Salvatore D'Amore

Los(t)s in Transitions: How Diverse Families Are Grieving and Struggling to Achieve a New Identity

Diverse families are constantly confronted with multiple losses. In psychotherapeutic consultation, they often appear as “grieving” systems whose identity is built on a loss. New theories of grief focus on family meaning-making processes. Unresolved grieving entails limited emotion sharing as well as poor family meaning-making. Moreover, some factors inhibit this process while others stimulate it. Using clinical illustration, this article tries to prove the relevance of such concepts. It suggests working to re-create, review, and reconstruct the family ties around its losses or break-ups. However, this work would remain reductive if it would not take account of the benefits and gains that often, within the experience of grief, families do not consider or anticipate.