From The Soul: The Women of Dropull, Lamentation, and Coping with Grief and Loss

Abstract

Death instills complex feelings of grief and pain that lead to various ways of mourning. One example is the ritual of lamenting, the full-body expression of mourning where grief is expressed through auditory means such as singing and weeping. This practice has been observed cross-culturally and it is prominently conducted by women. This ethnography tells the experiences of eleven women from the southern Albanian region of Dropull, an ethnically Greek rural area, with the traditional custom of lamentation. The women of Dropull believe that every individual has a soul, that pain resides within there, and that lamenting is a means of releasing your internal burdens into the external world. This framework of understanding was important in my conversation with the women of Dropull, as I learned how this ritual helped them cope with loss, and how the shifting demographics of the region and biomedicalization are impacting the tradition.