18. Chapter 5
Diversion: How Unresolved Grief and Trauma Take Us Away from Ourselves
*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.
It wasn’t until 2013, that I was challenged to face this unresolved grief and trauma head on when my mother suffered a tragic stroke, and this time I could not keep the lid on my crazy. I was a pot boiling over on the stove to everyone, all the time. And yet with all my most heartfelt good intentions, I again was not equipped to handle the tsunami of trauma because this time, there was a different kind of grief I had not met yet.
Dr. Pauline Goss coined the phrase “ambiguous loss” to describe when a loved one is with us physically but no longer psychologically or emotionally present. It’s where you microdose on losing the identity of a loved one, when they suffer from a cognitive illness, like my Mum. It’s important that I introduce you to this form of grief because according to relationship expert Esther Perel we are all experiencing it now in our daily lives, as mobile phones rob us of the presence of those around us, when their heads bow down mid-conversation to turn their attention to their devices, their presence redacted, much like my mother’s.
