This qualitative study concerns the process of grieving and identity transformation for mothers of children with Down syndrome. The study aimed to understand the identity loss of mothers of child with disability through their grieving process, and explored how mothers of children with Down syndrome reconstruct their identity during the experience of raising a child with Down syndrome. In addition, the study identified the key events that contributed to the identity reconstruction. In this study, data were collected from 20 mothers of children with Down syndrome in the west of Michigan area. Semi-structured individual in-depth interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed, coded and analyzed for the report. The grounded theory was adopted to explore and analyze the notions of self, identity, and the experiences of raising a child with Down syndrome through narratives offered by the mothers in the study. The findings of the study lent support to what has been discovered in the previous research regarding the stress, the struggle, and the frustration experienced by parents of children with disabilities. However, the stories of the mothers revealed that during the grieving process, they were not only grieving over the psychological loss of their expected children, but also grieving over a collection of secondary psychological loss, which fundamentally defines who they are as a mother, a wife, a caregiver, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a coworker. Furthermore, the narratives pertain to the transitional identities the mothers identified undoubtedly inform the nature of the self. The set of transitional identities of a personal health care provider, a resilient fighter, and a knowledgeable educator are derived from the deep sense-making of their engaged daily activities and interactions of taking care of their children’s needs. Finally, the narratives of finding peace in their lives and reconstruct the new identity of the mothers they wanted to be emphasize on their own interpretation and understanding of what the motherhood really constitutes.
Key words: Down syndrome, psychological loss, identity loss, and motherhood