Browsing by Author "Malacrida, Claudia A."

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    Mourning the dreams: how parents create meaning from perinatal loss
    (1996) Malacrida, Claudia A.; Frank, Arthur W.
    In this qualitative exploratory study, based on my own personal experience of perinatal loss and T. A. Rando's model of Complicated Mourning, I conducted long interviews with 25 individuals, attended several parent bereavement support group meetings, facilitated a focus group and held informal interviews with helping professionals to examine experiences of perinatal loss and perinatal mourning. I discuss the interaction between social, psychological and physiological factors that contribute to complicate mourning in order to develop a picture of why perinatal loss is so difficult to resolve. I also describe the methods parents employ to honour their feelings and experiences of loss, and how, through loss and their creative responses to it, parents find themselves and their worldviews transformed. As a. finishing step in the research, I conducted a followup survey to explore the therapeutic effects of research participation on interviewees. Finally, I discuss how this research has affected my understanding of my own perinatal loss.