Continuing bonds

For much of the twentieth century, the common view was that healthy grieving ends in detachment: let go, move on, reinvest elsewhere. In 1996, Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman, and Steven Nickman edited a collection that challenged that view. The work it gathered found that many people keep an ongoing relationship with the person who died, and that this is often normal and helpful.

That can look like talking to them, keeping their tools, asking what they would have done, or carrying something of theirs into the way you live.

Why it matters

Many men have been told to move on, and could not, and concluded that something was wrong with them. They were being measured against a model the field itself revised.

You were told to move on. The research moved on from that idea first.

What it is not

It is not a rule that everyone should keep a bond, or that a bond is always comfortable. Researchers since have looked at when a continuing bond helps and when it is part of being stuck. If a connection to the person who died is stopping you from living your life a long time afterwards, that is worth raising with a clinician.