LGBTQ+ individuals navigate oppressive systems that elicit ambiguous losses of identity, safety, and security, particularly during LGBTQ+ identity development in college. The assumptive world, or one's internal world guiding beliefs and actions, is challenged when such loss occurs. This study examined LGBTQ+ college student narratives of loss during identity development to understand how assumptive worlds evolved. Findings from a narrative analysis yielded three themes: (1) "Everybody has an expectation:" Reflecting on norms and stereotypes; (2) "This one thing that makes everything flip:" Shattering events; and (3) "Shake it upside down:" Rebuilding the assumptive world. Implications for practice and research are provided.

Objective This study explored how queer and trans people of color (QTPOC) college students navigate complex family relationships and understand the contexts that shape their family bonds. Background QTPOC face myriad forces of oppression that complicate their notion of family. Family relationships of QTPOC also reveal cultural nuances in tandem with race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexuality. For QTPOC college students, college can signify opportunities to create chosen family or navigate relationships with family of origin. Method Using a narrative inquiry methodology and the paradigm of intersectionality, this study involved the narratives of nine QTPOC college students using 18 interviews and nine journal entries to elaborate on how they experienced family relationships during college. Results Findings revealed complex cultural and family dynamics associated with race, sexual identity, and gender identity. The findings were exemplified in three themes: (a) Defining and Engaging Family as a Constantly Evolving Process; (b) Familial Impact on Identity Development; and (c) Salience of Intersection Between Racial Identity and LGBTQ+ Identity. Conclusion QTPOC college students experience a transitory period that heightens the salience of racism, genderism, and heterosexism and elicits complex negotiations between family of origin and chosen family. Some QTPOC college students renegotiate their notion of family to reinforce their racial, sexual, and gender identities. Implications It may be prudent for practitioners to consider how certain social identities may be rejected by certain family members and could lead to further types of distress. Practitioners can explore opportunities to maneuver family of origin and discover chosen family in collegiate settings, especially along the lines of race within LGBTQ+ communities.

Existing literature suggests that LGBTQ + POC may have access to cultural resources that help them to reinterpret and externalize oppression while negotiating and concealing their stigmatized social identities. We conducted a critical narrative study to understand the lived experiences and meaning-making structures of LGBTQ + POC as they negotiate and conceal their stigmatized social identities. Overall, findings from the ten participants narratives illustrated how they used an internally-felt ethnic-racial community and inherited values system that instilled strength, resiliency, and pride to make sense of themselves and others while concealing their stigmatized social identities. Implications for counseling practice as well as recommendations for future research, are discussed.

Queer individuals face a variety of complicated and fraught processes for coming to understand, navigate, and develop their gender and sexual identities. While many existing gender and sexual identity development models propose stages through which individuals might proceed in an orderly and predictable pattern, these models often fail to account for contextual factors and intersections with racism and racial identity development. In this study with LGBTQ + people in the Deep South region of the U.S., we document the ways that identity navigation processes were complicated, cyclical, and tenuous, as well as the ways that contextual factors variously constrained or facilitated identity processes. We also argue that racism and racial identity development intersected with gender and sexual identity development as well as interacting with contextual factors.

Family relationships are significant to the experience of developing identity. Scholars have previously indicated the complexity of identity maturation when people carry multiple historically marginalized identities and have to navigate oppressive contexts. These complex experiences are prominent during the young adulthood phase of life when many are pursuing higher education. Building from their previous study on familial relationships among BIPOC LGBTQ+ college students, the authors were curious to further explore the unique experiences of a sub-group of three queer Latinx/a/o identified participants. Thus, the purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand how family relationships shape identity exploration and development at the intersection of Latinx/a/o and queer identities. Using intersectionality as a guiding framework through analysis, findings yielded three themes: environment shapes meaning making, ethnic gendered roles impact developmental process, and challenges integrating siloed worlds. The authors discuss implications for family science scholars and helping professionals alike to further understand and support identity exploration and development through familial connections, particularly during young adulthood in collegiate settings.

