Final Critique

The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science Tells Us about Life after Loss, written by George A. Bonanno, illustrates the ways in which different people deal with loss in different ways and even so, most of us are resilient to loss. Death is an inevitable phase every person must face. Throughout one’s life, everybody is destined to confront the pain of death in his or her lifetime. But how do we cope? Is there a “correct” or “normal” way, or length of time we are supposed to use, to recover after a major loss? Bonanno delves into the ways in which we deal with grief and loss that are contrary to what people generally presume. We may be surprised, even hurt, by a loss, but we still manage to pull ourselves back together and move on. One of the recurring arguments made in The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science Tells Us about Life after Loss is that resilience after loss is real, prevailing, and enduring. Bonanno is able to provide much compelling evidence to show the different patterns or trajectories of grief reactions across time shown by bereaved people. He also explains thoroughly how grief is not work by elucidating the ways emotions work to help us deal with demanding environments. Bonanno is successful in allowing the readers to be conscious of what people are grieving after a major loss – they don’t grieve facts, they grieve what they remember. In addition, Bonanno explains how death elicits both terror and curiosity to help his readers conceptualize death. Bonanno essentially articulates that resilience is both genuine and lasting because it is in our human capacity to thrive in the face of adversity.
“Bereavement is not a one-dimensional experience. It’s not the same for everyone and there do not appear to be...

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...hip is still alive. As readers, we get a sense that there is power in these memories. It becomes relevant to the readers’ lives because the way he depicts it, we are able to relate it to every aspect of our lives. For example, a loved one need not to pass away to be considered as a “loss,” one may lose a friend for whatever reason or end a relationship with his or her significant other. In every case, even when it seems as if we’ve lost someone forever, we find that there is still something to hold onto, something to nurture us, something that is almost better than memory. Bonanno believes that resilient people are essentially less expected than others to use evasion and distraction as coping approaches. In sum, Bonanno argues that resilient people are less prone to avoid thinking about the loss, or to intentionally occupy their minds to evade confronting the agony.