Grief, Meaning, and Narratives

ABSTRACT Grief after the loss of a loved one often involves profound experiences of meaninglessness rooted in the absence of the deceased. Yet many people recover from this crisis of meaning fairly quickly. Can we explain this return to a meaningful life in a way that does not reveal anything problematic about our rationality, or about the significance of our relationship to the person who died? I propose that we can find meaning in the loss of a loved one by understanding how that loss has shaped who we are, or how it fits into a broader story about the world—even without attributing substantive value to the loss itself or its consequences in our lives. Thus, making sense of a loss through narratives can rationally support the recovery of meaningfulness in grief even if the evaluative facts about that loss remain the same, and without any troubling consequences regarding our relationship to the deceased.