135 The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 2 Transcendental phenomenology seeks to find meaning units that provide a textual description of what was experienced by the participants, as well as an imaginative variation describing how it was experienced (Moustakas, 1994). With each distinguishable reading of the data, we searched for phrases shared by the participants that illustrated a description of what they experienced and how it was perceived. Ultimately, through a process of consensus coding, the integration of the textual description and the imaginative variation yielded a composite of essential themes. After we analyzed and narrowed down the dominant themes via the final transcription phase, we emailed the participants these preliminary findings. We asked the participants to reflect and provide feedback on whether the final themes represented their experiences with adoption-related loss and grief, as well as their experiences with counseling related to adoption, as a form of member checking (Creswell, 2013). The participants confirmed that the findings adequately expressed their experiences with adoption-related loss, grief, and counseling. Trustworthiness Qualitative researchers promote trustworthiness in their work by safeguarding the credibility and confirmability of their methods and findings (Cope, 2014). Credibility is viewed as the direct connection between the participants’ words and the findings of the study (Cope, 2014). Confirmability is the level to which interpretation of the texts are representative of the participants’ meanings rather than the researchers’ preconceptions or bias alone (Cope, 2014). In this study, we ensured credibility and confirmability through immersion in the texts and by developing a spreadsheet that we utilized to track the analysis process of transforming the participants’ words into themes. This audit trail allowed us to revisit the data when questions of interpretation arose and as we worked toward consensus in our interpretation, as opposed to relying on any one researcher’s sole interpretation (Hill et al., 2005). In addition, we utilized member checking to test the goodness of fit of the findings and interpretations of the participants’ lived experiences to minimize researcher bias (Cope, 2014; Sheperis et al., 2017). Findings Our analysis brought to our awareness the concept of integration regarding the participants’ adoption stories, meaning to what depth the participants’ adoption experiences impacted their perceptions of loss, grief, and their involvement with counseling. Expanding on this and in alignment with the initial participants’ survey results regarding the perceived level of loss and grief toward their adoption (see Table 1), it was clear the prominent theme was that of ambivalence of whether loss and grief were significant aspects of their adoption story. Under this notion of integration, we identified six themes that expressed our participants’ experiences. The central theme was ambivalence toward loss and grief, followed by identity curiosity, the impact of one’s adoption story, connection, relational distrust, and involvement with counseling. Ambivalence Toward Loss and Grief This first theme regarding uncertainty toward loss and grief was significant, as it closely touched on the study’s research question and the participants’ perception of these two topics in relation to their adoption. Thus, it established the degree to which loss and grief were associated with and/or processed in the context of being adopted. Some of the participants indicated they did not feel they had undergone measurable loss and grief explicitly tied to their adoption experience. For example, Martin stated that he is “not an emotional person, [so] I really don’t have a huge amount of grief.” Similarly, Teresa stated, “I think the reason that I don’t personally feel, and haven’t really ever felt, a ton of loss
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