Hayes reviews his lifetime of work on loss from his perspective as a human development scholar. He argues that loss is the nature of life, that it is cumulative throughout life, and that it is mediated on each occasion by cognitive-emotional skills and by continual assimilation and accommodation. Citing Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget, he claims that the capacity to problem solve expands as people age. Every individual comes to recognize that they are different from who they were in the past and is able to consider that a loss in the present is also a loss of what could be in the future, something a young child cannot do. Hayes reviews the meaning of loss at different ages. The final chapter describes vivid examples of the challenges COVID-19 posed for medical staff, teachers, and small business owners. The conditions they lived and continue to live with as they confront moral distress and ambiguous loss allow no time for processing their grief. Hayes emphasizes the need for support from others experiencing similar circumstances. This book is likely to be an important resource for anyone dealing with loss during a time of rapid change. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Choice Reviews

I found this to be a 'big' book—the work of a lifetime, in a sense, and a thoughtful, engaged life, obviously—one committed to deep and compassionate witnessing by an author who has dedicated decades to hearing the call of distress on the part of countless clients undergoing daunting trauma and transition... I frankly regard it as a minor masterpiece, and certainly the magnum opus of Richard L. Hayes' career as a clinical scholar. Its most commendable content contribution is providing a sweeping and yet well-integrated account of loss and its role in fostering change and meaning-making across the lifespan, and doing so in a way that does not require the reader to be a specialist in the numerous literatures on which he draws.

Robert A. Neimeyer, University of Memphis