Linked inTwitter

The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on social media in early 2024 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

This site addresses what's changing, in our own lives, in our organisations, and in wider society. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 areas, ranging from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and very much else inbetween.

Halcyon's aim is to help you reflect on how you can better deal with related change in your own life.

What's Changing? - Loss

Loss

 

Please see below selected recent loss-related change.

 

See also:

 

February 2024

 

August 2023

  • For a long time, psychologists and psychiatrists viewed grief as a journey - a gradual process consisting of five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But there is no chronology or linearity in grief; it does not progress along predetermined stages as a journey. Psychologists and grief experts Jason Holland and Robert Neimeyer suggested that the five-stage model continues to persist due to the underlying cultural framework of the “monomyth” — a.k.a. the Hero’s Journey - that dominates much of our storytelling. noted Freethink.

 

May 2023

  • Saudade is the sad longing for something that is likely lost forever. It’s the recognition that everything has changed and that you and everyone will never be the same. It’s nostalgia for a past, contented time, but it’s also a deeper, philosophical acceptance that change is an inevitable part of life. Saudade sees the transience of things and accepts that all things must fade and pines for a memory that we know can never come back, noted Big Think.
  • In The Power of Regret, Daniel Pink drew on research in psychology, neuroscience, economics, and biology to challenge widely-held assumptions about emotions and behavior. Using the largest sampling of US attitudes about regret ever conducted, along with his own World Regret Survey, which collected regrets from more than 16,000 people in 105 countries, Pink identified the core regrets that most people have. These regrets, Pink argues, operate as a “photographic negative” of the good life. By understanding what people regret the most, we can understand what they value the most

 

April 2023

  • Psyche argued that the ‘grieving as learning’ framework can help us understand how specific cognitive and neurobiological processes can shape the ways in which grieving people relearn the world, as the philosopher Thomas Attig described it. The learning process will likely look different for everyone, but understanding the broad strokes of what is happening in the brain could help people feel more normal in their grieving and better appreciate why their grieving processes, and those of the people they care for, require time and experience.

 

March 2023

 

December 2022

 

August 2022

  • The last member of an Indigenous tribe in Brazil was found dead, marking the first confirmed loss of one of the country’s uncontactable tribes. He was known only as the "Man of the Hole'' because of the dozens of trenches he’d dug in his territory over the years. There are estimated to be 114 Indigenous tribes in Brazil, but only 28 have been identified.

 

July 2022

 

June 2022

 

July 2021

  • In a major review of studies on heartbreak, psychologist Tiffany Field at the University of Miami pulled together findings from a host of other researchers showing that the symptoms of heartbreak resembled those of bereavement: sleep disturbance, compromised immune function, digestive problems, body aches, depression, anxiety, all the way to something called ‘broken-heart syndrome’ where the shock from loss can induce a heart attack-style episode. 

 

May 2020

  • Normally, those who win at games do so because they know how to triumph, succeed and outwit others. The School of Life launched a game with a difference: those who win it are great at losing; they know all about frustration and difficulty and how, optimally, to respond to it. The game invites us to answer questions about the challenges we’ve faced (in love, work, etc.) – and rewards players for speaking with particular frankness and good humour about their lives. In a world often obsessed with success, The Loser Game gently suggests that losing isn’t some freakish anomaly, it’s an inevitable part of being human.

 

April 2020

  • According to a paper published by the Collective Psychology Project, This Too Shall Pass, this the coronavirus pandemic was the first cataclysm that many have faced - a shock to humanity’s system, especially in the developed world, that has provoked grief not only for those who have died but for the world we fear we have lost. We need, the authors argued, to reclaim the old shared habits of mourning and story-telling that were second nature to previous generations – to develop resilient narratives, just as we develop resilient supply-lines. 
  • There are an estimated 250,000 miscarriages in the UK alone every year, but it is not always clear why we find it so difficult to talk about something that happens so often. Miscarriage can be a lonely and isolating experience, and it is often hard to get answers to questions about possible causes. Doctors generally only undertake investigations after a third pregnancy loss and breaking the taboo of miscarriage is a challenge when people rarely get the support they feel they need.

 

June 2019

  • Many office cultures are pretty good at celebrating birthdays and new babies. But when a colleague experiences the death of a relative or friend, we usually respond with awkward silence. In When a Colleague Is Grieving, Harvard Business Review explored the challenge we face in helping coworkers return to work. They walked through three phases of grief - anger, despair, and the slow reinvestment in life - and offered guidance on being compassionate and supportive to colleagues who are in pain.

 

December 2018

 

September 2018

  • Loss can be cultural, as well as personal. The fire that tore through Brazil’s vast National Museum destroyed nearly all of its 20 million specimens. Among the items feared lost are a priceless collection of Egyptian and Andean mummies, artworks from Pompeii, a dinosaur skeleton unique to Brazil, rare records from the country’s imperial era, hundreds of audio recordings of extinct indigenous languages, millions of insect and marine specimens, and the oldest human fossil found in Latin America - a skeleton named Luzia.

 

August 2018

Topics
Timelines
Spaces
Signifiers