Incarcerated women face a number of stressors apart from the actual incarceration. Nearly half of all women in prison experience the death of a loved one during their incarceration. Our purpose for this study was to explore the experience of grief and loss among incarcerated women using a phenomenological method. Our study approach followed van Manen's method of phenomenology and Munhall's description of existential lifeworlds. Our analysis revealed four existential lifeworlds: temporality: frozen in time; spatiality: no place, no space to grieve; corporeality: buried emotions; and relationality: never alone, yet feeling so lonely. The findings generated from this study can help mental health providers as well as correctional professionals develop policies and programs that facilitate the grief process of incarcerated women within the confines of imprisonment.
Using a phenomenological perspective, the author explored the experience of body memory following a significant loss. Ten women who had experienced the loss of a special loved one participated. Uncovered in this research were the hidden processes involved in grief work, which were cyclical and nonrational. Body memory experienced by each participant was unique in its expression, the common pattern being that it was relived as it was originally lived. This study brings to light processes of grieving that have been hidden and have remained silent in response to a social world that has been unwilling to accept a grieving process that extends out of the boundaries of the expected norm.
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