Loss loss loss

An interview with University of Chicago's Froma Walsh on the subject of loss, exploring salvation in loss, legacies of loss that are destructive for generations to come, helping people speak about it, and human need to make sense out of it.

By Owen Lipstein, Hara Estroff Marano, published on July 01, 1992 - last reviewed on October 01, 2009

FW: Studies show that the more realistic individuals' appraisals of situations, the more depressed they are. There's probably a point at which you have to switch modes. We have to think of loss as a process, not just an event. If there is an impending or threatened loss, that's when you marshal all of your resources and try to master the situation, to fend it off.

Combating any serious adversity in life, there comes a point where either we master that adversity or we give in to it. With an illness, you may try many doctors or treatments. In a business, you may go to many banks.

I'm working with several individuals right now who are facing bankruptcy. As they go through these phases, the question becomes, "when do I throw in the towel? When do I admit defeat?" A man who is bound to look upon bankruptcy as a sense of failure can rationally say the economy is terrible, lots of companies are folding. Internally, when he thinks of his family, he can say, "but I've surmounted all odds, my family surmounts all odds. I should be able to beat this."

PT: You can also say to yourself that the company went down the tubes but what I did was heroic. I built it; I took risks. That strengthens your sense of self and helps you get through the other parts of the loss, the money loss, the job loss.

FW: Loss is experienced against a larger system. We're in a culture where we value personal responsibility. In another culture it's Allah's will that happens. If the company folds it's not your fault. In our culture, we believe we get what we deserve. And if a business fails it's a personal failure. There has to be an allowance for misfortune along with personal responsibility.

Complications around loss often occur when there's a lot of blaming or guilt. A parent may feel blamed or negligent because a child died of, say, Sudden Infant Death syndrome. There is nothing the parent can do, but blame, shame, and guilt complicate the loss process.

PT: What about cases where they are slightly negligent or could have done more? A father who shouldn't have let his son, who had a habit of drinking, ride off on a motorcycle.

FW: That's why accidental deaths of adolescents are especially difficult. There are all the complications of the risk-taking behavior, the sense of vulnerability that teenagers have; but then the parents wonder, what was my responsibility? What should I have done? I usually help them track through the process: What could you have done? What regrets do you have? It is natural to respond by attributing cause or feeling self-doubt. But sometimes it ends up in scapegoating someone. That's why families of homicide victims have tremendous difficulty over coming to terms with the loss when they feel justice has not been served.

PT: Doesn't there come a point when this doesn't work?

FW: In healthy families and well functioning families there is a sense that death is part of the life cycle and that it's inevitable. Healthier individuals and families tend to be more accepting of death as part of the life cycle. Given the life cycle, the most painful and unjust deaths are early deaths, untimely deaths. The death of a young adult or a kid is inherently unjust, doubly difficult because it reverses the life cycle.

PT: Are you seeing more people dealing with loss than ever?

FW: Many more people are coming in for help with business losses. One man was having night sweats, hadn't slept well in months, and got to the point where he was paralyzed because he was trying to pursue two opposite alternatives at the same time. One was trying to get new business to save the business, and the other was trying to figure out how he could unload the business to another buyer. He'd make a move in one direction, then feel absolutely torn because he was also trying to cover his face on the other side. Meanwhile he was having to fire people left and right, so there were constant and debilitating losses of the people that had built the business with him.

The business bore his name, so his whole identity was wrapped up in it. The question becomes, at what point does the captain either go down with the ship or abandon it. He was in such despair about how to get through each day that he had no vision of how he wanted to live his life in the next five or 10 years. He had to finally come to a point where he could at least put the worry out of the way for 48 hours and not act out of desperation, to feel like he could make a choice and not just be forced to do something. He may not be able to stop the forces destroying the business, but he's got some choices to make about what comes next. If he can't save the business, he needs to start to plan for the aftermath.

PT: How does he do that?

FW: He has a cabin in the woods, but he felt he couldn't even take a day off because he now had to cover the workload of all the people he had fired. I told him I wanted him to take his family with him down to that cabin for a few days just to get in touch again with why he built it and why it means something to him. At this point he can say, "I may have lost the business, but thank God I have the family. I could have lost my family." He's already shifting; there's a great deal more to life than the business he's losing.