Grief—An Invitation to Inertia: A Narrative Approach to Working With Grief

Abstract

Grief is a complex, compelling, and profound life experience that is a normal and healthy response to the death of a significant other. Personal experiences of grief, when juxtaposed against the cultural and health care discourses that see grief as a process that eventually results in a resolution characterized by the absence of grief feelings, can sponsor constraining and limiting experiences of life after loss. A narrative approach offers one way for nurses and other health care professionals to view grief and grief’s possible “problem” states. Narrative invites the bereaved into seeing and storying their experiences in a more accepting and facilitative fashion. This article outlines a narrative approach to a particular problem state found in grief. a problem state of inertia. Implications for family nursing are discussed.