ABSTRACT
The central role of meaning making has long been recognized in the literature relating to loss, grief and trauma, but its significance in relation to resilience has tended to feature much less. This chapter explores the complex interrelationships between resilience and meaning making. It locates meaning making and, by extension, resilience in a broader sociological context by showing that personal (or “biographical”) meanings need to be understood as part of wider frameworks of meaning—frameworks that have much to do with cultural and structural aspects of wider society. While it is recognized that we each, in a very real sense, create our own meanings; the “raw materials” from which we do so and the patterns we adopt in doing so are rooted in social processes, institutions, discourses and so on.
