Symbolic forms as embodied meaning-making after suicide loss: a bounded narrative-textual analysis of a loss survivor’s published memoir

Suicide bereavement can unsettle identity, relationships, and meaning. This study examined how symbolic and poetic forms represent embodied and relational experience in one published suicide-bereavement memoir. A qualitative narrative-textual analysis combined relational reading, formal-poetic close reading, and contextual interpretation across 107 survivor-centered episodes and 40 integrated poetic and symbolic units. Local readings were completed before cross-scene comparison, with rival interpretations, contradictions, and unresolved passages retained. Ten recurring domains encompassed objects, elemental and spatial imagery, voice, silence, and bodily movement. Their functions changed across scenes; none supported a stable memoir-wide symbolic meaning. Writing gave form to memory, continuing bonds, sensation, and uncertainty while grief remained active. These findings concern one authored text and offer a basis for attending to survivors' language and poetic form in poetry therapy and postvention. Clinical effects and psychological mechanisms require separate investigation.