The Myth of Closure by Pauline Boss

The subtitle of this is Ambiguous Loss in the Time of Pandemic, which is really just a recent framework around which to look at and contextualize grief and loss. This was the Ethics Book Club book of the month at my workplace this month, and since it was available without even a wait at my local library, I read it. As stated above, this book is and isn't centered on the pandemic, even though that is in the title. It is true that The years of 2020 and 2021 have been times of great loss. COVID-19 death tolls exceed 5 million worldwide, climate change threatens our ways of life, and political unrest and racial injustice are daily in the headlines. These are ambiguous losses, which the author describes as a loss that remains unclear, without official verification or immediate resolution, and for which resolution may never be achieved. The book guides us through six principles for developing the resilience to live with and thrive despite these ambiguous losses. She makes it clear that these are not steps to be achieved sequentially, but to be used as needed as we navigate these times. Finding meaning and discovering new hope are key, supported by adjusting mastery, reconstructing identity, normalizing ambivalence, and revising attachment. Finding meaning in our loss makes tragedy easier to bear. Adjusting mastery allows us to control what we can control. We may need to reconstruct our identity, changing how we define ourselves. We learn to accept that ambivalence and conflicting emotions and feelings are normal and move forward despite this. We revise our attachment to the way things were and accept change to find a new steady state. Ultimately, we learn to hope for something new and move forward rather than living in a state of suspended animation. It is a useful framework to think about coping with loss that is different from the more widely known stages of grief described by Kubler-Ross.