Ambiguous Loss and the Pandemic ~ (The Mary Hanson Show)

Pauline Boss sits down with Mary to share her ideas and theories about the losses that go along with the Pandemic, many of which are what she calls “ambiguous losses.” Pauline is Professor Emeritus at the U of Minnesota in the Dept of Family Social Science, and she is also an author and researcher. In this half hour, she shares ideas from her latest book, The Myth of Closure, Ambiguous Loss in a Tme of Pandemic and Change. She talks about the effects of the Pandemic on racial relationships and explains the new research on epigenetics, looking at how trauma is passed down from generation to generation. She also criticizes our culture’s focus on closure, writing that closure is not possible when there are major losses, but people do learn to live with the continuing loss. This book is probably her most personal as her husband, Dudley Riggs, died right before the Pandemic started, and she weaves her grieving in to her writing.