The Myth of Closure Lib/E: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change

How do we begin to cope with loss that cannot be resolved? The COVID-19 pandemic has left many of us haunted by feelings of anxiety, despair, and even anger. In this audiobook, pioneering therapist Pauline Boss identifies these vague feelings of distress as caused by ambiguous loss, losses that remain unclear and hard to pin down, and thus have no closure. Collectively the world is grieving as the pandemic continues to change our everyday lives. With a loss of trust in the world as a safe place, a loss of certainty about health care, education, and employment, lingering anxieties plague many of us, even as parts of the world are opening back up again. Yet after so much loss, our search must be for a sense of meaning, and not something as elusive and impossible as closure. This book provides many strategies for coping: encouraging us to increase our tolerance of ambiguity and acknowledging our resilience as we express a normal grief, and still look to the future with hope and possibility.

About the Author :
Pauline Boss, Ph.D., is renowned as a pioneer, researcher, and theorist who first coined the term "ambiguous loss" in the 1970s. She has published over one hundred peer reviewed articles and chapters and eight books, now translated into seventeen languages, and most recently received the AAMFT Emeritus Award for extraordinary work and leadership in marriage and family therapy. In this book, Dr. Boss guides us to understanding and managing the ambiguity and nuances of loss during these stressful times of pandemic and change. What do you do with a BA in English from Princeton University? You go to New York to pursue an acting career, and end up putting all of your skills together as an audiobook narrator. Elisabeth Rodgers first started recording audiobooks for the National Library Service of the Library of Congress at the American Foundation for the Blind (Talking Book Productions) in New York City. After she had numerous titles under her belt, she branched out, and has since narrated over 100 titles for a variety of publishers. She was the recipient of an Audie Award for the full-cast recording of Sherlock's Secret Life in 2000. Her work on The Last Chinese Chef, Annexed, The Naked Eye, and Mapping the Heavens garnered AudioFile magazine's prized Earphones Awards, and she was lucky enough to join the star-studded cast of Audible, Inc.'s Audie-nominated production of The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, as well as the Earphones-winning MetaBook audio-drama production of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Elisabeth continues to work both onstage and in the studio. She lives in the Lower East Side of New York City.

Review :
[Her] work helps us understand ourselves and each other. -- "Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia" A tour de force...A hopeful message to all of us who struggle to make sense of today's world. -- "Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, author of When We Die" An inspired and much-needed framework for living through the pandemic. -- "Coalition News" Boss offers us lessons in dealing with ambiguous loss. -- "Mary Pipher, PhD, New York Times bestselling author" From her own professional and personal experience, Boss offers us lessons in dealing with ambiguous loss. She writes beautifully and with great emotion as she tackles one of our most difficult challenges--how to grow through pain and suffering. Boss is a cultural therapist whose work helps us understand ourselves and each other. -- "Mary Pipher, psychologist and author of Women Rowing North and Reviving Ophelia" Her work is a tour de force that unites her earlier writings on loss, trauma, and resilience, and it is a hopeful message to all of us who struggle to make sense of today's world. -- "Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, author of When We Die" Of all the books and articles that Pauline Boss has written devoted to her pioneering work on ambiguous loss, this publication may be her finest. The book is timely and exactly what so many of us desperately need as we try to comprehend, adjust to, and gradually bounce back from the devastating losses that so many of us have experienced as we live amid a global pandemic. I am convinced that this book will provide a much-needed compass to those who feel directionless following the loss of loved ones during the pandemic, and for whom 'proper closure' was not humanly possible due to COVID-related constraints. One of the most refreshing and welcomed features of this masterfully written book centers around Boss's expansion of her previous groundbreaking work on ambiguous loss to include a critical examination of global issues such as climate change and racism. If there were ever a time where a book with such a sharp focus was needed, one that speaks honestly, authoritatively, and eloquently to where we are as a nation and a world, it is now. -- "Kenneth V. Hardy, Ph.D., Clinical and Organizational Consultant, The Eikenberg Institute for Relationships, New York, New York"