Emotional configurations of grief: Narratives from childhood

Abstract

Being human involves encountering losses to which grief is a common response. No one can escape grief—it is the price of affection and love. In this paper, we aim to understand how grieving unfolds as described in university students’ short narratives of their childhood. Applying a cultural-historical approach, especially the notion of emotional configuration, we explore the interplay of emotion, sense-making, and practice in grief-related childhood life events. Our research problematizes the binary classification of “little and large griefs” and shows that focusing only on death-related grief may devalue losses in childhood that are not related to death. Our findings demonstrate that grief is never isolated, but configured with a variety of other emotions and feelings, and strongly related to children’s own sense-making and worldviews. Attention to emotional configuration shifts our focus from individual grief to the wider cultural-historical practices and sense-making processes in which grief is always intertwined.