Ambiguous Loss and Agriculture - What is it? with Extension Educator Linda Reddish - Full Interview

Linda Reddish Author

09/29/2023 Added

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Linda, full interview for Ambiguous Loss project

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[00:00:00.416](light music)
[00:00:07.230]Hi, I'm John Fech with Nebraska Extension,
[00:00:09.840]and welcome to this video on ambiguous loss.
[00:00:12.660]Joining me here in the studio is Linda Reddish,
[00:00:15.240]program coordinator for Successful Co-Parenting.
[00:00:18.450]Now Linda, the title, ambiguous loss,
[00:00:21.780]it's a little bit hard to get your hands around
[00:00:23.820]and know what we're referring to.
[00:00:25.140]Yeah. I know what regular loss is.
[00:00:27.750]But what is ambiguous loss?
[00:00:29.910]Sure, so Dr. Pauline Boss,
[00:00:32.550]she's a professor emeritus with the University of Minnesota,
[00:00:35.910]coined the term ambiguous loss in the '70s.
[00:00:39.570]Where that work started for ambiguous loss,
[00:00:42.060]I think sometimes it's helpful to have an example
[00:00:44.280]before defining it.
[00:00:45.420]So her work primarily started
[00:00:48.750]during the Vietnam War, missing in action soldiers.
[00:00:52.830]And so there was the physical absence
[00:00:55.410]of those individuals, right?
[00:00:57.510]There wasn't a clarity, a likely death,
[00:00:59.280]but not certainty of death.
[00:01:00.810]And yet, they were weighing heavily on the mind, okay?
[00:01:04.740]So she started to sort of explore this phenomenon
[00:01:08.130]while at the same time exploring
[00:01:12.120]if someone was maybe physically present
[00:01:14.940]but psychologically absent.
[00:01:17.310]And so that's kinda how the term ambiguous loss was coined.
[00:01:22.410]She started looking at that,
[00:01:24.390]exploring that particular theory.
[00:01:27.480]And so now, it's really defined as kind of two losses.
[00:01:31.680]And I'll talk about those in more depth.
[00:01:33.420]But the way that I like to say it,
[00:01:35.100]it's a loss that has no definitive closure.
[00:01:41.220]It's ambiguous.
[00:01:42.180]That's why it's called that for a reason.
[00:01:44.100]There's not a lot of clarity
[00:01:46.020]or definitive closure
[00:01:52.620]on what that loss is.
[00:01:55.560]All right, so in addition
[00:01:56.580]to the MIA Vietnam War experiences,
[00:02:01.710]what are some other examples of ambiguous loss?
[00:02:04.410]Yeah, so let's start with sort of the type one loss,
[00:02:08.310]which I tend to describe as saying goodbye
[00:02:11.550]but without actually physically leaving.
[00:02:14.220]So a goodbye without leaving.
[00:02:15.960]That's the simplest way I could define this one.
[00:02:18.570]And that means that the person is still physically present,
[00:02:23.070]but psychologically, they're absent.
[00:02:26.640]Dementia is an example of this one, right?
[00:02:29.220]The person might still be there,
[00:02:30.480]but the person that you remember has changed.
[00:02:33.840]And so you're grieving that loss.
[00:02:36.090]Another one could be addiction.
[00:02:38.760]So you know, you remember the person,
[00:02:42.150]but that situation is so stressful,
[00:02:44.040]it's changed the dynamics.
[00:02:45.420]So even though that person might still physically be around,
[00:02:50.940]that psychological absence of who they used to be,
[00:02:53.700]they've said goodbye, but they haven't really left.
[00:02:56.730]Then the other one is saying,
[00:02:59.850]is the leaving without saying goodbye.
[00:03:03.120]So I'll say that again.
[00:03:03.953]It's leaving but without having the opportunity
[00:03:06.690]to say goodbye.
[00:03:07.860]So I talked about the MIA, missing in action soldiers.
[00:03:11.550]Others have included like missing or kidnapping.
[00:03:15.450]But there's also these pieces too
[00:03:17.550]that are becoming maybe just more collectively aware of,
[00:03:22.200]which is natural disaster losses.
[00:03:25.800]When we think about in Japan
[00:03:27.900]when the tsunamis had hit there,
[00:03:30.300]a collective experience that they all had
