Meaning making and coping strategies of women living in İzmir: Religious perpective

This research aims to investigate how women living in İzmir who lost their close relatives make sense of loss, experience mourning, and deal with loss of close family member from a religious perspective. As the primary aim of this research is to examine the meaning making and mourning process of these women from a religious perspective, we paid attention to that the participants of this study are Muslim women. The participants were 7 women, between the ages of 30-45 who has lived in İzmir. The daha of this study were collected through semi-structured individual interviews with these 7 women, and analyzed bu using Interpretive Phenemological Analysis. The analysis revealed 12 themes: (1) identity of the lost family member, (2) psychollogical symptoms following the loss, (3) the meaning attached to the corpse, (4) the life of the lost family member: psychological and physiological, (5) the positive features of the lost family member, (6) uncompleted lives and hopes, (7) the transformation of the family dynamics, (8) the meaning attached to the object, (9) mourning and women, (10) the responsibility of the women who lost their close relative, (11) religious coping strategies, (12) social coping strategies.