Spirituality – Illness Narratives

In this paper we examine stories of spirituality in people living with serious illness.

Abstract:

Aim: To examine stories of spirituality in people living with serious illness.

Background: Although knowledge about the experience of people with various chronic illnesses is growing, there is little known about peoples’ beliefs and perspectives relating to spirituality where there is a diagnosis of a serious

Design of the Study: A social constructionist approach to narrative inquiry was used.

Methods: In-depth narrative interviews were conducted on one occasion with 32 participants. This included 10 people with cancer, 14 people with end stage renal disease (ESRD) and eight people with HIV/AIDS. They ranged in age from 37-83 and included 18 men and 14 women.

Results: The themes were reflecting on spiritual religious and personal beliefs, crafting beliefs for their own lives, finding meaning and transcending beyond words. Participants melded various belief systems to fit their own lives. They also looked to find meaning in their illness experience and described what gave life meaning. For some aspects of these belief systems, participants could not or would not express themselves verbally, and it seemed that aspects of their experience were beyond language.

Conclusions: The stories revealed considerable depth relating to perspectives on life, illness and existential questions, but many participants were not comfortable with the term ‘spirituality’.

Relevance to Clinical Practice: Nurses must remain open to learning about belief systems of each individual in their care, regardless of that individual’s declared religious affiliation or declaration of no religious affiliation, given that personal beliefs and practices do not always fit into specific categories.

Reference: Molzahn, A., Sheilds, L., Bruce, A., Stadjuhar, K., Schick Makaroff, K., Beuthin, R. & Shermak, S. (2012). People Living with Serious Illness: Stories of Spirituality. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21(15-16), 2347-2356.

In this publication we explore spirituality and the incompleteness of definitions used to describe spirituality.

Abstract: Despite growing interest in spiritual matters throughout society, definitions and descriptions of spiri-tuality seem incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory. In this article, the authors consider the possibility that such incompleteness is perhaps necessary and welcomed in addressing spirituality. In particular, they investigate the challenges of using metaphor and metonymic approaches to “languaging” spiritual-ity. By exploring these figures of speech they hope to diversify how nurses articulate deeply personal and perhaps enigmatic human phenomena such as spirituality. Metaphoric language uses everyday structures to help make sense of complex, emotional, and abstract experience. Whereas metaphor cre-ates substitutive relationships between things and provides insights into conceptualizing spirituality, metonymy and metonymic writing establish relationships of contiguity. Whereas metaphor functions to represent and facilitates understanding and feelings about spirituality, metonymy disrupts while open-ing possibilities of moving beyond binary thinking. Attending to language and its various ontological assumptions opens diverse and potentially more inclusive possibilities.

Refefence: Bruce, A., Sheilds, L., & Molzahn, A. (2011). Language and the (Im)possibilities of Articulating Spirituality. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 29(1), 44-52.