This is the Sunday edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. I realized today was Mental Health Awareness Day when I opened Instagram and saw a post from a Peloton instructor. As you’ll see, this is particularly appropriate given today’s newsletter, featuring the work of
Ambiguous loss is a concept I’ve found helpful in living with my father’s Alzheimer’s disease. The book “Ambiguous Loss” by Pauline Boss is a good discussion of it in various contexts, primarily with a focus on experience of an ambiguous loss of a loved one.
This article struck home for me. As a soon to be psychologist who works with trauma—including with 9/11 first responders—the concepts of rupture and repair and of reframing the narrative from us in relation to our bodies to us AS our bodies are at the heart of my personal and professional work. It’s so hard, y’all.
There is so, so much to say, so I’ll leave it at this for now: We are all trying our best and that is enough.
I have a question from reading — do you believe anticipatory grief can exist? I don’t mean anxiety. But rather - knowing that a change or loss will be coming. And feeling that sense, well before it arrives?
I’ve been thinking about this in terms of decarbonisation and the radical changes coming. Knowing we must change. Losing « the before times » - but in this case the before is before we tackled climate change fulsomely.
Just yesterday, I was able to see my husband in person for the first time in three months. He lives in a nursing home that was on lockdown because of the pandemic. Five & a half years ago, he had a motorcycle accident that left him with a severe traumatic brain injury (at age 54). The man that yelled 'woman of mine, where are you?' when he came home was gone, along with the twinkle in his eye & everything that made him the man I fell in love with. Until I learned about ambiguous loss, I had no way to describe the pain I felt. How did I explain to people that I was a widow to a person that was still alive? Learning about this term gave me an odd sense of relief.
I'm listening to "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk - sooooooo much to do with everything you're talking about here. Thanks for another insightful piece.
The term "ambiguous grief" is so helpful to me. One of the hard things has been trying to articulate that very feeling I've had since Covid started, and this really, really helped in giving me language for it.
At my college last year, I created a survey for faculty about how they were doing because every time I had a meeting with someone, invariably they would say something to indicate how much they were struggling. I was union president and my meetings with admin were this constant narrative of me saying "people aren't doing okay, we have to do something," and them kinda shrugging it off, or saying things like, "But they are working from home, so are safe," or comparing them to our students (who were also definitely traumatized). The survey results were so hard to read (22 pages single space of comments about how they felt) that it broke me in a way when no one in power did anything. I couldn't even articulate 100% what I wanted them to do but now I think a big part of it was just the acknowledgement that we were in a traumatizing situation, and that this was happening to all of us--even if a lot of us had job security and enough food and safe housing. The lack of acknowledgement was really a big part of the trauma for people--I feel like this interview helped me truly understand that and put value to that concept.
Interesting to hear it called "ambiguous grief" here! I did research around similar feelings about a pregnancy loss during the dark heart of the pandemic and came across the very helpful term "disenfranchised grief," a sense of real loss, but one that is less visible or socially acceptable.
One of the things about my Peloton that surprised me most was how much I cried - sobbed - every time I got on the bike for the first few months. I wonder reading this if I was dealing with some sort of ambiguous grief that the bike helped me metabolize. (I suspect my pre-COVID lifestyle was even more traumatic than I realize). I have personally found engagement with the Peloton XXL group to also be almost entirely positive.
One question I found myself asking while reading this is, "are there any communities that don't cost money to join?" Or, if not money, a huge amount of time? I'm probably doing community wrong.
Interesting interview on many levels, though the language about the Peloton experience is nearly identical (in substance, if not words) to that of the yoga craze of the late 1990s, early 2000s. The same focus on uplifting language, the formation of community with a unique vocabulary/clothing/diet, etc. The digital experience, of course, is the outlier.
This was helpful for me after a miscarriage this summer - a totally unexpected pregnancy that I miscarried about 30 hours after finding out I was pregnant. It was such a confusing loss - ambiguous grief - and it made my world feel unsafe and unsteady. Add to that the pandemic fatigue and loss and it made for a very rough summer. It was so validating to read Samira's work here.
Samira, if you see this, I would love to hear more about all the parts of a culture that is *not* seen in the celebration events. Anne quotes you saying: "I’m hoping to dig into how users respond to this notion of having your culture seen and honored…but also employed as a marketing catalyst." And that is an interesting question. But what part of gay or lesbian culture is never on display in pride celebrations by companies, what part of LatinX culture is never talked about in marketing driven celebration. Take Peloton for instance. There is only so much their medium can bear, however, even in music that is their forte they have a fairly narrow definition of Latin music. There is no representation of alternative music or metal. What does it mean to be celebrated yet only superficially so?
