Digital storytelling: Narrating meaning in bereavement

Abstract

Individuals who cannot make sense of a significant death are more likely to experience bereavement complications than those who are able to reconcile their loss with existing or newly-developed ways of understanding the world. Digital Storytelling, a multi-media narrative technique, has been identified as a potential facilitator of meaning-making processes. In this secondary qualitative analysis, researchers described the meaning-making processes evident in bereaved individuals’ (N = 14) personally-created digital stories, identifying sense making, benefit finding, continuing bonds, shifting identity, and addressing unfinished business. Findings support prior research and enrich emerging understandings of arts-based interventions as tools to facilitate and communicate meaning-making processes.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the bravery and vulnerability of the workshop participants. We are forever grateful for their willingness to share their stories so openly and freely, and trusting us in this process.

Disclosure statement

We, the authors, declare that we have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This study described in this article was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [Grant #R24HS022140] via a Small Project Award from the University of Missouri Center for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research.