I took two courses in grad school with Pauline Boss, the person who developed the concept of ambiguous loss. Soon after this happened with our daughter, I remembered this concept and thought it was a good fit for our experience. But the idea of ambiguous grief maybe an even better fit . . .
The images are other worldly but oddly, because of the woo-woo world we have, realistic. My loss was similarly ambiguous and overwhelming, a different kind; first the shock of discovering my then-husband's cross-dressing diaries (his documentation of the "true life test" fakery), living with his detransition, the gradual realization the detransition was fake too, then raising our sons as the only rational adult, but forced to share the children into his woo-woo risk taking. Then, the last, most painful of all, the change in society, with the year 2015 as the watershed, when "the world" demanded we three were not traumatized, not gaslit and any further trauma my sons feel as adults is "due to Mom's transphobia." They are traumatized, have never had closure. Is there another phrase, for unrecognized ambiguous loss?
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
That's it isn't it? Ambiguous loss or ambiguous grief, yet it's still different. Only those who are affected by the woo/cult whatever the hell you want to call it understands how different it is. For those of us still waiting for our children to come home, we cheer on every family reunited, hoping every minute that it will one day be ours. That our child will not be harmed beyond repair. That our relationship will not be harmed beyond repair. Thank you again for naming something I'm feeling but have not quite put into words.
I took two courses in grad school with Pauline Boss, the person who developed the concept of ambiguous loss. Soon after this happened with our daughter, I remembered this concept and thought it was a good fit for our experience. But the idea of ambiguous grief maybe an even better fit . . .
The images are other worldly but oddly, because of the woo-woo world we have, realistic. My loss was similarly ambiguous and overwhelming, a different kind; first the shock of discovering my then-husband's cross-dressing diaries (his documentation of the "true life test" fakery), living with his detransition, the gradual realization the detransition was fake too, then raising our sons as the only rational adult, but forced to share the children into his woo-woo risk taking. Then, the last, most painful of all, the change in society, with the year 2015 as the watershed, when "the world" demanded we three were not traumatized, not gaslit and any further trauma my sons feel as adults is "due to Mom's transphobia." They are traumatized, have never had closure. Is there another phrase, for unrecognized ambiguous loss?
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
That's it isn't it? Ambiguous loss or ambiguous grief, yet it's still different. Only those who are affected by the woo/cult whatever the hell you want to call it understands how different it is. For those of us still waiting for our children to come home, we cheer on every family reunited, hoping every minute that it will one day be ours. That our child will not be harmed beyond repair. That our relationship will not be harmed beyond repair. Thank you again for naming something I'm feeling but have not quite put into words.