Part 2 — Beyond the Stages: When Theory Meets Experience

What the Heck Is a Theoretical Framework?

In Part 1, I shared how my own losses disrupted everything I thought I knew about grief. What I did not share is how that disruption followed me straight into my research. By the time I began shaping my dissertation a second time, I knew choosing a theoretical framework was not going to be a simple academic decision. It was not as easy as reaching for the most familiar model or the most popular theory.

I needed a framework that could make room for complexity, one that aligned with the layered experiences that had shaped my life and the lives of the people I wanted to study. Before I talk about how I eventually found that framework, we need to pause and talk about what a theoretical framework really is and why it matters.

Understanding the Lens We Use to Make Sense of the World

A theoretical (or conceptual) framework is often described as the “lens” of a study. While that metaphor is useful, it can also be deceptively simple. The framework a researcher chooses not only influences what they pay attention to, but it also shapes the entire understanding of the phenomenon being studied. Choosing a framework means deciding what you believe about the world, what you believe is meaningful, and what questions are worth asking.

In qualitative research, a framework matters a lot. For example, suppose a researcher begins with a stage model of grief. Their inquiry may emphasize progression and center their analysis on movement from one emotional task or step to another. During interviews, the researcher might pose a question such as, "What was your experience with acceptance of the loss?" They might then listen for signs that acceptance has occurred.

But another researcher using a different framework might focus on the dynamic nature of the experience, the cultural context, and the moments when grief ebbs and flows rather than neatly marches forward. A moment of acceptance may occur when I get up and go to work in the morning, but when I come home, I'm confronting the loss all over again.

The same set of interviews can tell completely different stories depending on the lens through which they are viewed.

For me, this meant I could not choose a framework casually or automatically. I needed to think carefully about what my framework would allow me to see and what it might cause me to miss. Would it reflect cultural expressions of grief, including the silence, spirituality, resilience, and private but powerful ways loss is carried? Or would it flatten those experiences to fit assumptions built into the original theory?

The more I reflected, the clearer it became that choosing a framework was not just a methodological decision. I would argue that it belongs on the same level as research ethics, because it can determine whose experiences are centered, whose voices are visible, and whose realities the research is prepared to honor.

Tracing My Research Journey and Its Turning Point

Years before I returned to my dissertation, I began my research journey with a very different focus. I was studying the human–animal bond among single, childless adults, examining how adults experience connection with their pets. Pet loss was part of that story, but it was not the center of it. For what I was exploring at the time, two frameworks fit naturally.

Attachment theory offered a way to talk about affectional bonds, emotional closeness, and the significance of relationships that shape us. It had been used in countless areas of psychology, so applying it to human–animal relationships made sense.

Social support theory complemented it by synthesizing related theories and concepts that illustrate how relationships function as a buffer during hardship and stress.

Fast forward 7 years, and the great dissertation return, and I made two decisions that shaped everything that followed. First, I committed to focusing specifically on pet loss. Instead of studying the bond in general, I focused on the heartbreak that occurs when that bond is broken. Second, I focused intentionally on the African-American experience. I could not ignore the gap I had seen in the literature and felt called to contribute to a field that consistently left certain voices out, specifically that of my own.

Those decisions brought a new challenge. The frameworks I once used no longer felt right. Attachment and social support were helpful in understanding the bond, but they did not encompass the cultural realities or emotional complexities I needed to explore. And the Five Stages of Grief were even further from what I was looking for.

Why Attachment Theory No Longer Fit

Attachment theory is considered a seminal theory, widely used and highly respected. Yet as I revisited it, something felt off. I explored further and found two articles in the journal Attachment and Human Development that helped me understand why:

• Coard, S. I. (2021). Race, discrimination, and racism as “growing points” for consideration: Attachment theory and research with African American families.
• Stern, J. A., Barbarin, O., and Cassidy, J. (2021). Working toward anti-racist perspectives in attachment theory, research, and practice.

Together, these articles offered a critique that helped me articulate what I had sensed.

When attachment theory was developed and tested, systemic disparities were not widely understood in psychology. African Americans were historically not represented in attachment conceptualizations, meaning that new knowledge aligned with African American values, beliefs, and experiences is needed. Understanding attachment behaviors among African Americans requires an awareness of the social context of caregiving that is intertwined with discrimination and racism.

When researchers study attachment among African Americans, it is essential to understand who functions as an attachment figure and under what circumstances. Historically, attachment networks in African-American communities have included immediate family, extended family, church, community elders, and other relational networks. These networks developed for strength, resilience, protection, and survival.

Context is not a footnote; it is part of the story. Race is not just a variable; it is part of the environment in which relationships form, are maintained, and are grieved.

All of this meant that traditional attachment theory, at least in its original form, could not fully support the lens I needed.

The Search for Something New

I knew I needed a different kind of framework. I needed one that did not force a linear path, could honor and integrate the existing frameworks of grief, but allowed for movement and contradiction, and did not shy away from culture, silence, identity, or meaning. I needed a framework that could hold pet loss AND the African-American experience. I needed a framework that was as messy as grief is.

In many ways, this became the beginning of a synthesis, a blending of insight, experience, and intention that felt more real than anything I had used before.

That search, and the concepts, models, and frameworks I walked through along the way, is where we will go in Part 3.