[00:03:35.220]was the disaster of the tsunami hitting.
[00:03:38.850]But if we drill it down from collective into individual
[00:03:43.680]and look at maybe farmers, okay?
[00:03:46.380]So collectively, all of the farmers experienced
[00:03:48.990]some sort of, you know, destruction to property,
[00:03:52.260]maybe the actual physical loss of animals,
[00:03:55.440]loved ones, the death of loved ones, okay?
[00:03:57.480]So a collective experience at the national level,
[00:04:01.380]but then at a community level,
[00:04:03.540]the destruction throughout the farmland.
[00:04:05.250]But then at the individual level,
[00:04:07.020]what ambiguous loss could feel like, sound like,
[00:04:10.357]"What if I no longer have the capacity
[00:04:12.480]to maintain that farming land
[00:04:13.830]because it's been do destructed?
[00:04:15.750]So what does that mean for my individual identity?
[00:04:18.450]Am I no longer a farmer?"
[00:04:20.880]So this ambiguous loss, it's a real loss.
[00:04:24.060]It really is.
[00:04:25.980]It's just different
[00:04:28.110]than our certainty that we have with death.
[00:04:31.500]With that certainty, it seems like the commonality,
[00:04:34.470]though, would be that with many problems in life,
[00:04:37.410]either traditional or ambiguous,
[00:04:40.890]it's really important to identify them
[00:04:43.440]and then move forward.
[00:04:45.120]Is that really the same with ambiguous loss,
[00:04:47.430]the identification of the issue?
[00:04:49.890]Yeah.
[00:04:52.350]It is, and I sorta say this with like red flag caution,
[00:04:55.587](laughing) okay, so warning.
[00:04:58.500]In Western culture and particularly in our culture
[00:05:01.380]in America, we have this sorta belief
[00:05:05.310]that if we can find a solution and fix it,
[00:05:08.940]it'll get better.
[00:05:10.290]And that's kind of just our culture.
[00:05:12.570]That's not the case with ambiguous loss.
[00:05:15.870]Ambiguous loss will always be present.
[00:05:18.360]Sometimes it might feel like a pebble in your back pocket.
[00:05:21.300]Other times it could feel like a boulder weighing you down.
[00:05:24.330]It is a grief that will be consistent
[00:05:26.760]throughout your entire life.
[00:05:28.650]Another example of this could be empty nesters, okay?
[00:05:31.830]So there's excitement.
[00:05:33.660]You're getting ready to send your kid off to graduation.
[00:05:36.870]All of that is wonderful,
[00:05:38.070]but there's also the anticipatory grief.
[00:05:41.130]And then that kid goes off to college,
[00:05:43.620]and now you're grieving, right?
[00:05:45.660]That is always going to be the case now
[00:05:47.460]with that adult child.
[00:05:48.720]So there will be moments
[00:05:49.800]throughout that lifetime of grieving.
[00:05:52.680]What is helpful in terms of ambiguous loss
[00:05:56.280]is not so much trying to tame it or move on from it,
[00:06:00.720]but it's really about tempering it.
[00:06:02.580]So and tempering yourself,
[00:06:04.290]knowing that the way that I can best help myself cope
[00:06:08.850]with ambiguous loss is to one, identify it, for sure.
[00:06:12.570]Because it is a real loss.
[00:06:13.950]It is a real grief.
[00:06:15.480]And then after that is to say,
[00:06:18.120]are you familiar with the idea of like the Serenity Prayer?
[00:06:20.113]Yeah. Like yeah,
[00:06:21.270]like accepting that this is what it's going to be, right,
[00:06:25.020]what I cannot change,
[00:06:26.400]and then how do I find meaning moving forward?
[00:06:29.820]It's the both/and thinking, okay?
[00:06:32.580]So I can both be sad that my kid has gone off to college,
[00:06:36.630]and I have this new opportunity to find meaning
[00:06:39.720]in my life or what that's going to look like moving forward.
[00:06:42.750]For help with other parts of ambiguous loss,
[00:06:45.330]click on the other videos found on this web page.
[00:06:48.171](light music)

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Ambiguous Loss and Agriculture - What is it? with Extension Educator Linda Reddish - Full Interview

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