Riannodare le fila del tempo: l’attesa, la perdita e il lutto

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the loss of a pregnancy and temporality. Based on an ethnography of support groups in Milan, it examines how time is experienced during pregnancy, loss and mourning. Focusing on pregnancy loss, the article aims to contribute to a more general understanding of the beginnings and ends of life and of the experience of time at these thresholds. Grief following pregnancy loss is not experienced as a linear and temporally-bound process but as an enduring affective state which is socially shared within support groups, and is integrated in bereaved parent’s life course.

Keywords

• ‘pregnancy loss’, ‘personhood’, ‘life’, ‘death’, ‘time’