:
In Western culture, several factors work against our sharing rituals of remembrance and ongoing connection. For years, conventional wisdom has said that the right way to mourn fully is to move on. As long as one continues to invest emotional energy in the past or in past relationships, so the theory goes, one is not free or able to enter into new relationships in an open and complete way.
The power of this belief persists, despite the fact that counselors who work with the bereaved tell us that rituals to honor the connection to deceased loved one are a normal part of mourning. Our failure to understand truly the continuing presence the dead play in the lives of the living has led to a tendency to overpathologize normal mourning.
(...)Survivors needed a way to establish a continuing connection to those who had died. They also, however, needed to find a way to separate enough from the past so that they were free to make new connections in the present. Both too much and too little connection to the relationships of the past may make it difficult to move forward. A continuing connection to the relationships of the past, when it exists in a balance with the present, may be a necessary condition for establishing connections in the future. Rather than preventing one from moving on, as many have suggested for so long, these connections may actually enable future growth.
/The Loss That Is Forever, M.Harris/
The power of this belief persists, despite the fact that counselors who work with the bereaved tell us that rituals to honor the connection to deceased loved one are a normal part of mourning. Our failure to understand truly the continuing presence the dead play in the lives of the living has led to a tendency to overpathologize normal mourning.
(...)Survivors needed a way to establish a continuing connection to those who had died. They also, however, needed to find a way to separate enough from the past so that they were free to make new connections in the present. Both too much and too little connection to the relationships of the past may make it difficult to move forward. A continuing connection to the relationships of the past, when it exists in a balance with the present, may be a necessary condition for establishing connections in the future. Rather than preventing one from moving on, as many have suggested for so long, these connections may actually enable future growth.
/The Loss That Is Forever, M.Harris/