Featuring the experiences of 14 LGBQ+ college students at U.S. institutions across the country, this paper centers on photographs participants took and reflected on as they described expressions of grief relative to their sexual identity development (SID). Drawn from an interview-based narrative inquiry study focused on how LGBQ+ students detail ambiguous loss in SID by considering stories and photos, we employed narrative analysis to examine their photos and data gathered through two individual interviews with each participant. Guided by a conceptual framework integrating literature on SID and scholarship on the social constructionist model of grief, we identified four thematic expressions of grief: Navigating External and Internal Conflicts Shaped by Oppressive Structures, Articulating Varied Emotional Responses in SID, Processes Associated with Coming into Queerness, and Engaging with the Future as Unknown, Yet Filled with Hope. We provide implications for research, as well as for practice targeted at educational and counseling professionals.

Abstract: LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other minoritized genders and sexualities) and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities contend with oppressive realities on and off college campuses. Family relationships—families of origin and chosen families—have garnered attention for how they support and/or marginalize LGBTQ+ BIPOC college students. Informed by intersectionality as a theoretical framework, this narrative inquiry study centered on nine LGBTQ+ BIPOC students as they described the influence of families of origin and chosen families during college. Findings revealed the contexts that informed their negotiation of family relationships, how they discussed connection to family of origin based on family members' adherence to oppressive beliefs, and how chosen family served as a powerful mediator to oppressive realities. Shaped by these findings, we provide implications for research and practice relevant to higher education and student affairs.

Narrative inquiry, or narrative research, is a qualitative research methodology where knowledge is co-constructed through the telling and re-telling of life stories. As researchers engage in narrative inquiry, their identities or life narratives are lived and changed. Utilizing Bruner's Life as Narrative framework, alongside intersectionality theory as an analytic tool, the authors describe the ongoing development of narrative identity within and outside of the narrative researcher role. Strategies to engage an intersectional, interactional process of narrative inquiry are provided with first-hand examples throughout research design, data collection, data analysis, and post-analysis write-up phases of research.

A need exists to examine the strengths and limitations of literature on LGBTQ + student mental health since higher education and helping professionals use it to support LGBTQ + college students. A summative content analysis of LGBTQ + student mental health research from 2009 to 2019 yielded three themes: (1) how authors frame research, including decisions on methodology, frameworks, and samples; (2) mental health issues explored as involving descriptions and attributions of mental distress, together with the (lack of) systemic analysis; (3) implications provided to enhance LGBTQ + student well-being, such as more resources, structural changes, and training. Implications for practice and research are provided.

Utilizing constructivist grounded theory, this study explored how counselor educators reflexively examine power and privilege to provide culturally responsive mentorship. Analysis of two semi-structured interviews with 10 counselor educators practicing mentorship yielded the Culturally-Directed Relational Mentorship (CDRM) model. The CDRM model includes four processes: reflexivity, mentor-driven connection building, shared tasks, and mentee growth and success. Implications for practice and future research are provided, with emphasis on nurturing the development of counseling professionals.

Extensive literature focuses on grief and loss and individual levels of resiliency, while less research has been done on cultural resiliency. This phenomenological study examined the lived experiences of using cultural resiliency to cope with traumatic loss in 2020. Compounded grief experiences and effects, emotional impacts, learned resiliency, cultural protective factors, and therapy experiences emerged as themes from these narratives. Implications for the field are provided to expand our thinking about ways to decolonize counseling.

The field of thanatology emphasizes understanding grief as situated within social contexts. Yet, existing research largely examines individual experiences, neglecting to critically examine the role that sociocultural systems and forms of oppression play in how people grieve. In this manuscript, we use the social constructionist model of grief as an epistemological stepping stone to operationalize intersectionality as a framework to engage in this critical qualitative research. We provide an overview of the research process implementing an intersectional framework, including examples of research questions and procedures throughout, and discuss implications for helping praxis and education and future scholarship.

Ambiguous loss experiences may be common among sexual minority (LGBQ+) populations who sometimes have fewer supports and increased feelings of vulnerability due to the marginalization they encounter. Consequently, it is increasingly necessary to understand how LGBQ+ individuals encounter loss during formative parts of their development and how these loss experiences are connected to larger systems of power and oppression. For those in college during late adolescence, higher education environments represent a place where LGBQ+ students explore sexual identity. This narrative inquiry study, rooted in a constructivist-critical epistemology, explored LGBQ+ college students' ambiguous loss experiences as they formed their sexual identities. In particular, this project centered the stories of 15 LGBQ+ students gathered through two semi-structured interviews. Three major themes exemplified participants' narratives: Navigating Internal and External Expectations, Experiencing External and Ambiguous Loss, and Expressing Grief and Hope. Implications for helping professionals and student affairs are offered.

