|
Moira Walker
says in the Preface to her book,
"In my interviews with abuse
survivors, it was evident that incorporating their stories into a book
was empowering for them and highly significant to them. They were
unanimous in wanting others to know their stories: both what happened to
them as children and as adults."
Pauline
Boss's book deals with grieving when one is left with unanswered
questions about the loss. She includes a range of circumstances where
the person you knew is still alive but lost to you, e.g. mental health,
addiction, brain injury, family separation as well as deaths where for
example the body is not found.
"The inability to resolve such
ambiguous losses is due to the
outside situation, not to
internal personality defects. And the outside force that freezes
the grief is the uncertainty and ambiguity of the loss."
(p10)
But the book
is optimistic, even though closure cannot be achieved in some
circumstances, the goal is
"to find some way to change even
though the ambiguity remains. This is yet another paradox - to transform
a situation that won't change. Many people succeed. ... People use their
powers of mastery to make changes, not always to alter the tragedy of
their own loss, but to help others who might be suffering a similar loss
in the future. If the world is unjust for having caused their ambiguous
loss, they resolve to make meaning out of the chaos by lowering the
risks of such loss for others."
(p120)
They are also
books that I would like health care professionals to be aware of.
"Those of us who work with
abuse survivors often hear things we would prefer not to hear and not to
believe. That does not make what we hear unbelievable, although it may
well be inconceivable."
(Moira Walker pp4/5)
"When people suffering
ambiguous loss seek treatment and are evaluated in the traditional way,
they often look dysfunctional, exhibiting readily diagnosed symptoms
such as anxiety, depression and somatic illnesses. The question that
therapists and physicians should add to their diagnostic repertoire is
this: Is the patient experiencing any ambiguous losses that might
account for his or her immobilization? Even in otherwise healthy people,
the uncertainty of such a loss can diminish power and get in the way of
action."
(Pauline Boss p10) |