Life journey in grief:

honoring your child’s story beyond their departure

Abstract

This article uses the understanding of narrative therapies, referencing the works of Michael White, David Denborough, Angel Yuen, Helene G. Kristensen and David Newman involving grief and trauma to collaborate in the deepening of preferred stories in the experience of neonatal, gestational, and perinatal grief, offering a destination that goes against what is normally experienced by grieving parents: experiencing a grief defined as unrecognized and stories that are easily made invisible by society. Michael White, through his article “Saying Goodbye to Say Hello Again”, invites us to review the normative ideas of having to say goodbye, accepting death, letting go of the person who left, moving on with life, “overcoming” death, instead of this path, offering space for the preferred stories lived in the parental relationship can have a place and voice, contradicting the dominant discourse that what remains after departure is the pain of loss.