The grief of divorce and significant estrangement is complicated by the fact that the person is not dead — they still exist in the world, possibly in proximity, possibly in dispute — and yet the relationship that existed is genuinely gone. Pauline Boss named this experience ambiguous loss: a grief without the social recognition or the finality that comes with death. This domain examines this particular form of grief and what it asks that ordinary mourning does not.
Each step builds on the last.