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The death of a loved one can create a tear in the fabric of meaning. Grieving involves remaking meaning. In therapy, events can be emplotted into stories, which can return some sense of coherence to the bereaved. In this paper, I present a way of narrating loss through a narrative therapy approach of retelling. This involved writing found poems, known as rescued speech poems, from the conversations of people who had lost a loved partner. The found poetry sought to bring an order to grieving and to polish the beauty of key moments following loss. For one participant, the found poetry amplified a narrative of the biography of the loved one. For another, the poems added beauty to a memory of her deceased partner. Thus, rescued speech poems—judiciously selected from speech, and sensitively arranged on the page—can provide another way to facilitate vibrant meaning-making of life after loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grief scholars have concurred that continuing bonds with the deceased represent normal adaptive behaviour in the face of loss, and numerous researchers have stressed the therapeutic benefits of writing through trauma; however, few have interrogated the potential therapeutic effects specific to elegy writing, which offers robust opportunities to express and transfigure grief through imagery and recollection. This research reveals the role of elegy writing in acknowledging and nurturing ongoing bonds with lost others. Drawing on critical debates surrounding the grief process, it examines case studies derived from adult writing workshops using poems by students working through loss to uncover ways elegy writing can assuage even difficult feelings like guilt and resentment, which often complicate the grieving process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]