The question "what it means to be a part of a community that you pay to be a part of?" struck me. Makes me think of other cult (and bougie!) workout classes like The Class by Taryn Toomey, what Gwyneth has built with Goop, and even college Greek life. It's interesting to think that a sense of belonging can be so easily and steeply commodified. I wonder what the implications are behind communities built for and only afforded by the affluent.
several parts of this interview struck me, and I imagine that I'll come back to it and take it in again in new ways.
it also clarifies a couple of things that I'm wondering. when I was reading the sections focused on ambiguous grief, I kept thinking about the ways that historians (and literary scholars) talk about WWI's "lost generation" (which was also at the same time as the influenza epidemic). This cultural moment is different from that one in key ways, but as i think about all of those lost to COVID, this general comparison keeps coming to mind. is this a useful comparison? are there things that can help us now by how folks coped then? I know others have talked about this in relation to the previous epidemic, but I don't know that people really separated these losses in the way that we often do for them, over a century later.
I was also struck in Samira's descriptions of the peloton space by just how much some of it sounded like what many religious spaces are/strive to be/are complicated by. I'm pretty sure others have talked about various gyms, diets, health initiatives, etc as religion replacements for an increasingly agnostic population, but are such comparisons useful?
Kinda interesting: years ago I hopped on a Peloton at a gym while I was traveling. It was my first use of the bike, and I can’t remember who the instructor was—but it was the holidays and despite being with family I was feeling sad and alone (not uncommon). Whatever the instructor said that day made me emotional—I got off the bike and tweeted “almost cried on a Peloton”—which I thought was funny at the time but now I’m seeing… it was built for that!
I found this interview fascinating, especially the Peloton portion. I've been thinking about my Peloton experience a lot this past week and how it has been positive both as support for ambiguous grief (much better term than the one I was using--"psychological malaise") and acute loss. One of our power zone team members died this weekend, and while a number of us over the past year have lost parents and siblings and pets, this hit pretty hard. She had breast cancer and had been up and down for almost a decade. And her husband is also on the team, so there is a shared grief--that while is 'virtual' in the sense that many of us have never met in the physical realm--is also very real and comforting and cathartic. The way the group rallied around the husband is one of two really amazing things that the Peloton platform enabled in my life this year. The other was the introduction, courtship, and marriage of two team members who lived on opposite sides of the country when the pandemic hit. Even though this seems surreal and unlikely, like Samira said, there is already a gatekeeper--the platform itself. It's fairly expensive and that barrier is one that is easier to overcome with education and employment and the corollaries that come with those. And then for our team itself, when we laud how support and love we give each other and how well we get along? I always think "Well, yeah. Of course. We are all well-educated, fairly well-to-do professionals, who are ex-athletes or fitness enthusiasts, who have access to Peloton AND understand the science of power zone AND have time to do it." Looking at it that way, how could we not have met? Anywho, just some thoughts I had as I read this. Glad I found your newsletter. It's proving to be thought provoking. Thanks!
The Language of Ambiguous Grief
Ambiguous loss is a concept I’ve found helpful in living with my father’s Alzheimer’s disease. The book “Ambiguous Loss” by Pauline Boss is a good discussion of it in various contexts, primarily with a focus on experience of an ambiguous loss of a loved one.
This article struck home for me. As a soon to be psychologist who works with trauma—including with 9/11 first responders—the concepts of rupture and repair and of reframing the narrative from us in relation to our bodies to us AS our bodies are at the heart of my personal and professional work. It’s so hard, y’all.
There is so, so much to say, so I’ll leave it at this for now: We are all trying our best and that is enough.
This is such a resonant piece for me.
I have a question from reading — do you believe anticipatory grief can exist? I don’t mean anxiety. But rather - knowing that a change or loss will be coming. And feeling that sense, well before it arrives?
I’ve been thinking about this in terms of decarbonisation and the radical changes coming. Knowing we must change. Losing « the before times » - but in this case the before is before we tackled climate change fulsomely.
Just yesterday, I was able to see my husband in person for the first time in three months. He lives in a nursing home that was on lockdown because of the pandemic. Five & a half years ago, he had a motorcycle accident that left him with a severe traumatic brain injury (at age 54). The man that yelled 'woman of mine, where are you?' when he came home was gone, along with the twinkle in his eye & everything that made him the man I fell in love with. Until I learned about ambiguous loss, I had no way to describe the pain I felt. How did I explain to people that I was a widow to a person that was still alive? Learning about this term gave me an odd sense of relief.
This was very interesting! I feel like Samira could find a lot of similar things researching the knitting and crafting communities.
I'm listening to "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk - sooooooo much to do with everything you're talking about here. Thanks for another insightful piece.
The term "ambiguous grief" is so helpful to me. One of the hard things has been trying to articulate that very feeling I've had since Covid started, and this really, really helped in giving me language for it.
At my college last year, I created a survey for faculty about how they were doing because every time I had a meeting with someone, invariably they would say something to indicate how much they were struggling. I was union president and my meetings with admin were this constant narrative of me saying "people aren't doing okay, we have to do something," and them kinda shrugging it off, or saying things like, "But they are working from home, so are safe," or comparing them to our students (who were also definitely traumatized). The survey results were so hard to read (22 pages single space of comments about how they felt) that it broke me in a way when no one in power did anything. I couldn't even articulate 100% what I wanted them to do but now I think a big part of it was just the acknowledgement that we were in a traumatizing situation, and that this was happening to all of us--even if a lot of us had job security and enough food and safe housing. The lack of acknowledgement was really a big part of the trauma for people--I feel like this interview helped me truly understand that and put value to that concept.
