the depth of loss with them. In Sartwood et al.’s (2011) research on online grief communities, he found that one of the ways they communicated and expressed support was through attending to difficult emotions, which resembled an honoring of vulnerability. Yet these research findings describe the experience of support solely from the perspective of the bereaved parents or through analysis of communication online between bereaved individuals. Describing the process of vulnerable engagement and the embedded processes occurring between bereaved parents and their community members as part of their shared grieving is novel to the literature on community bereavement. Holding complex tensions. Bereavement researcher and theorists have frequently highlighted the complexity and paradoxical nature of grieving (Attig, 2004; Wolfelt, 2015). This understanding is not new to the bereavement literature, yet, how bereaved parents and community members hold complex tensions, as part of shared grieving, is a novel contribution to the literature on community-level grieving. These tensions were held in community relationships by helping provide a contextual understanding of the person and by not reducing simultaneous emotional states. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 188 The bereaved parents and community members held complexity through reminding one another of how their grieving was connected to the many aspects of their lives. They connected grieving with stages of life, dreams/hopes, other children, current experiences, and most importantly values. In identifying the values that connected to their grieving process, this helped illuminate their unique process, changes in grieving over time, and intensity of their grieving. In these ways they helped one another connect their grieving to the interwoven nature of their lives. Bereavement theorists have suggested that grieving should be understood as intertwined with all of life (Attig, 2004). Yet, understanding how the bereaved and community members share in this together as part of grieving has not yet been described in the literature. Bereaved parents and communities also engaged with complexity through allowing and holding paradoxical emotional states. The conversations together often flowed in and out of sadness and joy and these emotions could be felt simultaneously at times. The participants also talked about paradoxical emotion states, such as sorrow and joy and longing and gratitude. When describing these, they would give permission for one another to feel both of these experiences at the same time, not trying to simplify or reduce the experience. The participants talked about the ways their relationship together helped them to hold these paradoxes and as a result, to transform and expand as persons to share in the fullness of their experience and life. Bartel (2016) examined family grieving as a relational process and also found that families grieved together through holding simultaneous emotional states of joy and sadness. Although bereavement theorists have discussed paradoxes in grieving, how it occurs as part of the relational process of grieving in community has not yet been described in the literature. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 189 Theoretical Implications The current research has implications for bereavement research and theory. Firstly, the research provides more support for the importance of understanding grieving as a relational and contextually-situated experience and activity. Numerous studies have pointed to the ways grieving is contextually influenced and the relational aspects of community grieving (Attig, 2004; Fowlkes, 1990; Giannini, 2011; Granek, 2010; Harris, 2009; Neimeyer et al., 2014; Shapiro, 2001). There have been many calls to develop relational models of grieving (Neimeyer et al., 2014; Shapiro, 2001). This study provides further evidence that grieving models are needed that help to understand the relational nature of grieving and capture it as a holistic, reciprocal processes, rather than a segmented individual activity with one-sided influential factors. Existential-phenomenological models of grieving help to improve how we describe relational grieving since grieving is understood to be intertwined with the larger wholes of one’s life (Attig, 2004). In Attig’s (2004) existential-phenomenological model of grieving, he suggests grieving as a re-learning the world, in which we re-learn our being-in-the-world. Thus, grieving cannot be separated from our being in the world, and is inextricably connected to our physical surroundings, social surroundings, as well as lived time and space. Attig discusses the ways that we grieve as “whole persons” through our engagement in the world with multiple levels of relearning and adjusting happening at the same time, within the relational contexts of our lives (p. 349). The ways in which bereaved parents and community grieved together, discerning how to meet each other moment to moment, holding complex tensions, and engaging in the vulnerability mirrors many processes outlined by Attig. Models that capture this wholeness in grieving and how it is shared in relationship are needed for an understanding of relational grieving. