Grief, Identity, and the Fight to Keep This Research Alive

Every little helps.

I’ve never been good at asking for help. But sometimes, you hit a wall no matter how much you fight to do things independently. This is where I’m at right now.

I never thought I’d make it to university, let alone be accepted onto a PhD programme.

I come from a background where philosophy wasn’t an expected career path. I grew up in an abusive home, spent time homeless, and worked multiple jobs to survive. There was no safety net, just me, trying to carve out a future.

But philosophy found me when I needed it most. It became more than an academic pursuit: it was a way to make sense of loss, suffering, and what it means to keep going when everything else tells you to stop. That’s why I’ve dedicated my research to grief, not just as an emotional experience but as something that fundamentally reshapes us.

And that’s what I need your help with.

The Research: Why It Matters

When we lose someone, we don’t just feel their absence; we lose part of ourselves. Our identity, sense of self, and way of being in the world are all altered. Psychology gives us models of grief, stages, and coping mechanisms, but it often reduces grief to something to be “processed” rather than something that changes us ontologically. Analytic philosophy has explored grief’s ethical and metaphysical dimensions but frequently stops short of the lived transformation that grief demands.

Phenomenology describes the feeling of loss but doesn’t address how grief forces us to reconstruct our very being. That’s where my work comes in.

I will introduce the concept of being-in-the-midst-of-non-being to describe what happens when someone who helped shape your identity is gone. We are not merely with others in life; our very sense of self is entangled with them. When they are gone, we are forced to confront a version of existence we never chose, where the world remains, but its shape has changed irrevocably.

This matters because grief is universal. Every person, at some point, will experience loss. But despite its impact, grief remains an underexplored subject in philosophy.

By deepening our understanding of grief, we can also rethink how bereavement support, mental health care, and philosophical inquiry address loss, not as something to “move past,” but as something that requires an ontological reconfiguration of self.

This research is already in motion. I’ve been accepted onto a PhD programme at Edinburgh University, supervised by Dr. Michael Cholbi, one of the foremost philosophers on death and dying. This is my opportunity to complete this work.

But I can’t do it alone.

Why I’m Asking for Help

I’ve always worked to support myself, juggling jobs while studying. I’ve put everything I have into making this happen; all my savings have already gone toward tuition, and I’m working two jobs to keep going. But even with that, the financial gap is too big.

I was not awarded a scholarship, so I won’t be able to continue this research without help.

I’ve set up a GoFundMe to help cover tuition fees. This isn’t about funding a degree for the sake of it; it’s about ensuring that this research doesn’t get lost due to financial barriers.

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How You Can Help

Please consider donating if you believe in this work and think grief deserves deeper exploration.

Even small contributions make a huge difference. Every donation, regardless of size, brings this research closer to completion.

https://gofund.me/d5cc31bf

If you can’t donate, sharing this helps more than you know. Spreading the word increases the chances that this research will reach the people who can make it happen.

I don’t take any of this for granted. Just reading this, engaging with my work, and supporting the idea that grief deserves deeper philosophical attention already means a lot.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and believing in this. Your support truly means everything.

Andrew