ABSTRACT It is nearly inevitable that an early adolescent (ages 10–14) will experience a death-related loss of an individual significant to them. Given the significant amount of time early adolescents spend within the school system, a multi-tiered system of care (MTSC) is a systematic school counseling program focus that reflects the needs of early adolescents grieving a death-related loss. The Dual Process Model (DPM) provides school counselors with a contemporary, holistic lens that considers cultural, environmental, and familial perspectives, appropriate for recognizing and addressing early adolescents’ grief in an effective manner. The authors provide a practical, developmentally appropriate MTSC model that addresses early adolescents’ experiences of loss- and restoration-orientations of stress and coping with grief.

Counseling professionals who identify as people of color, women, and gender or sexual minorities commonly suppress or negotiate their personal identities due to experiencing adversity. We describe findings from a narrative inquiry of counselor educators' experiences negotiating marginalized identities. Implications for intersectional praxis-including reflexivity, mentorship, and power deconstruction-are discussed.

Findings from our review of research articles published between 2004 and 2019 indicated students and faculty in counselor education who identify as women; as people of color; or as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning face eight common types of adverse experiences. Implications for praxis and research are provided to support the profession's aim to diversify and embody inclusion.

Grief is a culturally-situated praxis, where cultural phenomena convey norms and expectations for grief expression and reconciliation. Music is one example of a cultural phenomenon that can inform grief and mourning. Utilizing narrative thematic analysis, the author examined cultural messages within music lyrics of 36 songs performed at the One Love Manchester 2017 benefit concert. Four themes-emotional expression, active mourning, expectations, and meaning-making-are presented as a poem to reflect the creative form and delivery of music. Findings indicated conflicting emotional and behavioral grief expressions, and time was an influential factor in expectations and meaning-making processes conveyed throughout lyrics.

Conduct disorder has become an increasing burden on families, communities, and school systems (Barry et al., 2013; Baker, 2009). Often associated with an increase in rates of injury, vehicular accidents, poor educational outcomes, and interpersonal aggression, conduct disorder is a predictor of future violent behavior (Henggeler, Cunningham, Pickrel, Schoenwald, & Brondino, 1996; Potter, 2014; Barry, Golmaryami, Rivera-Hudson, & Frick, 2013). Therefore, the availability and utilization of valid, reliable, and consistent screening and interventions for conduct disorder is imperative. This article addresses the systemic nature of the symptomology and interventions most effective with conduct disorder through an ecological systems lens. A case illustration is utilized to highlight Bronfenbrenner’s (1981, 1994) Ecological Model and offers ways in which the model can be used as a tool to conceptualize the systematic nature of conduct disorder.

Rural Appalachians make up a unique cultural group that shares common values of egalitarianism, familism, religiosity, and neighborliness. These values impact cultural norms and expectations for grieving after experiencing loss. Complicated grief, an enduring and impairing grief response to the loss of a loved one, can develop when individuals are unable to reconcile grief within cultural expectations and norms of grieving. Thus, rural Appalachians are at risk for developing complicated grief when their experiences conflict with common cultural values. A systemically focused theoretical framework, such as feminist therapy, can offer a culturally appropriate approach to address the etiology and manifestation of complicated grief with this group. The authors review complicated grief and rural Appalachian culture, provide a brief description of feminist therapy, and demonstrate the use of feminist therapy with rural Appalachians through a case illustration.

Common losses, such as the death of a loved one, losses related to aging, or the breakup of a relationship, often possess unique features for LGBTQ+ people. Disenfranchised grief may result from fewer supports and increased feelings of vulnerability. Additionally, some losses are unique to LGBTQ+ people, such as those associated with coming out. Meaning reconstruction is a current model for integrating and reconciling grief for LGBTQ+ clients. This model privileges individual context and social construction, supports client agency, and includes a growing research base within the field of thanatology. A clinical example provides context and practical applications for counselors.