Hope and ambiguous loss

Every year, 35,000 people are reported missing in Australia. When a person is missing, those who wait exist in the space between the person being here and gone. The literature suggests that to live with ambiguous loss is to exist along a continuum of hope that changes as the loss continues. Hope has practical and psychological implications for the "left behind". It exists for the physical return of the missing person and within the community as shared hope for a positive outcome. From an interpersonal perspective hope was attached to a need for the left behind to find ways to navigate their loss and to sit with the experience of "not knowing". Within these layers was the fear that to extinguish hope was to give up on the safe return of the missing person. The paper will explore the concept of hope for families of missing people by presenting a review of the literature in comparison to what is known about hope and grief. Focus will be placed upon the flexibility of the definition of hope and the challenges for both practitioners and those left behind in supporting that space between hopefulness and hopelessness.

9243 Hope in the liminal space (461kb pdf)