And Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow

This book is a classic. As foundation for understanding how loss operates in our lives from our earliest days, it is well-written, soundly-researched, and decidedly worth the read. Viorst asserts that loss is central to, and pervasive in, everyone's life. She divides our losses into four major categories: 1) the losses of childhood and the becoming of a separate self; 2) the losses of accepting the limitations of our power and potential including the forbidden and the impossible; 3) the losses of our dreams of ideal relationships to the reality of imperfect human connections; and, 4) the losses of people we love to death.
In one passage, Viorst tells us: "In fantasies and dreams, in all of our searchings for the dead, we try to deny the finality of the loss. For the death of someone we love revives our childhood fears of abandonment, the ancient anguish of being little and left." Is it possible that every loss to death touches the inner child? What a provocative and compelling idea! If true, that retouched anguish may have far-reaching consequences. By itself this is more than adequate reason for each of us to do our part in integrating and embracing loss as part of life.
For more information on loss and change, grief and bereavement, go to LeaningIntoLoss.com.

Judith Viorst's book Necessary Losses has been by my bed for many years. I have read it 3 times but spread out for when I suffered one more loss. It is actually the only book that I have ever read that many times. Why? Because it is comforting, accurate, profound and thoughtful. Judith lets the reader see how many losses we will have to suffer in our lives and she helps us to be able to accept them. Her words have helped me to accept the death of my precious daughter, Katie Brant. I am in the field, a psychotherapist, and I needed consolation. We therapists must grieve for our losses as everyone else; no one is exempt. Thank you Judith, you are a gift.

Mary Jane Hurley Brant, M.S.,CGP,
Author When Every Day Matters
Simple Abundance Press, Oct. 2008
[...]

I spent a couple of years of my clinical training working at an agency that offers grief counseling and maintains a twenty-four hour suicide prevention hotline. I chose Ms. Viorst's wonderful book to write a report required for the agency's training class in grief counseling. We also were given an assignment to prepare a list of the losses we experienced over the course of our lives. What an enlightening exercise, especially as we listened to fellow students share what they'd written! Others' losses reminded many of us of events we'd forgotten, events that had affected us profoundly. It is so easy to forget what is most painful!
Contrary to what some reviewers have said, the information that Ms. Viorst offers in her excellent book is not widely appreciated. I've worked with grief clients whose therapist referred them to the agency when they experienced a significant loss. I've been on the hotline when therapists as well as regular folks called with their bewilderment at how to respond to the loss of a loved one, or equally baffling, how to be with a friend who has experienced such loss. Ms. Viorst normalizes the inevitability of loss and rightly observes how our growing capacity to hold ourselves open to these losses deepens our human experience. I've recommended the book many times to both clients and friends. I encourage those who pick up the book to slow down and digest what she has to say. Let the thoughts seep through your days and weeks, your meetings with friends and family. Buddhists meditate on the vase already broken. In truth everyone we love will be lost to us, whether through their passing or our own. It is not morbid to recognize that fact. Rather it can become the beginning of appreciation and gratitude. Ms. Viorst is not a Buddhist, so far as I know, but she clearly recognizes this ancient wisdom. Opening one's heart to loss is a sure way to open to love.

In her book, “Necessary Losses,” Judith Viorst shows readers how they can grow from the losses they experience during life. She also helps readers gain a positive perspective and greater maturity and wisdom by analyzing life’s challenges. I recommend “Necessary Losses” in the Learn More section of Chapter 3: Coming to Terms in my new book, Your Aging Body Can Talk: Using Muscle -Testing to Learn What Your Body Knows and Needs After 50.

"This perceptive book should absorb and enrich anyone who admits to being human."
Benjamin Spock, M.D.
Essayist Judith Viorst, who has humorously eased our journey to middle age, now turns her considerable talents to a more serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are an inevitable and necessary part of life. Arguing persuasively that through the loss of our mothers' protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper persepctive, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life, Judith Viorst has wirtten a life-affirming and life-changing book.
This book spent seven months on the New York Times Best Seller List!! And for good reason.
It is about the loves, illusions, dependencies, and Impossible Expectations that all of us have to give up in order to grow.

First of all, I am a child and adult psychoanalyst and as it happens Mrs. Viorst (a free-lance writer of, among other things, childrens books) was invited by the institute who trained me in Child Psychoanalysis to be a "lay" student-- meaning not medically professional-to participate in the training which was one of the best at that time in child developmental psychoanalytic theory and practice. It was a committment by this author which spanned several years and a very extensive and intensive experience. this book was a distillation of many elements of that program as seen by this very "clear" competent writer. I have given this book to many people and bought this one to replace one of my daughter's copies. It is an indepth look at psychological developement and especially the mother-child relationship (or Object relationships) and was on the New York Times best seller list for many months. It is still very relevent and well-worth the current new and used price.

NECESSARY LOSSES was suggested as an interesting book to read for reasons
I later learned were understated. Judith Viorst helps the reader to
confront losses of any kind - loss of independence, loss of a loved one
or loved ones, marital difficulties, diappointments, pervasive loss of
one's personal sense of well being and adequacy. . .
We have loaned it out, given it as a gift many times over, and re-read
it many times over the years. Our thanks to the caring physician who
brought the book to my attention many moons ago. Good read! Good luck!

