Abstract
Written by a pastoral counselor and professor of pastoral care, All Our Losses, All Our Griefs by Kenneth R. Mitchell illuminates the many shapes of loss and grief as well as how to provide pastoral support to those experiencing these travails in life’s journey. Mitchell’s work addresses three main questions: “(1) Why do people grieve, or what is the genesis of grief in human life? (2) What are the dynamics of grief and the characteristics of grieving? (3) How can we help those who grieve?” By compiling the three questions of grief into one work, Mitchell’s All Our Losses, All Our Griefs provides a unique and convenient resource for those serving the mourning and bereaved population.
Through multiple case studies and examples, Mitchell illustrates how grief is a normative “response to significant loss … (of) someone or something we value.” (ps. 18-19) Furthermore, Mitchell names his “fundamental thesis: The genesis of grief lies in the inevitability of both attachment and separation for the sustenance and development of human life.” (p. 20) For example, the selfishness and withdrawal associated with grief can be connected to Margaret Mahler’s findings on the connection between the human mother and child. Similarly, the role of continuity, ambiguity, and the transitional object in grief can be explained by Melanie Klein’s interpretation of the human psyche through object relations theory. Finally, the grief that arises from separating from a source of attachment (protest, despair, and detachment) correlates to John Bowlby’s attachment theory. Through these theoretical lenses, the human relational bonds of love mirror the Imago Dei within each human: the “capacity to love and be loved.” (p. 31)
Mitchell identifies six types of loss that we as humans experience: material loss (“the loss of a physical object or of familiar surroundings to which one has an important attachment,” p.36), relationship loss (“the ending of opportunities to relate oneself to, talk with, share experiences with, make love to, touch, settle issues with, fight with, and otherwise be in the emotional and/or physical presence of a particular other human being,” ps. 37-38), intrapsychic loss (“the experience of losing an emotionally important image of oneself, losing the possibilities of ‘what might have been,’ abandonment of plans for a particular future, the dying of a dream. Although often related to external experiences, it is itself an entirely inward experience,” p. 40), functional loss (the loss of “muscular or neurological functions of the body,” p. 41), role loss (“the loss of a specific social role or of one’s accustomed place in a social network," p. 42), and systemic loss (the loss of functions performed within one’s constructed and interactional system, p. 45). Mitchell notes that with any of these six types of loss, the loss can be avoidable or unavoidable, temporary or permanent, actual or imagined, anticipated or unanticipated. Furthermore, loss can occur from either leaving or being left. In each case, these factors flavor and personalize the loss.
Grief can be defined as an emotional response to loss. Erich Lindemann, the father of grief work theory and the concept of anticipatory grief, identifies the characteristic of grief by behaviors of “somatic distress, preoccupation with the image of the deceased, guilt, hostile reactions, and the loss of patterns of conduct” (p. 55). In contrast, David Switzer, author of the seminal work The Dynamics of Grief, determines that the “major dynamic of the inner experience of grief is anxiety, and all the behavioral responses are in some way related to this anxiety” (p. 55.) Lindemann’s identifies the person’s behavioral response to grief and loss, while Switzer identifies the person’s emotional response to grief and loss. Mitchell pairs these two concepts together to enhance the lens through which grief and loss are viewed. Along a similar vein lies the concepts of anticipated loss and anticipatory grief, which is when loss “occurs over a period of time” (p. 58) and, consequently, grief is elongated. Regardless of length, all grief shares features that may include numbness, emptiness/loneliness/isolation, fear and anxiety, guilt and shame, anger, sadness and despair, and somatization. Just as the factors surrounding loss influence the loss experience, the intensity and complexity of attachment contributes to the individuality of each grief experience (p. 82). In other words, grief is unpredictable.
When grief is productive, it helps the bereaved person “to enable a person to live a life relatively unencumbered by attachments to the person or thing lost; to remake emotional attachments; to recognize and live with the reality of the loss and the feelings occasioned by it.” (p. 86) According to Mitchell, the “shapes of grieving” can be identified as follows: searching, immoderation, nonlinear with distorted time, self-oriented, and with longing never totally diminishing. Grief can be hindered by avoiding pain or other emotions or by a lack of social and communal support. To Mitchell, “the pastoral task is primarily concerned with keeping open communication between the grieving person and God” (p. 170).
Interventions for the grieving individual include support, memory making, reintegration into community, meaning making, empathic listening, “gentle confrontation,” advocacy, and providing resources for coping (p. 111). It is important to not provide comfort prematurely (p. 121), particularly with religious resources, as this can cause spiritual and emotional harm. The acts of remembering and hoping can be particularly healing on the grief journey. Restoration, likewise, can be of great help, though it demands caution for the sake of boundaries.
Interventions in the public sector or grieving community involves religious rituals and homiletics. Worship and funerals, for example, help to provide language for feelings while gently guiding the grieving community towards healthy expressions of grief and the faith experience. These offer powerful resources to those in mourning, including exposure to external reality in the midst of internal anguish.
Interestingly, Mitchell’s concluding thought brings a unique understanding and sense of meaning to death and dying: “All our achievements are finite, but so are our failures. Our lives are finally judged according to limited possibilities. We are free to live and love and learn in the confidence that the God who ordained the boundaries of life will accept our finite completeness” (p. 173). By so doing, Mitchell gathers the abstract concepts of loss and grief and presents a meaningful, comforting, and concrete theological understanding of the role of death in the human spiritual journey.
By first considering the questions of why people grieve and the nature of grief and loss, Mitchell equips the reader to offer competent care to the grieving and bereaved. Mitchell offers an astute understanding of grief and loss while consistently offering theological implications and reflection, rendering this book a useful compilation of theory and skills for integration into one’s ministry praxis. While Kenneth R. Mitchell’s All Our Losses, All Our Griefs may not be written at a level accessible to the everyday person, Mitchell’s book is a quality, seminal work that prepares, equips, and enriches the ministry of pastoral care counselors, spiritual care providers, and other ministry professionals.
