Living with loss

Abstract

Each of us has a story that comes alive as we wake up in the morning, develops throughout the day, and holds layers of meaning as we lay our heads down at night – it might be called a narrative of our identity. When loss occurs, our story fragments into unfamiliar pieces, and who we identify as becomes scattered – sometimes even shattered. We must work to reconstruct meaning in our lives and to rebuild our identity. As leading author on this editorial, with an article of my own in this issue, I confronted this when my father died. I felt his story slipping away, becoming blurred, forgotten, and for some, erased – and the same held true for me. The chaos of my shattered identity exacerbated the deep pain of losing him and I experienced complicated grief. I had to reshape my narrative to remember the authentic parts of me and rebuild a new self in a fatherless world. This journey is in part what motivated me to become a symposium co-editor for the journal. All four of us editors of this special issue have experienced “living with loss” following the premature loss of either our father or spouse, and I wanted to see what lived experience and knowledge we could bring to the readers about loss in the fields of both guidance and counselling. In this issue of Living with Loss, the visible theme tying the articles together is learning how to support those impacted by death and non-death losses by allotting space for their stories, recovering meaning in their lives, and re-establishing an identity post-loss within their life narratives. Each article not only sheds light on the impact of devastating losses but also lights a path toward healing and rebuilding a coherent life story.