Finding meaning in loss
For many Americans, Sept. 11, 2001, evokes memories of confusion and sadness, a stunned sense of the world not being what it once was. For Jennifer Page Hughes, those feelings were all too familiar, from an earlier time in 1996. Hughes was preparing to graduate from high school on Boston’s North Shore the year her father died. While walking the family dog on a cold spring Saturday, he fell through the ice on a local pond and drowned. “It’s not something you ever imagine will happen,” said Hughes, now a counselor at Harvard’s Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC). Her father was simply there that morning — as she headed out the door to meet friends at the mall — and then he wasn’t. A loss of that nature, she said, “feels chaotic.” Since then, she has found meaning in her own senseless tragedy by working to mitigate and confront the pain of grief...