This book is a wonderful conversation on development and loss from a psychoanalytic perspective. There is little or no jargon to muddle the message and the learning. Want to learn more about people in a western society? Start here.

This book is very interesting and helpful if you have the time to devote to reading all of the psychoanalytical aspects. There is definitely information supporting Viorst's viewpoints and the book really encourages you to think in-depth about your life.

In her book, “Necessary Losses,” Judith Viorst shows readers how they can grow from the losses they experience during life. She also helps readers gain a positive perspective and greater maturity and wisdom by analyzing life’s challenges. I recommend “Necessary Losses” in the Learn More section of Chapter 3: Coming to Terms in my new book, Your Aging Body Can Talk: Using Muscle -Testing to Learn What Your Body Knows and Needs After 50.

"This perceptive book should absorb and enrich anyone who admits to being human."
Benjamin Spock, M.D.
Essayist Judith Viorst, who has humorously eased our journey to middle age, now turns her considerable talents to a more serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are an inevitable and necessary part of life. Arguing persuasively that through the loss of our mothers' protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper persepctive, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life, Judith Viorst has wirtten a life-affirming and life-changing book.
This book spent seven months on the New York Times Best Seller List!! And for good reason.
It is about the loves, illusions, dependencies, and Impossible Expectations that all of us have to give up in order to grow.

First of all, I am a child and adult psychoanalyst and as it happens Mrs. Viorst (a free-lance writer of, among other things, childrens books) was invited by the institute who trained me in Child Psychoanalysis to be a "lay" student-- meaning not medically professional-to participate in the training which was one of the best at that time in child developmental psychoanalytic theory and practice. It was a committment by this author which spanned several years and a very extensive and intensive experience. this book was a distillation of many elements of that program as seen by this very "clear" competent writer. I have given this book to many people and bought this one to replace one of my daughter's copies. It is an indepth look at psychological developement and especially the mother-child relationship (or Object relationships) and was on the New York Times best seller list for many months. It is still very relevent and well-worth the current new and used price.

NECESSARY LOSSES was suggested as an interesting book to read for reasons
I later learned were understated. Judith Viorst helps the reader to
confront losses of any kind - loss of independence, loss of a loved one
or loved ones, marital difficulties, diappointments, pervasive loss of
one's personal sense of well being and adequacy. . .
We have loaned it out, given it as a gift many times over, and re-read
it many times over the years. Our thanks to the caring physician who
brought the book to my attention many moons ago. Good read! Good luck!

This book is a wonderful conversation on development and loss from a psychoanalytic perspective. There is little or no jargon to muddle the message and the learning. Want to learn more about people in a western society? Start here.

This book is very interesting and helpful if you have the time to devote to reading all of the psychoanalytical aspects. There is definitely information supporting Viorst's viewpoints and the book really encourages you to think in-depth about your life.

I discovered this book 25 years ago after my divorce... I read it many times the first few years after I found it, and still re-read it from time to time for inspiration and encouragement. This book helped me change my life! Highly recommend it!

I ultimately had to put this book down without finishing it. I wanted a book about coping with loss, about dealing with the things that we "have to give up in order to grow", to quote the title. Unfortunately, this book is NOT what the title makes it appear. In the first seven chapters -- which is as far as I managed to get -- Viorst doesn't talk about loss. Instead, she describes in great depth the most extreme psychoanalytic theories of human psychological development. Sorry, I didn't want to read about how I wanted to have sex with my parents as a child, or how infants have an active sexual life (which we somehow know despite the fact that no one remembers being an infant and infants cannot communicate!), or how my parents were sexually attracted to me when I was three (yes, she DOES say that). I didn't want to learn that homosexuality is apparently the result of a failure to correctly resolve the Oedipal stage (way to pathologize normal sexual variation, Ms. Viorst). I wanted to read about LOSS. Viorst attempts to pretend that she is actually talking about loss by occasionally making a remark like "we must give up our sexual attraction to our parents in order to grow" or whatnot, but really, all she's doing is presenting some of the craziest of Freud's theories as though they are actual fact. Though these theories do have kernels of validity (e.g., our early relationships with our parents probably do affect us for the rest of our lives), Viorst takes them to the extreme, which just makes this book absurd.

If you want to learn about how your mother's failure to interact with you perfectly or your (in)ability to resolve your childish sexual attraction to one or both of your parents has supposedly messed you up for the rest of your life, go ahead and read this book. If you are really interested in learning about "necessary losses", or reading a psychology book that describes our psychological development in an actually plausible way, steer clear.

I ended up reading this book for a school assignment, I chose the book on my own because a friend recommend it.
I mildly liked the book. I thought that it was long and drawn out. Viorst obviously is a fan of Freud, I felt like I was reading his biography because she quoted him so much.
The other thing that bothered me is that she makes many statements like they are fact. Where does she get her information and how does she really know? Really? If you hear something long enough people tend to take it as reality. I thought that many of the chapters were way too long and tedious and unnecessarily graphic.
Now who really thinks they long to have sex with their opposite sex parent or same sex parent as a baby? Give me a break. The worst part is I have to write a 3 page review of this book and that isn't enough space to point out all the unnecessary garbage in the text.
Unfortunately I can't get back the time I spent reading this dribble. Oh well, I must grieve and move on...