Interesting to hear it called "ambiguous grief" here! I did research around similar feelings about a pregnancy loss during the dark heart of the pandemic and came across the very helpful term "disenfranchised grief," a sense of real loss, but one that is less visible or socially acceptable.
One of the things about my Peloton that surprised me most was how much I cried - sobbed - every time I got on the bike for the first few months. I wonder reading this if I was dealing with some sort of ambiguous grief that the bike helped me metabolize. (I suspect my pre-COVID lifestyle was even more traumatic than I realize). I have personally found engagement with the Peloton XXL group to also be almost entirely positive.
One question I found myself asking while reading this is, "are there any communities that don't cost money to join?" Or, if not money, a huge amount of time? I'm probably doing community wrong.
Interesting interview on many levels, though the language about the Peloton experience is nearly identical (in substance, if not words) to that of the yoga craze of the late 1990s, early 2000s. The same focus on uplifting language, the formation of community with a unique vocabulary/clothing/diet, etc. The digital experience, of course, is the outlier.
This was helpful for me after a miscarriage this summer - a totally unexpected pregnancy that I miscarried about 30 hours after finding out I was pregnant. It was such a confusing loss - ambiguous grief - and it made my world feel unsafe and unsteady. Add to that the pandemic fatigue and loss and it made for a very rough summer. It was so validating to read Samira's work here.
Samira, if you see this, I would love to hear more about all the parts of a culture that is *not* seen in the celebration events. Anne quotes you saying: "I’m hoping to dig into how users respond to this notion of having your culture seen and honored…but also employed as a marketing catalyst." And that is an interesting question. But what part of gay or lesbian culture is never on display in pride celebrations by companies, what part of LatinX culture is never talked about in marketing driven celebration. Take Peloton for instance. There is only so much their medium can bear, however, even in music that is their forte they have a fairly narrow definition of Latin music. There is no representation of alternative music or metal. What does it mean to be celebrated yet only superficially so?
The question "what it means to be a part of a community that you pay to be a part of?" struck me. Makes me think of other cult (and bougie!) workout classes like The Class by Taryn Toomey, what Gwyneth has built with Goop, and even college Greek life. It's interesting to think that a sense of belonging can be so easily and steeply commodified. I wonder what the implications are behind communities built for and only afforded by the affluent.
several parts of this interview struck me, and I imagine that I'll come back to it and take it in again in new ways.
it also clarifies a couple of things that I'm wondering. when I was reading the sections focused on ambiguous grief, I kept thinking about the ways that historians (and literary scholars) talk about WWI's "lost generation" (which was also at the same time as the influenza epidemic). This cultural moment is different from that one in key ways, but as i think about all of those lost to COVID, this general comparison keeps coming to mind. is this a useful comparison? are there things that can help us now by how folks coped then? I know others have talked about this in relation to the previous epidemic, but I don't know that people really separated these losses in the way that we often do for them, over a century later.
I was also struck in Samira's descriptions of the peloton space by just how much some of it sounded like what many religious spaces are/strive to be/are complicated by. I'm pretty sure others have talked about various gyms, diets, health initiatives, etc as religion replacements for an increasingly agnostic population, but are such comparisons useful?
Kinda interesting: years ago I hopped on a Peloton at a gym while I was traveling. It was my first use of the bike, and I can’t remember who the instructor was—but it was the holidays and despite being with family I was feeling sad and alone (not uncommon). Whatever the instructor said that day made me emotional—I got off the bike and tweeted “almost cried on a Peloton”—which I thought was funny at the time but now I’m seeing… it was built for that!
I found this interview fascinating, especially the Peloton portion. I've been thinking about my Peloton experience a lot this past week and how it has been positive both as support for ambiguous grief (much better term than the one I was using--"psychological malaise") and acute loss. One of our power zone team members died this weekend, and while a number of us over the past year have lost parents and siblings and pets, this hit pretty hard. She had breast cancer and had been up and down for almost a decade. And her husband is also on the team, so there is a shared grief--that while is 'virtual' in the sense that many of us have never met in the physical realm--is also very real and comforting and cathartic. The way the group rallied around the husband is one of two really amazing things that the Peloton platform enabled in my life this year. The other was the introduction, courtship, and marriage of two team members who lived on opposite sides of the country when the pandemic hit. Even though this seems surreal and unlikely, like Samira said, there is already a gatekeeper--the platform itself. It's fairly expensive and that barrier is one that is easier to overcome with education and employment and the corollaries that come with those. And then for our team itself, when we laud how support and love we give each other and how well we get along? I always think "Well, yeah. Of course. We are all well-educated, fairly well-to-do professionals, who are ex-athletes or fitness enthusiasts, who have access to Peloton AND understand the science of power zone AND have time to do it." Looking at it that way, how could we not have met? Anywho, just some thoughts I had as I read this. Glad I found your newsletter. It's proving to be thought provoking. Thanks!