Hope in the Liminal Space

Abstract

Each year in Australia 35,000 people are reported missing to law enforcement agencies (James, Anderson, & Putt, 2008). When a person is missing those who are left behind exist in a space between the person being both here and gone (Boss, 1999). Within this space, a sense of ambiguous loss is punctuated by feelings of hope. Given the lack of certainty surrounding the permanency of the loss and the absence of the customary markers of grief, those left behind "engage the future in an extended or suspended present" (Hogben, 2006, p. 333). A study currently being undertaken by the author seeks to deconstruct hope and its dual role in being attached to the relational bond with the missing person, as well as the individual's capacity to exist in a space where hope and despair shift on a fluctuating basis, known as a "liminal space".