Foundations of and Expansions of Ambiguous Loss

Expansions on Ambiguous Loss Theory

Scholars in Family Social Science at UMN and from around the world have applied Ambiguous Loss Theory in a variety of contemporary research topics including:

• Migration, Immigration – e.g., immigrants losing their identities
• Deportation – e.g., separation of children from their parents
• Military Deployments – e.g., loved ones feel psychological presence of deployed service member
• Pregnancy loss, infertility – e.g., grieving lost identity as a parent
• Separation from beloved pets – e.g., storms, earthquakes contributing to people being separated from pets and not knowing if the pets survived
• LGBTQ+ - e.g., relational ruptures with family members adjusting to individual’s identity; adoption barriers contributing to loss of potential identity as a parent
• Farmers’ identity loss and land loss – e.g., farmers losing their farming identity as land is there but engulfed in debt; losing farming as a family heritage as younger generations opt for other careers
• Digital ghost – e.g., individual dies but their social media footprint remains
• Climate change – e.g., although there is still an abundance of water on earth, the amount of unconsumable water is increasing

Scholars around the world have addressed the aforementioned issues. Research faculty in the Department of Family Social Science have also expanded the scope of Ambiguous Loss Theory.

Selection of their articles/presentations:

• Boss, P. (2026). Quantify or Classify? Recommendations for Ambiguous Loss Versus Boundary Ambiguity. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 18(1), 7–12. Quantify or Classify Journal
• Chhuon, V., Aleixo, M., & Solheim, C. (2024). Ambiguous Loss for Cambodian American Deportees and Their Families. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 22(3), 573–585. Ambiguous Loss for Cambodian American Deportees and Their Families Journal
• Krekelberg, E., & McGuire, J.K. (April, 2022). Support for mental health as a production tool in farming: An ambiguous loss perspective. Poster accepted for presentation at The Agricultural Health and Safety Conference, Las Vegas
• Mendenhall, T. J., & Boss, P. (2022). Ambiguous Loss: Contemporary Applications and Theoretical Extensions. In A. L. Few-Demo, C. Proulx, K. Roy, & K. Adamsons (Eds.), Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methodologies (pp. 513–529). Springer International Publishing. Ambiguous Loss: Contemporary Applications and Theoretical Journal
• Okrey Anderson, S., & McGuire, J. K. (2021). “I feel like God doesn’t like me”: Faith and Ambiguous Loss Among Transgender Youth. Family Relations, 70(2), 390–401. "I feel like God doesn’t like me”: Faith and Ambiguous Loss Among Transgender Youth Journal

Dr. Boss's most famous book, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (Harvard University Press, 1999), introduced the phenomenon of ambiguous loss to a more general audience and has been translated into six foreign languages including Chinese, Taiwan Chinese, German, Japanese, Marathi, and Spanish.

Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss(W.W. Norton, 2006) was written for professionals and people who want to know how to ease the pain of ambiguous loss and how to help people to live with the “not knowing.” Based on what Dr. Boss learned from her work with families of the physically missing in Kosovo and in New York after 9/11 and from her ongoing clinical work with families of the psychologically missing from Alzheimer's disease and other chronic mental illnesses, Loss, Trauma and Resilience is used as the text for the Ambiguous Loss Online Training and is available in German and Japanese.

Her 2011 book, Loving Someone Who has Dementia (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2011) was written explicitly for family caregivers and paraprofessionals and is also read internationally in French, German, Norwegian, and Polish.