Meaning-Making in Grief Work and Where We Stand Today

Grief has seen developments in conceptualization and treatment over the course of 60 years. This paper provides an analysis of the historical developments in thanatology. While in the early 1900s, grief was viewed as a universal process of detachment and severing emotional connections from the deceased, literature has evolved to conceptualize grief from a sociocultural perspective, emphasizing the personal and social construction of meaning. By culminating knowledge of what we know and what we practice, the paper aims to explore steps that need to be taken in the field of grief work to account for the needs of diverse cultural backgrounds and support a healthy grieving process, especially after the mental health concerns due to complex grieving during the COVID-19 pandemic. By specifically discussing the importance of meaning-making in grief work, this paper will highlight the changes in grief conceptualization from an objective stagewise model to sociocultural frameworks of grief. Additionally, this paper will also discuss what counselor-education programs currently teach in alignment with new literature and offer suggestions on how programs can update education in trauma-informed care, particularly grief.