Saying Goodbye to Our Children: A Phenomenon of Soul-Making

In this article, the author navigates a personal yet common circumstance as a possible experience of soul-making, a concept outlined by James Hillman in his pivotal text Re-Visioning Psychology. Pulling the four moves of personifying, pathologizing, psychologizing, and dehumanizing through the life event of a child's graduating from high school and moving onto college, the author reveals, through the myths of Chronos, Ananke, Demeter, and Persephone, how saying goodbye to our children can deepen our relationship with psyche. The article offers an accessible interpretation of the often heady and conceptual theories of Hillman and describes a process of learning to accept and even come to find love in the inevitability of one's own mortality.     

The Goodbye Brochure: Helping Students to Cope With Transition and Loss

This article describes a brochure that has been used by various college personnel in their attempts to help students in coping with transition and loss. The brochure's content is presented, and its development, use, merits, and limitations are discussed.     

Knowing When to Say Goodbye: Final Exit and Suicide in the Elderly

The publication of Derek Humphry's Final Exit in 1991 caused a large uproar. Although designed as a suicide manual for terminally ill persons, there has been considerable fear that the book's methods might be used by others, such as nonterminal elderly individuals who have made a “rational” decision to end their lives. This piece, a short story about an elderly couple that commits double suicide, explores rational suicide by using fiction, as opposed to a standard bioethical approach. Fiction does not provide answers, but rather highlights the ambiguities surrounding elder suicide, and reminds us to evaluate this issue in the context of individual life experiences.     

Goodbye,Daddy: An Autoethnographic Journey Through the Grief and Mourning Process

The purpose of this article is to present an autoethonographic study in how I experienced and communicated parts of the mourning process when my father died at the age of 73. The article highlights the stages of grief experienced during the first year. Autoethnographic means are used chronologically to explore how the loss of a family member impacts the stages of grief that are present and how they overlap. In particular, I highlight the events that carried meaning or provided an outlet to express one of the stages of grief. It is hoped that this article can be used to understand why grieving is not an overnight process, but rather is drawn out through the highs and lows of remembering a loved one.     

Farewell!

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