Rejection Re-Activates Unresolved Grief
This research begins with a specific question: what happens when a romantic refusal reopens an older grief that was never fully worked through?
The Inquiry
Originating in a case where romantic rejection reopened the pain of a sibling's death, the project treats unrequited love and unresolved bereavement as entangled rather than separate experiences. I write on archival family photographs as if in conversation with my younger brother, whose funeral I could not attend, and use those handwritten image-texts alongside extensive conversations about love and loss as ethnographic material. The analysis looks for recurring patterns around recalling, interrupted mourning and feelings of abandonment where ritual was absent. Intimate image-making and held dialogue can make coexisting losses legible without flattening their differences, while consent, anonymisation and the right to withdraw remain central to the method.
Outcome
Accepted as a roundtable presentation in the Families & Relationships stream at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2026. This paper is the academic research output of a larger ongoing artistic inquiry.
