Excerpts: “Or it could be simply ourselves, growing older and losing many of the assets and capacities we had when we were young. Whether such personal losses are physical or psychological, the confusion about what we have lost and who are now is disturbing. Something about us has disappeared, and we know it” (p. 13).

“These multilevel ambiguous losses are occurring right now and increasing the population’s anxiety as well as anger. The challenge, however, can also strengthen our resilience—if we learn to think less about mastery and our own agency and more about empathy and concern for others” (p. 15).

“Change is inherently stressful because it requires us to be open and flexible to new ways and ideas. Transformation often requires compromise, so it tests our tolerance for the less than perfect. Not always getting exactly what we want is a test of ambiguity tolerance” (p. 52).

“…the following guidelines can help build your resilience: finding meaning, adjusting need for mastery, reconstructing identity, normalizing amivalence, revising attachment, and discovering new hope” (p. 70).

“Over a lifetime, loss and change accumulate, so we must be malleable enough to grow and shift who we are and what we do. We do this to survive, but more is involved than just ourselves” (p. 79).

“We are, after all, an accumulation of all the relationships we have had over our lifetime. It’s possible to hold them all—the old and the new, the good and the bad—in the same sphere, for they are all part of who we have become” (p. 84).

“I want to be frank: you can be knocked down and eventually get up again to have a good life, but you’ll never be completely over the loss of someone you have loved. There is no closure, nor is there a need for it. Instead, we remember them and learn to live with the ambiguity of absence and presence. You know they’re gone, but you keep them present in your heart and mind—even as you move forward with your life. They become part of your psychological family” (p. 92).

Boss, Pauline (2022). The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Ltd.