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 190 This study not only confirms theories and models of grieving as a contextually situated relational process, but also as a decided and active engagement. Klaassen , Bentum, and Gallagher (2015) described relational grieving as the “personal decided engagement with the loss of life-relevant values in which we share our turning towards with another person”. This study was consistent with this definition of relational grieving. In the interviews and through their discussion there was much evidence of the participants actively engaging with the loss and one another. This active engagement involved allowing emotional connection to the grief and one another, and having an attitude of openness with time and space for whatever emerged. There was also a distinct difference between this type of active engagement with loss in communities two and three and the grieving experience of community one. Community one often referred to dealing with the loss as “coping” and talked about the ways that they “got through it”. In their process together, they focused on how to keep life moving forward, how to remain emotionally distant from the pain, particularly in the presence of one another, and how to “move on” from the loss. Community one also mentioned near the end of the interview that much of their grieving felt individual rather than shared. Furthermore, there also seemed to be a distinct difference in how the loss and their deceased child were situated in their lives, as something they described as “tucked away”. It seems that grieving together requires an active engagement with loss, and one that is willing to be shared, however, whether this active engagement is possible has many connections to the person, their situation, and relationships. Bereavement theorists have suggested differences between coping and grieving with others arguing that coping is grieving (Stroebe & Schut, 1999). This study highlights the possible differences between active engagement in grieving and coping with the loss and potential connections to how that positions the loss in the lives of the bereaved and community. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 191 Lastly, this study was consistent with Stroebe and Schut’s (1999) Dual Process Model (DPM) of grieving in relation to the oscillation involved in coping with loss and could also contribute to or extend their theory in terms of how the dual processes can emerge concurrently and in relationship. The authors describe coping with the loss as an oscillation between two different types of stressors, ones associated with the loss and the restoration, or secondary levels of loss. Both processes were evident in the findings of the current research. The bereaved families talked about times when they wanted to engage with the pain, and other times where they either needed to attend to life or wanted a break from facing the loss. The bereaved parents in community two, specifically talked about their children as a great example of grieving; the children would engage with the loss, allowing themselves to deeply cry and in the next moment would go off and play. They also talked about how their children forced them to attend to life tasks and not just remain with their grief because they needed them. The flexibility between engaging with the grief and life tasks was evident in communities two and three. This was different in community one, where many moments in the conversation felt like an intentional shift in focus from the difficult aspects of the loss toward something funny or positive. This seemed connected to an intention to avoid the pain and a relational process to prevent anyone from going there together. Stroebe and Schut discussed the importance of flexibility to have both engagement and avoidance. These findings described this type of flexible oscillation in communities two and three and also a more rigid orientation toward restoration in community one. The findings of this study could also contribute to extending the DPM two specific ways. Firstly, in the interviews, the oscillation described and witnessed through the participants process together, was a shared relational process, extending the concept of the oscillation beyond an GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 192 individual activity. Although Stroebe and Schut (2015) have sought to integrate their model in more intra and interpersonal ways through developing a family DPM, these still involve segmented tasks of individuals that they can be coordinated to accomplish specific outcomes. In the current study, grieving together involved sharing in the activity of turning toward the pain of loss and one another, jointly orienting toward the pain of loss together and whatever emerged. Secondly, the oscillation between the loss and other stressors/life was not as segmented as described in the DPM, but seemed to flow and emerge moment to moment out of the engagement with loss. It is worth mentioning that these interviews were conducted many years after the loss, and therefore, the type of oscillation could look different, even at this relational level, in the immediate wake of loss. The bereaved parents and community members in community two and three, however, seemed to have a natural flow between the pain of loss and other aspects of their grieving, and also joy and laughter. It seemed that these moments of lightness and the shifts in focus naturally emerged from their shared active engagement with the loss, rather than any shared activity of intentionally turning away from or avoiding the pain. These findings suggest that the DPM may need to be expanded to describe the ways that these processes of engagement in loss and restoration occur more concurrently and integrated. Theories that suggest grief work, not a forced engagement with specific tasks, but an active engagement with one’s overall life help to more holistically describe how these different aspects of loss and restoration can emerge together and in relationship and not simply for the purpose of coping (Attig, 2004; Längle, 2012). Clinical Implications for Counselling Psychology There are several clinical implications given the findings of this study. Firstly, given the negative experiences of community support often described in the literature, there have been GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 193 many calls for communities to become better educated to support the bereaved, this study being one of them (Breen & O’Connor, 2011; Christensen et al., 2017; Gear, 2014; Giannini, 2011; Hunt & Greef, 2011; Rack et al., 2008; Swartwood et al., 2011; Wilsey & Shear, 2007). Yet, the research has mainly been