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Mindful Living: Love & Loss
Humans are social beings; we attach, bond and connect with people every day. The natural desire to connect also leads to a natural response when we must part with people or situations. That response is grief. While death being the obvious and most severe form of separation, what about all the other types of loss we experience every day? What airtime do those get? Grief shows up in break-ups, moves, disability, divorce, and unmet expectations among others.
A supervisor of mine recently suggested reading the work of Pauline Boss, PhD., who has been a professor at the University of Minnesota and at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Boss writes about “ambiguous loss.” This type of loss she says differs from ordinary loss in that there is “no verification of death or no certainty that the person will come back or return to the way they used to be.” The ambiguity of such losses prevents closure and often impairs an individuals or family’s functioning.
While ambiguity can stifle the grieving process, there are two other major obstacles to processing a loss. CONTINUE READING
