12. For a full discussion of mourning in different cultures, see M. McGoldrick, J. M. Schlesinger, E. Lee, P. M. Hines, J. Chan, R. Almeida, B. Petkov, N. G. Preto, and S. Petry, “Mourning in Different Cultures,” in Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family, 2nd ed., ed. F. Walsh and M. McGoldrick (New York: Norton, 2004), 119–160. [34]
13. P. Dilworth-Anderson and S. Marshall, “Social Support in Its Cultural Context,” in Handbook of Social Support and the Family, ed. G. R. Pierce, B. R. Sarason, and I. G. Sarason (New York: Plenum, 1996), 61–79; Roots, DVD, directed by D. Greene, G. Moses, J. Erman, and M. Chomsky (1977; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2002).
14. D. G. Faust, The Republic of Suffering (New York: Vintage, 2008).
15. Ibid.
16. Kenneth Gergen, a professor at Swarthmore College, said, “We all confront loss in our lives, and with loss comes a rupture in meaning.” Quoted on book jacket of P. Boss, Loss, Trauma, and Resilience (New York: Norton, 2006). [35]
17. S. Minuchin, Families and Family Therapy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).
18. E. Lindemann, “Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief,” Journal of Psychiatry 101 (1944): 141–148.
19. D. S. Becvar, In the Presence of Grief: Helping Family Members Resolve Death, Dying, and Bereavement Issues (New York: Guilford Press, 2001); G. A. Bonanno, The Other Side of Sadness (New York: Basic, 2009); F. Walsh and M. McGoldrick, eds., Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2004).
1. E. Berscheid, “The Human’s Greatest Strength: Other Humans,” in A Psychology of Human Strengths, ed. L. G. Aspinwall and U. M. Staudinger (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2003), 42. See also E. Berscheid and H. T. Reis, “Attraction and Close Relationships,” in The Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th ed., ed. D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, and G. Lindzey (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1998), 2:193–281. [36]
2. Berscheid, “Human’s Greatest Strength”; Berscheid and Reis, “Attraction and Close Relationships.”
3. A psychological family is indeed a “mental representation of family, which may exist in addition to the family in which one actually lives”: D. Becvar, review of Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss, by P. Boss, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 32, no. 4 (October 2006): 531. [37]
4. Berscheid, “Human’s Greatest Strength”; M.E.P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (New York: Free Press, 2002).
5. Berscheid, “Human’s Greatest Strength,” 41; H. T. Reis, W. A. Collins, and E. Berscheid, “The Relationship Context of Human Behavior and Development,” Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 844–872.
6. For the full story, see Boss, Loss, Trauma, and Resilience, 25, and P. Boss, Ambiguous Loss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1. In 1999, I wrote about the letters my father and his mother exchanged over the decades. Lives lived apart were still connected. I also wrote about them in an academic journal: P. Boss, “The Experience of Immigration for the Mother Left Behind: The Use of Qualitative Feminist Strategies to Analyze Letters from My Swiss Grandmother to My Father,” Marriage & Family Review 19, nos. 3–4 (1993): 365–378. Reprinted in Families on the Move: Migration, Immigration, Emigration, and Mobility, ed. B. H. Settles, D. E. Hanks III, and M. B. Sussman (New York: Haworth, 1993), 365–378. In German (now translated), my Swiss grandmother, Sophie Salzmann Grossenbacher, wrote of her longing, too, for dear ones far away. Having read all of her letters, I understand that we had become her psychological family, just as she had become my father’s; see Boss, Ambiguous Loss. [38]
7. F. Russo, They’re Your Parents, Too! (New York: Bantam, 2010).
8. P. Picasso, The Tragedy, 1903. Oil on wood, 41½ × 27½ in., Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. [39]
9. Berscheid, “Human’s Greatest Strength,” 41; Reis, Collins, and Berscheid, “Relationship Context of Human Behavior and Development.”
10. K. Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase (New York: Knopf, 2004), 272.
11. Ibid., 298.
12. N. L. Paul, “The Use of Empathy in the Resolution of Grief,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 11 (1967): 153–169.
13. M. McGoldrick, R. Gerson, and S. Petry, Genograms: Assessment and Intervention, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 2008).
1. S. J. Wolin and L. A. Bennett, “Family Rituals,” Family Process 23, no. 3 (1984): 401–420.
2. B. H. Fiese, “Dimensions of Family Rituals Across Two Generations: Relation to Adolescent Identity,” Family Process 31 (1992): 151–162.
3. B. H. Fiese and C. A. Kline, “Development of the Family Ritual Questionnaire: Initial Reliability and Validation Studies,” Journal of Family Psychology 6, no. 3 (1993): 290–299.
