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Abstract
During the journey of life, one has to face so many challenges. For the smooth sailing of ship of life in the face of an inevitable dreadful storm, one has to accommodate oneself by adopting certain adaptive/maladaptive coping strategies, which fuel the pursuits that lead to enhanced psychological growth. After pondering over these notions, the present study is an attempt to explore the coping strategies used by rural Indian widows which may result in their posttraumatic growth. A purposive sample of 100 literate widows, aged 30-50 years, was drawn from the rural areas of Haryana and Punjab states with five years of married life and at least one year of widowhood. Widow’s coping strategies and post traumatic growth were assessed by using reliable and valid scales/tests. Descriptive statistics was computed which indicated above average level of posttraumatic growth and more usage of avoidance oriented coping strategies followed by approach-oriented strategies, thereby indicating coping flexibility as per demand of the situations. Further correlational analysis indicated the significant and positive correlation of various types of coping strategies with posttraumatic growth (overall and its various domains). Problem solving (an approach oriented coping strategy) emerged as a robust predictor of overall PTG and its various domains except the two domains such as “new possibilities” and “appreciation of life”. Conversely positive reappraisal (an avoidance cognitive strategy) was found to be the only strategy which completely failed to predict overall PTG and any of its domain. The current findings have highlighted the fact that both types of coping strategies (approach as well as avoidance) played a stringent role in growth aftermath trauma of death of a husband.