Grief and Divorce: A Personal Journey

Abstract

Grief is an event that normally goes hand in hand with death but can be experienced on a daily basis for various different reasons and can manifest itself in different forms. When the grief is ambiguous and disenfranchised, it has the power to change our assumptive world. This thesis provides an autoethnographic account of my experience with my parents’ divorce and the journey I went through to navigate my loss and grief by looking at my development, attachment and experience with counselling. By sharing my personal narrative, I hope to encourage awareness, insights, and open dialogues on divorce, loss, grief and the importance of counselling for youth in the school system and engage in a process of witnessing and creating meaningful dialogue that engages readers to be reflective and empathetic when they witness others who are grieving such a loss or experiencing their own grief.