The Myth of Closure, Pauline Boss
The Myth of Closure, Pauline Boss
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The Myth of Closure
Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change

Author: Pauline Boss

Narrator: Elisabeth Rodgers

Unabridged: 3 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/21/2021

Synopsis

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 Pauline Boss

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.

About Elisabeth Rodgers

Elisabeth Rodgers is an actress and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. After graduating from Princeton University, she completed a two-year program at William Esper Studio, where she studied with Maggie Flanigan. Her audiobook narration training came from Robin Miles, who has also directed her in several productions. She has recorded dozens of books for a multitude of publishers.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Karen on January 03, 2023

I would give this a higher rating in terms of the important concepts that it introduces but have reduced it to 3 because there is much more repetition than development. In this book, Boss builds on her earlier work in "Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live to Unresolved Grief" (1999) in which she defines......more

Goodreads review by Beebee on February 17, 2022

This was insulting for me to read. I hoped to garner some inisight into why white americans couldnt keep their shit together and have been acting like psychopathic toddlers. Instead, i've practically written this book in my endless encouragement to white people to not be entitled jackasses. White pe......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on January 20, 2022

Find meaning Revise attachment Discover new hope Reconstruct identity Adjust mastery Normalize ambivalence "What you are experiencing is ambiguous loss; it is the most difficult loss because it defies resolution. This is not your fault. The problem is the ambiguity, not you. It can traumatize. With this,......more

Goodreads review by Servando Patlan on January 13, 2022

A very helpful and timely book Sometimes the less said, the better. This book invites you in to find a banquet table set for you to select as you need. Fill your plate, eat, chew, and digest. It Is a book that will sustain you through the starvation ahead when you will feel you are dying of hunger bu......more

Goodreads review by Karen on January 10, 2022

Quick read with good information. I loved the both/and thinking idea. I'm looking forward to reading her classic, Ambiguous Loss.......more

Quotes

“Boss offers us lessons in dealing with ambiguous loss.” Mary Pipher, PhD, New York Times bestselling author

“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

“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

“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

“[Her] work helps us understand ourselves and each other.” Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia

“An inspired and much-needed framework for living through the pandemic…[A] beautiful melding of Boss’s eighty-plus years of personal experience with life and loss with her forty-plus years of professional work as a family therapist, professor, clinician, and grief expert.” Coalition News

“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

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