focused on the types of support that is desired/needed. The findings of this study point to the importance of community education expanding in two specific ways: teaching communities to approach shared grieving with better attunement to themselves, the bereaved, and the moment and secondly, learning to tolerate vulnerability. Each community involved in this research was different in their needs for grieving, therefore, the reciprocally-sensed harmonization to those needs/capacities led to different outcomes of shared grieving and overall support in each community. It is important that advocacy and education about grieving with bereaved parents avoids a set of programmed rules or responses, and instead teaches how to engage in reciprocal sensing to the moments with the bereaved. The findings regarding the engagement in vulnerability suggest that a willingness to be vulnerable from both the bereaved and the community member could foster shared grieving and help grieving to be approach as an encounter and point of connection. Approaching grieving as something that needs to be fixed or solved produces a mentality of needing to know what to do. These findings suggest that it could be more helpful for communities to expect and embrace vulnerability as part of being with the bereaved, as this may help them to be in the unknown together, with the goal of simply being together there and connecting in these places. As a result, these findings also implicate that community examine their own fears and barriers toward vulnerability that could hinder them in accompanying the bereaved. Likewise, shared grieving is also more likely when the bereaved are open to sharing their grieving and allowing community GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 194 into their suffering. Clinicians can be involved with educating communities to approach the bereaved with a desire to connect and openness to that taking shape uniquely in the relationship. Given the lack of support for bereaved parents described in the literature and cultural norms around grieving for the bereaved, these findings also suggest a larger examination of the cultural factors that hinder vulnerable engagement. Harris (2009) who provided a critical analysis of grieving in western society, suggested that death and grieving represent vulnerability and this is unacceptable in western society due to our economically based, patriarchal, consumerdriven, vitality-loving society. Yet in the communities in the current study, they resisted these social norms, allowing the bereaved to be vulnerable in turning toward their pain, and joined them in this vulnerability through sharing in their grieving. Harris talked about how “much of the focus in grief therapy and support is often upon the ‘un-doing’ of these oppressive social norms, which ironically cause prolonged suffering in grieving individuals by preventing the potentially adaptive aspects of the grief process to unfold naturally without hindrance” (p. 248). It seems that in these communities a key aspect to allowing grieving was the capacity to join together in vulnerability. Brené Brown (2010), a prominent researcher in the area of vulnerability, argued that western society has a lack of tolerance for vulnerability. It seems that not only would a cultural understanding and engagement with the concepts of death and dying change community support, but also the capacity and willingness to be vulnerable (Harris, 2009). Clinicians can help to facilitate wider discussions around vulnerability and how to engage with suffering. Another important implication from the findings of this research was the way that community members had support from their community. It is important for clinicians to be aware and help those who are supporting the bereaved to also have their own supports in place. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 195 Given that community members are often there for the bereaved in ways that allow the bereaved to fully rely on them, they also need someone to process their experience and whom they can rely on. Clinicians can help raise awareness of this with clients who are closely supporting bereaved individuals and to also help wider communities see the value in supporting the bereaved through supporting those who are closely connected to them. Lastly, the findings from community three, in which the bereaved and community member shared the experience of loss, point to the value of communities for fellow bereaved individuals. It is important to note, however, that they both mentioned not everyone who shared the experience with them was helpful. It seemed that their shared grieving process and the alignment of values was their greatest connection point and what became most helpful to them. When these values were aligned, it brought a sense of validation, normalization, and permission to grieve in the ways that they needed to; alternately, when this was out of alignment with someone who had a shared experience it seemed to threaten their way of grieving. This may be important for clinicians who facilitate groups for bereaved individuals to consider. Strengths and Limitations A significant strength of this research was exploring how communities share in grieving with bereaved parents from an interpersonal perspective, bringing bereaved parents and community members together as a whole community and interviewing them about their shared grieving without the presence of the researcher. The QA-PM captures not only the retrospective content of shared grieving, but also illuminates the shared grieving process as it is occurring in the interview. Shared actions were understood through examining observable behaviours, internal processes, and social meanings, as well as the shared intentions underlying these actions. As a result, this method captured holistic, relational, contextual, multi-layered levels of GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 196 communication and action