Finding Meaning After Loss: The Sixth Stage of Grief

In 2019, David Kessler — who had co-authored On Grief and Grieving with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross — published Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, adding a transformative dimension to the classic five-stage model. His proposal was not that grief has a happy ending, but that bereaved individuals can, over time, construct meaning from their loss — not meaning that explains why it happened, but meaning that emerges from how they choose to live in its aftermath.

Important notice: This article is informational and does not replace professional mental health support. Finding meaning is not an obligation — it is a possibility. If grief feels overwhelming, please seek professional help.

Quick Summary

What Does "Finding Meaning" Actually Mean?

Kessler is careful to distinguish meaning from explanation. When someone says "everything happens for a reason," they are offering an explanation — a cosmic justification for suffering. Kessler explicitly rejects this. No one's death happened "for a reason." No loss was "meant to be."

Instead, finding meaning is about what you do with the loss. It is about the choices you make in its aftermath: the ways you honour the deceased, the values you prioritise, the compassion you develop, the connections you form. Meaning is not found in the loss itself — it is built from the life that follows.

Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist who founded logotherapy, wrote in Man's Search for Meaning that meaning can be found even in suffering — not that suffering produces meaning automatically, but that the human capacity for meaning-making persists even in the darkest circumstances. Frankl's insight — "Those who have a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how'" — underpins Kessler's addition to the grief model.

The Research: Post-Traumatic Growth

Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun at the University of North Carolina developed the concept of post-traumatic growth (PTG) in the 1990s, documenting how people who endure major life crises — including bereavement — sometimes report positive changes alongside their pain. Their research identifies five domains of growth:

1. Greater appreciation for life. Priorities shift. Small pleasures gain significance. Time becomes more precious.
2. Deeper relationships. Loss often deepens empathy and strengthens the bonds with those who remain.
3. New possibilities. Doors that were invisible before the loss become visible — new careers, new purposes, new commitments.
4. Increased personal strength. "If I survived this, I can survive anything" — not bravado, but hard-won knowledge of one's own resilience.
5. Spiritual or existential change. The loss may deepen, challenge, or transform one's relationship with faith, purpose, or the nature of existence.

Crucially, Tedeschi and Calhoun emphasise that growth and pain coexist. Post-traumatic growth is not the absence of suffering — it is the presence of transformation within suffering. The person who reports growth still misses the deceased, still wishes the loss had not happened, still carries the scar.

Robert Neimeyer: Meaning-Making as Grief Work

Robert Neimeyer, at the University of Memphis, has built an entire therapeutic framework around meaning-making in grief. His research shows that one of the strongest predictors of healthy long-term grief adaptation is the ability to construct a coherent narrative that integrates the loss into the broader story of one's life.

This does not mean the narrative is positive. It means it is integrated — the loss has a place in the story rather than existing as an incomprehensible rupture. Neimeyer describes the process as "re-authoring" the life narrative: not erasing the chapter of loss but writing the chapters that follow it with intention.

His research identifies three types of meaning-making:

• Sense-making: Understanding why the loss happened (not always possible, and not always necessary).
• Benefit-finding: Identifying something positive that emerged from the experience (growth, compassion, new direction).
• Identity change: Recognising that the loss has changed who you are — and integrating that new self into a coherent identity.

Boris Cyrulnik and the Resilience of the Wounded

Boris Cyrulnik, the French neuropsychiatrist and resilience researcher, adds a neurobiological dimension to the meaning-making conversation. His concept of resilience — not as an innate trait but as a developmental process — emphasises that human beings have a remarkable capacity to transform suffering into growth, provided they find what he calls "affective tutors" — people who offer the emotional scaffolding needed for reconstruction.

Cyrulnik's work with war survivors, abandoned children, and trauma victims shows that meaning rarely emerges in isolation. It emerges in relationship — through conversation, through narrative, through being witnessed by another human being who says, "I see your pain, and I see you surviving it." This relational dimension of meaning-making is one reason why tools like support groups, therapy, and platforms such as LetsShine.app can be so valuable in the aftermath of loss.

Practical Paths to Meaning

1. Tell your story. Neimeyer's research consistently shows that narrating the loss — out loud, in writing, in therapy — is one of the most powerful meaning-making tools. Writing about your loved one, about the loss, about what has changed, helps the brain integrate what feels unintegrable.

2. Create legacy projects. Many bereaved individuals find meaning through actions that honour the deceased: a foundation in their name, a garden, a scholarship, a tradition continued. Kessler calls these "meaning-making acts" — concrete ways of ensuring that the person's existence continues to ripple outward.

3. Help others who share your experience. One of the most consistent findings in post-traumatic growth research is that people who use their experience to support others report greater meaning and better long-term adjustment. This is not about obligation — it is about the healing power of transforming personal pain into collective compassion.

4. Sit with the questions. Not all meaning arrives as answers. Sometimes the most meaningful position is one of honest unknowing: "I don't know why this happened, but I know how I want to live in its wake." Frankl would recognise this as the essence of existential courage.

5. Be patient with yourself. Meaning does not arrive on schedule. Kessler is explicit: you cannot force meaning, and its absence at any given moment is not a failure. It may come in fragments, unexpectedly, years after the loss. Or it may come as a quiet shift in perspective that you notice only in retrospect.

When Meaning Does Not Come

Not everyone finds meaning, and that is not a moral failing. Some losses are so catastrophic, so senseless, so undeserved that meaning-making feels impossible — or even offensive. Kessler acknowledges this. The sixth stage is not a demand; it is a possibility.

What the research does suggest is that the attempt to make meaning — even when unsuccessful — is itself associated with better outcomes than passive avoidance. The effort matters even when the result is uncertain. And sometimes, the meaning that eventually emerges is simply this: "I survived, and I learned to live with what I cannot understand."

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it necessary to find meaning to recover from a loss? Not strictly necessary, but research shows that people who manage to construct some form of meaning — however small — tend to have better long-term adaptation. Neimeyer distinguishes between "sense-making" (finding an explanation) and "benefit-finding" (identifying something positive). Even when sense-making is impossible, benefit-finding can help.

Is post-traumatic growth only for "strong" people? No. Cyrulnik is very clear: resilience and growth are not qualities of the strong but processes of the wounded. Research actually shows that people who report the most growth are often those who suffered the most, not those who suffered the least.

Can I feel growth and pain at the same time? Yes, and this is the most common experience. Tedeschi and Calhoun call this the "cost of growth": transformation does not eliminate pain — it coexists with it. You can simultaneously feel that the loss has made you more compassionate and that you would give anything to have the person back.

Does finding meaning after loss mean the loss was "worth it"? Absolutely not. No one who has grown through loss would choose to go through it again. Growth is a response to adversity, not a justification for it. It is what you do with what happened to you, not a reason for it to have happened.

Can I help someone in grief find meaning? You cannot do it for them, but you can create the conditions: listen without judging, validate their pain, accompany without rushing, respect their pace, and above all, do not impose meanings. Worden would say your role is to be a compassionate witness to the process, not a director of it.