4. J.H.S. Bossard and E. S. Boll, Ritual in Family Living: A Contemporary Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950); L. A. Bennett, S. J. Wolin, and K. J. McAvity, “Family Identity, Ritual, and Myth: A Cultural Perspective on Life Cycle Transitions,” in Family Transitions, ed. C. Falicov (New York: Guilford Press, 1988), 211–234; E. Imber-Black and J. Roberts, Rituals for Our Times (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
5. B. H. Fiese, K. A. Hooker, L. Kotary, and J. Schwagler, “Family Rituals in the Early Stages of Parenthood,” Journal of Marriage and Family 55 (August 1993): 634.
6. S. Dickstein, “Family Routines and Rituals— The Importance of Family Functioning: Comment on a Special Section,” Journal of Family Psychology 16 (2002): 441–444; S. R. Friedman and C. S. Weissbrod, “Attitudes Toward the Continuation of Family Rituals Among Emerging Adults,” Sex Roles 50, nos. 3–4 (2004): 277–284.
7. M. McGoldrick, J. M. Schlesinger, E. Lee, P. M. Hines, J. Chan, R. Almeida, B. Petkov, N. C. Petro, and S. Petry, “Mourning in Different Cultures,” in Living Beyond Loss, ed. F. Walsh and M. McGoldrick (New York: Norton, 2004), 119–160.
8. J. Roberts, “Setting the Frame: Definition, Functions, and Typology of Rituals,” in Rituals in Families and Family Therapy, ed. E. Imber-Black, J. Roberts, and R. A. Whiting (New York: Norton, 2003), 3–48.
9. E. Imber-Black, “Rituals and the Healing Process,” in Living Beyond Loss, ed. F. Walsh and M. McGoldrick (New York: Norton, 2004), 340–357.
10. Ibid.
11. Rituals also serve to fix who is in or out of your family (boundaries) and who does what (roles). According to sociologist Erving Goffman, rituals clarify and fix these roles and boundaries and thus stabilize the family. What to do, where to sit, how to act, when to speak— all are spelled out in a family’s rituals that deal with birth and death, marriage and divorce, and ceremonies of transition to adulthood. See E. Goffman, Interaction Ritual (New York: Pantheon, 1967). [40]
12. Imber-Black, “Rituals and the Healing Process.”
13. I. Böszörményi-Nagy and G. Spark, Invisible Loyalties (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 75.
14. Imber-Black, “Rituals and the Healing Process.”
15. R. A. Whiting, “Guidelines to Designing Therapeutic Rituals,” in Rituals in Families and Family Therapy, ed. E. Imber-Black, J. Roberts, and R. A. Whiting (New York: Norton, 1988), 84–112.
15. C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 1973), cited in M. W. deVries, “Trauma in Cultural Perspective,” in Traumatic Stress, ed. B. van der Kolk, A. C. MacFarlane, and L. Weisaeth (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 398–413.
17. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, cited in deVries, “Trauma in Cultural Perspective,” 402.
18. J. M. Beaton, J. E. Norris, and M. W. Pratt, “Unresolved Issues in Adult Children’s Marital Relationships Involving Intergenerational Problems,” Family Relations 52, no. 2 (2003): 143–153.
19. F. Russo, They’re Your Parents, Too! (New York: Bantam, 2010).
20. Wolin and Bennett, “Family Rituals”; Fiese and Kline, “Development of the Family Ritual Questionnaire.”
1. A. B. Cohen, “Many Forms of Culture,” American Psychologist 64, no. 3 (April 2009): 194–204.
2. H. Lavretsky, “Stress and Depression in Informal Family Caregivers of Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease,” Aging Health 1, no. 1 (August 2005): 117–133.
3. For this reason, we are now looking at caregiving through a stress process lens. See Lavretsky, “Stress and Depression.” [41]
4. Lavretsky, “Stress and Depression.” See also W. Caron, P. Boss, and J. Mortimer, “Family Boundary Ambiguity Predicts Alzheimer’s Outcomes,” Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes 62, no. 4 (1999): 347–356. [42]
5. C. Buckley, Losing Mum and Pup (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009), 91; see also C. Goldman, The Gifts of Caregiving (Minneapolis, MN: Fairview Press in cooperation with the Center for Spirituality and Healing, University of Minnesota, 2002). [43]
6. G. A. Bonanno, The Other Side of Sadness (New York: Basic, 2009).
7. H. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Anchor, 2004).
8. This version of the Serenity Prayer is from E. Sifton, The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (New York: Norton, 2003), 7. [44]
9. P. Boss, Loss, Trauma, and Resilience (New York: Norton, 2006), 177.
10. I use the term attachment in this section in a general sense. See J. Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, vol. 3, Loss: Sadness and Depression (New York: Basic Books, 1980). [45]
11. T. Bowman, Finding Hope When Dreams Have Shattered (St. Paul, MN: Bowman, 2001).
12. B. Pym, Excellent Women (New York: Penguin, 1952), 11.