Abstract
Two collaborators in the Deathworld to Lifeworlds research project ex-plored the intersection between their respective phenomena:unravelingandgrief.If life and love provide the opportunity to bind together intricate strandsfrom one’s stocks of knowledge, typifications, and Lifeworlds to form a coher-ent tapestry of meaning, what experiences face the individual suddenly unrav-eling from the loss of that love and sense of meaning? Whitney explored thephenomenon of unraveling from a toxic relationship. David explored the griefthat ensued from the sudden withdrawal of a romantic partner. Descriptions ofunraveling and grief appear separately before a description of the authors’col-laborative meaning-making that occurred when they negotiated the signifi-cance their phenomena assumed in light of each other. In grief,where doesunraveling locate? Does unraveling happen to the individual with the loss ofthe object of love? Does the individual unravel from grief, or does grief causean individual to unravel? We conclude that grief results from and catalyzesunraveling. Moreover, we discovered ironies: that grief and unraveling oftenwork as rivel forces and our collaborative work represented raveling and unravel-ing as we attempted to discover the whatness of unraveling and grief.