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.