Some losses never resolve cleanly: a parent with dementia who's alive but unreachable, a relationship that ends without closure, a career derailed by illness with no recovery timeline. Ambiguous grief lives in the gap between presence and absence, requiring you to hold contradictory feelings without a clear endpoint.
Ambiguous loss, a term coined by therapist Pauline Boss, describes situations where someone is physically absent but psychologically present, such as a missing person, or physically present but psychologically gone, as with dementia.
Because there is no clear moment of closure, this type of grief is especially hard to process alone, and AI tools can provide a consistent space to articulate feelings that rarely have socially accepted outlets.
Peri can explain this concept, give practical examples, help you decide whether it applies to your situation, or recommend a journey if appropriate.
Explore related journeys or tell Peri what you're working through.