illuminating the complexity of community grieving and providing rich descriptive narratives for an original, contextual, and data-driven understanding of community grieving. This type of research on community level grieving has not, to my knowledge of the literature, been examined, therefore, providing insight into relational dimensions of community grieving not previously understood. The innovative use of the QAPM adapted for community demonstrates the usefulness of a qualitative, process oriented method for examining community level grieving and was a significant strength of this study. Another strength of the research was the diversity of the community groups’ grieving processes. The first community was mainly organized around practically supporting the bereaved, helping them to get back to normal life, and included two community members who did not share the experience. The second community was emotionally open, sharing tears and many other emotions together in their shared grieving, and the community member did not share the experience of loss. The third community included a community member who shared the experience of losing two children to stillbirth, similar to the bereaved mother who lost two children to miscarriage. Their grieving process revolved significantly around validating and allowing their grieving process. These three different communities strengthen the research project by describing diverse community experiences and shared grieving processes where all of the bereaved felt immensely supported and grieved together with their communities. It is also important to note some of the limitations of this study, including (a) the lack of diversity with respect to loss, (b) demographically similar characteristics between communities, (c) relatively limited community participation, and (d) the construction of the research question. In the current study, all of the children who died were under the age of 18 months old, with two of the communities having perinatal deaths. Community two was the only community that had a GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 197 relationship with their child outside of the womb and had the opportunity for their child to build memories within their family and community. The lack of diversity with the type of child loss should be noted in terms of the transferability of the findings, as it is unclear how grieving may differ for bereaved parents and among their communities when their child dies at an older age and when they have existed longer within the family and community. The type of child loss in this study was intentionally undefined, as the parent’s grief and the community’s connection to the loss was the defining criteria. Although the pain of loss was significant among all three, it must be noted that the difference in the length of the child’s life, and the community’s tangible connection to the child could alter the impact on bereaved parents, the community, and their shared grieving. The family samples were also all demographically similar, which should be considered in terms of transferability. The bereaved parents and community members were all middle aged, cis-gendered, Canadian, mainly Caucasian, with mainly Christian faith backgrounds. The types of loss were all related to medical causes and the interviews spanned between seven and fifteen years post-loss. The community members were also all female. The diversity of cultures, faiths, and gender identity as part of grieving in community was not represented, which could change the expressions and shared grieving activities and should be considered for transferability. Although the demographic diversity is limited, the diversity of the grieving processes demonstrates the diversity of shared grieving even within similar demographic populations. The size of the communities should also be considered in terms of transferability. In the first community, the bereaved parents indicated that there were other people they wanted to be present, but could not make it to the interviews. In the second and third community, the bereaved mothers only indicated one person whom they identified as their community member. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 198 The consistently small size of the community should be considered in terms of transferability to larger communities as it is unclear how the relational dimensions of shared grieving would differ with a larger group of close support if larger groups of close support do occur. Lastly, the research question was constructed to ask how communities grieve with bereaved parents, which shaped the research findings in a more one-sided direction with the focus on the communities’ actions toward the bereaved. Although reciprocal grieving actions emerged as a central process in the findings, the research question could limit the findings regarding the interactional nature due to the way it was articulated. Future Research As many researchers have articulated, future research should continue to explore community level grieving using methods that help to capture the holistic, complex, relational dimensions of grieving and expand on these findings (Attig, 2004; Neimeyer et al., 2014; Shapiro, 2001). The current study is one of two known studies that examined both the bereaved and community members together to understand the reciprocal interactions of relational grieving in community. Future research can continue to explore the bereaved and community members together to further expand this understanding of relational grieving in community. Future research regarding relational grieving in community could include more diverse samples of bereaved parents who have a wider range of their child’s age at death, helping to expand the understanding of different parental and community responses when the child is more integrated into the family and community life. Future research could also include bereaved parents and community members from more demographically