Your Pandemic Sadness Is Called ‘Ambiguous Loss’
Therapist Pauline Boss explains why it’s harder to grieve in the face of uncertainty—and why ambiguous loss is everywhere in 2021
I spent most of the pandemic grieving, though, at the time, I didn’t think I was sad about the pandemic itself. Everyone around me seemed to have specific losses. Their loved ones had died, or they had long Covid. They had friends they couldn’t see or jobs they’d lost. I was isolated before lockdown — I’d moved to a new town where I didn’t know anyone, and having a toddler made it hard to socialize — and my job was never at risk. My family was lucky; the virus mostly passed us by.
So there wasn’t any clear reason for the sorrow that overwhelmed me. I spent lockdown obsessing over incidents from ten or twenty years ago, getting teary-eyed during uneventful family dinners. Certain memories came back so often I could set my watch by them: A childhood friend who skipped town and seemingly disappeared, or my estranged biological father, who was diagnosed with dementia, making reconciliation effectively impossible. The grief was obsessive, repetitive, embarrassing. I couldn’t move on, no matter what I tried. I wore myself out with sadness, got sick of my own sadness, and I was still sad.
