@jjones what came up for me while reading your post was the idea of ambiguous loss. Ambiguous loss is a term coined by Dr. Pauline Boss to describe grief that arises when a person's body has not been retrieved, as in the case of being missing, or a person's body is present but their mind is gone, like in advanced dementia and so on. Grieving for these kinds of losses is difficult because it can exist for many years without any sense of closure. For example, in a death where a body is present, one is able to verify their death, care for their body, and perform a ritual to acknowledge that loss within support of a community. In the case of someone missing, they can exist for many years in a liminal space of gone but never dead, with no rituals or social acknowledgement of the intense grief in the wake of their absence.
This is a clear example of how difficult and painful dwelling within the unknown can be, how hardwired we are to seek clarity and control. Therapists caring for those with ambiguous loss commonly use the term "yes, and..." "Yes, I still hope that they will return or that we will reconcile, and I need to find a way to live a meaningful life and take care of myself right now."
Ambiguous loss also occurs during major life transitions when there are limited rituals or social acknowledgement of the grief. For example, becoming a mother has been an intense transformation of everything I know about myself, all of my values have changed and with those values, all of my relationships to people are in a state of flux. Yes, I love my child fiercely and wouldn't trade them for the world, and I deeply miss the freedom, spontaneity, and identity I had before becoming a parent.
This chapter was very eye-opening for me as well. I wonder if there are other languages that utilize a different framework from Aristotelian logic? Reading this chapter made me realize how I have assumed Aristotelian logic was innate, but in fact, it could just be the result of our western culture and language.
