5 Key Teachings, AMBIGUOUS LOSS, by Pauline Boss, PhD

CAPTION:

Dr. Pauline Boss has written several powerful books—her classic, Ambiguous Loss, which was published in 1999, is about the term she coined to account for all of the loss where there is no body: In it, she wrote about working with immigrants (before the time of the internet and long distance calls), families of POWs and those who were MIA, as well as families of people diagnosed with diseases like Alzheimers. In her follow-up, The Myth of Closure, published during COVID, she dives into the cultural need to put an end to loss when it's something that we learn to live with, not circumvent or get over. She did a lot of work with families of 9/11 around the idea of physical ambiguous loss: When there is no body to mourn, no physical proof that someone has passed. There's also psychological ambiguous loss: When someone disappears into dementia, addiction, divorce, etc. I think it's such a powerful framework to imagine all different types of loss, and to learn how to support people enduring each of them.

5 KEY TEACHINGS:

1. There’s no cultural container for ambiguous loss—we’re really bad at honoring this passage.

Here’s Dr. Boss: “Few if any supportive rituals exist for people experiencing ambiguous loss. Their experience remains unverified by the community around them, so that there is little validation of what they are experiencing and feeling. … The absurdity of ambiguous loss reminds people that life is not always rational and just; consequently, those who witness it tend to withdraw rather than give neighborly support, as they would do in the case of a death in the family. Finally, because ambiguous loss is a loss that goes on and on, those who experience it tell me they become physically and emotionally exhausted from the relentless uncertainty.”

2. The first type of “Ambiguous Loss” is physical—someone is missing. But that’s not the only kind.