diverse backgrounds such as different cultures, gender identities, types of deaths, and community members’ gender to further understand how differing communities support bereaved parents and the relational dimensions of GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 199 shared grieving that span across diverse populations. Given that all the community members were female, further research is needed to understand community grieving between males or with more male community members. This research can help provide further understanding of gender as part of the relational dynamics in community grieving. Future research is also needed to understand grieving within the different layers of social networks and communities. More research that includes larger groups of community and different groups within that support network could help provide an understanding as to how different relational dimensions of shared grieving occur at different levels of the community and social network. Future research could also explore the aspects of vulnerability involved in grieving together and further understand the capacities, attitudes, and experiences that helped individuals to engage in this type of openness to the loss and one another. Conclusion Grieving together is not simply about recovering from loss, but an opportunity to engage with life and one another with a richness of clarity and depth that can only be encountered through suffering. In modern society, grieving is often understood as something to be recovered from and the focus on the community is how they can be helpful in the return to normal functioning (Granek, 2014). Granek (2010) stated that, “the pathologization of grief is part of the widespread phenomena of turning everyday problems into psychological disorders to be managed and treated by mental health professionals” (p. 66). In a society focused on positivity, productivity, and progress, there is little “tolerance for the time and space required of [grieving] and the emotional intensity [it] entails” (Granek, 2014, p. 64). As a result, grieving is not only oppressed, but becomes pushed out of our lives and relationships, as does any form of suffering. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 200 When we fail to engage with all of our life, the joy and suffering, and limit our interactions to the positive aspects of our lives we become cut off from one another and ourselves; ironically, this is where more real problems actually manifest (Brown, 2012). When we numb the painful emotions of our lives, we also cut ourselves off from the goodness and joy of life (Brown, 2010). 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There is potential for this phone call to take up to 30 minutes. Is it alright to proceed or would another time be more suitable? For you to be included in this study I first need to ask you a series of questions about your experience of losing a child. If you don’t meet the criteria for inclusion in the study, the information you have provided will be destroyed? Is it alright to proceed? Semi-structured questions: 1. I need to have some basic information about you and your child. What’s you’re your child’s name? If you could please tell me how they died? 2. How long has it been since they died? (In order for the parents to be included, their child needs to have died at least a year ago. If their child died a long time ago, further questions will be asked about their current connection to the community and recollection of community actions to determine suitability. If they do not reach the 1 year requirement, they will be informed of this fact at this point, thanked kindly for their interest in the study, and the phone call will be ended). The research I am doing is about grieving in community and so I need to ask some questions about your community during bereavement that will determine whether or not your situation meets the criteria for this research. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 213 1. Have you had or do you recall having a community of people with you during your bereavement? (If the answer is no, then I would inform them that they unfortunately will not be able to participate in the study and end the phone call here). 2. If so, did these people in your community help you to grieve and engage with your loss? (If the answer is no or they talk about these people being unhelpful, distancing themselves, or helping them to disengage from their loss, then they will not be included in the study. I will inform them that they do not meet criteria as I am looking for people who had community members that grieved with them. I would then end the conversation here). 3. Who are these people and how were they involved? Are you still in relationship with these people? Would you be willing to let them know about the research and ask them to contact me? (If they had an experience where the community helped them to grieve their loss, but they no longer have contact with these people, then I will inform them that they do not meet the criteria and end the phone conversation. If they have continued relationships with those members and they live locally, then we can continue). If all of the above criteria are met, then I can move on to determine their mental and emotional stability for the current study. I would say, now that we’ve determined your suitability for the community aspect of the study, I’m just going to ask some questions about your personal experience with the loss. 6. Can you tell me about how you first learned about your child’s death? What happened after that? 7. Can you tell me about your bereavement experience? How did you cope initially with the death of your child? How has this changed over time/the years? What is it like now? 8. How did the death of ________ affect your relationship with your spouse? Have you been able to support each other in your grieving process? 