School of Medicine

To learn about normal grief and complicated grief. I hope to accomplish this by reviewing the literature on bereavement and on the current, effective therapies for bereaved individuals to prepare myself for caring for these individuals in my future practice. I hope to utilize the knowledge I gain about strategies to help patients cope with their bereavement experience successfully. The focus of the literature selected for this paper is specific to bereaved parents grieving the loss of a child from a natural, anticipated cause. My interest in bereavement stems from my personal journey of navigating through the loss of my boyfriend, Kevin, in 2015 after a long battle with terminal cancer. Reflecting on my own bereavement experience and others close to Kevin, I hoped to learn more about the grieving process so I could guide others towards resilience and positive adaptation to their new life change. My continued relationship with his mother allowed me to witness the emotional challenges she faced in her grieving journey firsthand. I was moved by the difficulty of her situation and motivated to learn how I could better help her adapt to her loss ultimately leading me to focus my paper on bereaved parents who had lost a child from a natural, anticipated cause.