Divorce is one of life’s most disorienting and painful transitions. It can feel like the death of a future you had planned, a redefinition of your identity, and a splintering of once-familiar emotional ground. While the legal process may have a clear start and end, the emotional and psychological aftermath often lingers in complex and ambiguous ways. To navigate this healing process, two therapeutic concepts—ambiguous loss and narrative therapy—offer powerful frameworks for recovery.
Coined by Dr. Pauline Boss, ambiguous loss refers to a type of loss that lacks clarity or closure. Your former partner may no longer be physically present in your life, yet their emotional and psychological presence remains. Or, you might co-parent or still interact, yet feel an emotional absence where intimacy and shared goals used to reside.
Unlike death, where society offers rituals like funerals and grieving spaces, divorce lacks clear cultural rituals for mourning. This lack of structure can make the loss feel “unreal” or invalidated, leading to what Dr. Boss calls “frozen grief.” You may feel stuck, unsure of how to move forward when the loss is neither clearly defined nor socially recognized.
To work through ambiguous loss, you first need to acknowledge the loss and that you are grieving. You’ll allow yourself to go through the grieving process and its non-linear stages. Much like the traditional grief cycle, you’ll work your way through denial, bargaining, sadness, anger, and find your way to acceptance.
As you work your way through navigating this transition, it is helpful to find a way to rewrite your story using Narrative Therapy. Narrative therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston, is based on the idea that we make sense of our lives through stories. Divorce disrupts the central narrative many people hold about themselves—their identity as a spouse, a family unit, or even their belief in romantic permanence.
Through narrative therapy, individuals are encouraged to externalize the problem. This shift separates you from the problem and helps reduce self-blame. This form of therapy also seeks to look for exceptions, such as other times when you felt strong or hopeful during difficult times. These exceptions highlight alternate storylines that can be further developed. This empowers you to re-author your life. You get to decide what the next chapter of your story will be and who you are becoming in that story.