9. Has there ever been a time when you accessed medical or counselling assistance to help you cope with your grief? What were the reasons for seeking such assistance? GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 214 10. Have you experienced a psychiatric crisis (e.g., called a crisis line, seriously contemplated suicide) since the loss of your child? If so, when did this take place? How are you doing now? (If the potential participant indicates that s/he is actively suicidal, the screening portion of the call will be terminated immediately. The potential participant will be directed to call a suicide hotline (e.g., 1-800-SUICIDE 784-2433) or 911, or sent to their local hospital). 11. Is your partner interested in participating in this study? If so, could I speak with him/her (or have his/her phone number) to go explain the study to him/her? If the person is present and there is sufficient time, speak to the partner at this point. Otherwise schedule a second phone call. Proceed with question #3-10 (the questions about community would be included again for the second bereaved parent to ensure that both people experienced the community as present and helpful for their grieving). To conclude this intake interview I would like to explain to you what is involved in this study, your rights as a participant, how we compensate participants and the limits of confidentiality to which I must abide. Proceed to summarize the two meetings (initial interview and follow up interview and time expectations), compensation, rights to withdraw at any time. Inform participants that you will go over these things again in your first interview and will call them to set up a time in the next two weeks. Then ask participants to identify five community members (defined as anyone who was involved in their grieving and helping them to engage with it) and ask them to reach out to them in the next week to see if they are interested in the study. Let them know that you will forward them the advertisement for the study through email that they can share with their community members to give them information about the study. Let them know that your contact information is on the advertisement and ask them to tell community members to contact me to set up an intake interview if they are interested. Let them know that you will be in touch with them in the next week to see how things have gone with reaching out to their community members. To close, ask if they have any final questions about the study. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 215 APPENDIX C Telephone Screening Call for Community Members Date of screening call: Name/contact info: Introduce myself & explain that I am returning his or her call regarding participating in the community grieving study that ________ (name of bereaved parents) told them about and asked permission for me to contact them. Thank you for your interest in this study. The purpose of this call is to explain the study to you and to determine whether your experience fits with the purpose of the project. There is potential for this phone call to take up to 30 minutes. Is it alright to proceed or would another time be more suitable? For you to be included in this study I first need to ask you a series of questions about your experience supporting ______ (name of bereaved parents) who lost their child. If you don’t meet the criteria for inclusion in the study, the information you have provided will be destroyed? Is it alright to proceed? Semi-structured questions: 1. I need to have some basic information about you. How are you connected with the _________(name of bereaved parents)? In what way were you connected with the deceased? 2. Can you tell me a bit about your bereavement experience? How did you cope initially with the news of ________ death? What is it like now? 3. Has there ever been a time when you needed medical or counselling assistance to help you cope with your grief? What were the reasons for seeking such assistance? GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 216 4. Have you experienced a psychiatric crisis (e.g., called a crisis line, seriously contemplated suicide) since the loss of the community member? If so, when did this take place? How are you doing now? (If the potential participant indicates that s/he is actively suicidal, the screening portion of the call will be terminated immediately. The potential participant will be directed to call a suicide hotline (e.g., 1-800-SUICIDE 784-2433) or 911, or sent to their local hospital). To conclude this intake interview I would like to explain to you what is involved in this study, your rights as a participant, how we compensate participants and the limits of confidentiality to which I must abide. Proceed to summarize the two meetings (initial interview and follow up interview and time expectations), compensation, rights to withdraw at any time. Inform participants that you will go over these things again in your first interview and will call them to set up a time in the next two weeks. To close, ask if they have any final questions about the study? GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 217 APPENDIX D Demographic Questionnaire for Bereaved Parents This is a study about grieving in community. We are interested in learning more about you and your grieving. Below are some items/questions that will help us understand your particular background a bit more. Thank you for your help with answering them. Name: ___________________________________________________________________ Gender: ___________________________________________________________________ Date of Birth: _____________________________ Current education (check only one option): ____ Completed High School ____ Completed College or Trade/Technical Institute ____ Completed Undergraduate Degree (e.g., Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science) ____ Completed Graduate Degree (e.g., Master of Arts, PhD, MD, etc.) ____ Other (please explain) ______________________________________________ Current