Later life is often associated with loss, loneliness, suffering, and existential vulnerability. Although spirituality and religiousness are increasingly recognised as important resources for coping and adaptation in older adulthood, less is known about the processes through which lived religiousness and spirituality contribute to the construction of psychological resilience.
This study explores how lived religiousness and spirituality shape psychological resilience in later life under conditions of suffering and adversity. The research was conducted within a broader qualitative study examining spirituality, religiousness, and resilience among older adults. The presented analysis focuses on one theoretically rich case selected for its conceptual density and its ability to illuminate emerging processes within Classic Grounded Theory methodology (Glaser). The participant was a 63-year-old divorced woman with high levels of psychological resilience and subjective well-being, who described her relationship with God as central to her life experience and responses to suffering.
Data were collected through a semi-structured face-to-face interview and analysed using Classic Grounded Theory procedures, including open coding, constant comparative analysis, emergence of categories, selective coding, and conceptual integration. The analysis revealed an emerging process through which suffering was transformed into meaningful service, existential continuity, and inner stability within a lived religious relationship with transcendence.
The emerging conceptual process involved constructing existential security through a relationship with God, reinterpretation of suffering through religious meaning-making, emotional regulation through prayer and religious rituals, preservation of moral integrity through service and forgiveness, and reconstruction of inner strength through caring for others. Identification with Christ’s suffering functioned as a process that reduced the catastrophic framing of adversity and integrated suffering into a broader, transcendent narrative. Forgiveness emerged as a process of psychological liberation, while service to others contributed to existential continuity and reconstruction of meaningful selfhood.
The findings point to a process through which existential suffering is transformed into meaningful service, inner stability, and psychological resilience within lived religiousness and spirituality.