Loss, Grief, and Resilience

Loss, Grief, and Resilience

Source: AAMFT / Used with permission

by Froma Walsh, Ph.D.

In these turbulent times, families have suffered devastating losses of loved ones, from the anguish of COVID-related deaths to gun violence, drug overdose, suicide, environmental disasters, and war. More attention is urgently needed in marriage and family therapy training and practice to help the bereaved heal and forge pathways to live and love fully beyond loss.

Attending to death and loss: A shared human experience

Of all life experiences, death and loss pose the most painful challenges for surviving loved ones. Yet, with our cultural aversion to facing death, the profound impact of these losses is minimized. Many are isolated in their grief, lacking vital connection, understanding, and support. Recovery is hindered by workplace demands, a lack of paid bereavement leave, financial duress, and barriers to resources that disproportionately affect racial/ethnic minorities and other marginalized communities. In our faulty notions of resilience, the bereaved are often urged to quickly gain “closure,” "bounce back," and move on, and are advised to "keep strong" and count their blessings. Caring spouses, family, and friends who are uncomfortable and unsure of what to say or do may withdraw over time. Too often, grief is unacknowledged or minimized, as in pregnancy loss or the death of a cherished pet. COVID-related losses may be suppressed by understandable wishes to put the pandemic behind us (Walsh, 2020; 2023).

A hole in the heart of the family

Most grief treatment models focus on reducing individual symptoms. A systemic practice approach is vital to humanize our understanding and expand our attention to influences in family and social contexts in suffering and healing. We address the impact of loss in couple bonds, among siblings, and in the family system, affecting all members, their relationships, and family functioning. Stressful adaptational challenges—as with the loss of a caregiver or breadwinner—compound distress. Rippling through kinship networks, loss touches many lives with immediate and long-term ramifications. Couples and family bonds can be broken; hopes and dreams are shattered. Submerged pain of overwhelming loss can surface years later in problems with life pursuits or other relationships, which may bring people to therapy.

Resilience-oriented, systemic practice with loss and grief

Best practices in helping bereaved clients are informed by early family systems studies and a growing body of grief research:

• Mourning and adaptation are varied and complex processes over time. There is no right way to grieve, no timetable, and no fixed sequence of stages to complete resolution.
• Attention oscillates between grieving and addressing adaptive challenges.
• We heal through our grief, not by getting over it.
• People die; relationships do not. Adaptation is facilitated not by detaching but by transforming attachments into continuing bonds through spiritual connections, rituals, memories, stories, and deeds.

A resilience-oriented systemic approach applies core principles and methods of strength-based, collaborative practice (Walsh, 2023). Therapists provide a safe haven and compassionate listening and inquiry to understand the shared and unique experiences of loss. We depathologize and humanize grief processes and support the inherent human capacity for resilience, helping those who are struggling to cope, adapt, and thrive. We repair connections and communication to strengthen kin and social support, mobilize community and larger systemic supports, and tap cultural and spiritual resources. In complex and traumatic loss situations, we attend to conflictual or estranged relational dynamics and deep concerns that complicate grief. Applying the research-informed Family Resilience Framework (Walsh, 2016), we strengthen key relational processes—shared beliefs and practices—that facilitate resilience. We highlight the power of connection, meaning-making, hope, and transformation for individuals, families, and their communities to heal from unbearable loss and go forward to thrive.

Froma Walsh, Ph.D., is a professor emerita at the University of Chicago and co-director of the Chicago Center for Family Health.

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