profession: ___________________________________________________________________________ Were you born in Canada? YES / NO If NO, what country were you born in: ____________________________ How many years have you lived in Canada: ____________________ GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 218 How would you describe your cultural or ethnic background (e.g., Welsh; German; Taiwanese; French-Canadian; East-Indian; First Nations, Latino): __________________________________________________________ How would you describe your current spiritual/religious background (e.g., Christian [Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, Christian Reformed, other], Buddhist [Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana], Hindu [Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Smartism], Sikh [Nirankaris, Nam-Dharis, Akhand Kirtani Jatha] Muslim [Sunni Islam, Shai Islam], etc.): __________________________________________________________ What language do you usually speak at your home (e.g., English): _______________ How many children do you have? _____________________________________________ Names and ages: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ How old was your child at the time of his/her death? ______________________________ Can you share with me how long it has been since your child’s death? _________________________________________________________________________ Can you share with me how your child died? When and under what circumstances? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 219 What have you done to cope with the loss of your child? (e.g., support from family/friends, parental bereavement support group, worked with a grief therapist, etc.) ______________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________ GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 220 APPENDIX E Demographic Questionnaire for Community Members This is a study about grieving in community. We are interested in learning more about you, your relationship to the bereaved family, and your grief together in the community. Below are some items/questions that will help us understand your particular background a bit more. Thank you for your help with answering them. Name: ___________________________________________________________________ Gender: ___________________ Date of Birth: _____________________________ Current education (check only one option): ____ Completed High School ____ Completed College or Trade/Technical Institute ____ Completed Undergraduate Degree (e.g., Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science) ____ Completed Graduate Degree (e.g., Master of Arts, PhD, MD, etc.) ____ Other (please explain) ______________________________________________ Current profession: ___________________________________________________________________________ Were you born in Canada? YES / NO If NO, what country were you born in: ____________________________ How many years have you lived in Canada: ____________________ How would you describe your cultural or ethnic background (e.g., Welsh; German; Taiwanese; French-Canadian; East-Indian; First Nations, Latino): GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 221 __________________________________________________________ How would you describe your current spiritual/religious background (e.g., Christian [Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, Christian Reformed, other], Buddhist [Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana], Hindu [Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Smartism], Sikh [Nirankaris, Nam-Dharis, Akhand Kirtani Jatha] Muslim [Sunni Islam, Shia Islam], etc.): __________________________________________________________ What language do you usually speak at your home (e.g., English): _______________ How many children do you have? _____________________________________________ Names and ages: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ How long have you known the bereaved family? ____________________________________________________________ What is your relationship to the parents? (e.g., neighbours, sister, church member, etc.) ________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ How did you hear of their child’s death? _________________________________________________________________________ How would you describe your relationship to their child? _____________________________________________________________________ GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 222 _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ What have you done to cope with the loss of the child? (e.g., support from family/friends, support group, worked with a grief therapist, etc.) ______________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 223 APPENDIX F Informed Consent Grieving in Community Research Study Principal Researcher: Marnie Venema, BA, Counselling Psychology, Trinity Western University Supervisor: Dr. Derrick Klaassen, Counselling Psychology, Trinity Western University Contact info: If you have any questions about the research project itself, you may contact Marnie Venema (phone 604-614-1344 or email marnie.venema@mytwu.ca) or Derrick Klaassen (phone 604-513-2019 ext. 3881 or email Derrick.Klaassen@twu.ca). If you have any concerns about your treatment or rights as a research participant, you may contact Ms. Sue Funk in the Office of Research, Trinity Western University at 604-513-2142 or sue.funk@twu.ca. Dear Participants, Thank-you for your interest in this study, which is designed to explore how you as either bereaved parents or community grieve/grieved together after the loss of a child. Overview of the Study If you all agree to participate, you will be asked to take part in two interviews over five months. The interviews will be audio- and video-recorded. The purpose for these recordings is to enable the research team to transcribe and analyze what you have said. These interviews involve several stages. Initially, we want to