Research has not addressed issues of life meaning in a life-span developmental framework. The Loss and Transcendence paradigm was developed as a humanistic-existential approach to life-span development which has as its central theme the concept that individuals are in a continuous process of creating their lives and their selves. To explore loss and transcendence over the life-span, 48 women aged 25-67 were interviewed with the Loss and Transcendence Life History Form. Eleven issues regarding life meaning were investigated, including what is meant by life meaning, the prevalence of the belief in life meaning, whether life meaning is found or created, the relationship between belief in meaning and one's orientation to loss or transcendence, and whether a taxonomy of meaning can be found. The majority of respondents reported feeling that life had meaning. The results revealed that: (1) individuals throughout their life reviews demonstrated orientations to either loss or transcendence; (2) individuals exhibited patterns of losses and transcendence over their lives; (3) networks of events, thoughts, and feelings represented death and life to respondents; and (4) grieving, searching, replacing, and reintegrating were all stages of the loss and transcendence process. Qualitative analysis revealed four different types of self, and loss and transcendence were traced for individuals over their life spans. These findings hold significance for an existential life-span developmental paradigm. (NB)