get to know you and your child a little. We also want to understand your community and what your relationships with each other look like. Interviews will include observed conversations between the parents and community members, individual interviews with researchers, and joint interviews with the parents, community members, and researchers. After the first interview, we will write up a brief narrative summary of the interview and pass it along for your feedback, which will take place at the second interview. Honorariam You will receive an honororiam of $30 for your time and travel to participate in the study. You will receive $15 after the first round of interviews and $15 after the second round of interviews. You may choose to withdraw from the study at any point in time, however, the honoroariam is not awarded in advance. Therefore, if you are to withdraw before the second set of interviews, the second installment of the honorariam will not be awarded. Time Commitment GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 224 The total time commitment involved in this study is 5 hours. This includes 4 hours for the first set of interviews, and 1 hour for the second interview. If you are interested in the results of the study, you will be given the opportunity to leave your contact information so that we can send you a summary, once we have finsihed the interviews. Potential Risks and Benefits It is not anticipated that you will encounter risks, including emotional or physical risks, as a result of participating in this study; however, if any risks do arise please inform the research team immediately, and if the research team becomes aware of any risks, they will inform you. The focus of this study is on the ways in which you and your community grieve together for the loss of your child. Some people may find it embarrassing to be video-taped, or uncomfortable talking about their grieving. If you ever feel uncomforable, you can take a break from the interview, or even decide that you no longer want to continue at all. It is important to remember that some level of disagreement about grieving is normal. However, if problems in the realtionships or in the grieving process do develop over the next three months, we will be available to help participants find an appropriate grief or relationship counsellor, depending on your needs. Your participation in this study will help us explore and understand joint grieving in community. Most of the previous research on parental grieving to date has ignored how grieving takes places in relationships. Some parents or community members may also discover that participating in this study will be helpful to them in their grieving as they become clearer about how they grieve individually and jointly for their loss. Some participants may also find that talking about how they grieved together strengthens their community relationships. Your Rights Your participation in this study is entirely voluntary and you may refuse to participate or withdraw from the study at any time. If at any point you want to withdraw, please inform any member of the research team and you will be removed from the study immediately without any trouble. You will still receive half of the honorarium if you chose to withdraw at any point during each phase of the study. If you do withdraw from the study, any data collected will be disposed of either by shredding any written material or permanently deleting any electronic information from computer sources. Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be identified with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission or as required by law. There are some of the circumstances where disclosure is required by law are: 1) If there is a reasonable suspicion of child, dependent, or elder abuse or neglect; 2) If you present a danger to self or to others We will store all information and recordings in locked filing cabinets and password protected computer hard-drives; only the investigators will have access to the information and any information disposed of will be shredded. Your signatures below indicates that you have had any questions about the research answered to your satisfaction, have received a copy of this consent form for your own records, and that you consent to participate in this study and that your responses may be put in anonymous form and kept for further use after the completion of this study. GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY ___________________________________________ _______________________ Signature Date ___________________________________________ Name (please print) ___________________________________________ _______________________ Signature Date ___________________________________________ Name (please print) 225 GRIEVING IN COMMUNITY 226 APPENDIX G Master List of Codes Acknowledges Disagrees Expresses surprise Advises Disapprove Expresses uncertainty Agrees Dismissive or diminishing statement Expresses understanding Elaborates Incomplete statement Ambiguous response Answers question Apologizes Encourages Approves Evaluative or judging statement Asks for clarification Asks for confirmation Expresses anger Female Partner Interrupts Invites or elicits a response Laughs Paraphrasing Asks for information Expresses belief or disbelief Asks for justification or reasons Expresses desire Pause Expresses disgust Praises Expresses dissatisfaction Provides information Expresses doubt Reflects cognition Expresses fear Requests Expresses gratitude States a plan Expresses humour Suggests Expresses joy Unintelligible response Asks for opinion or belief Asks for speculation or hypothetical scenario Clarifies Complains Confirms Continues others statement Demands Describes future Expresses love Describes other Expresses opinion or perception Describes past Expresses realization Describes possibility or hypothetical situation Expresses sadness Describes self Describes situation or event Partial agreement Reflects affect