When hope puts grief on hold: Support to live with unresolved loss
What happens when a person is gone, but it’s not clear where – when grief wants to take hold without the certainty and rituals of death?
It’s a daily experience for countless families, as around 55,000 people are reported missing in Australia every year.
Living in the Liminal Space is a new book exploring this profoundly uncertain emotional terrain, where families and communities exist between hope and despair, struggling to find meaning amid ambiguity.
Author Sarah Wayland is a CQUniversity Professor of Social Work with more than 25 years of experience in research and practice.
She has worked with families of missing people across Australia and internationally, and identified their experience of ‘liminality’ – the uncertain waiting room stuck between one life stage and the next.
Prof Wayland shares her experiences, and those of families she has worked with – beginning with her first role with the NSW Police, at the time Australia’s only social worker counselling families of missing persons.
“They had reported someone missing to the police and then became stuck, not just emotionally but even physically, not wanting to move further than a few minutes from their home in case the person returned, the phone rang or worse – the police came and knocked on their door,” Prof Wayland explained.
“It became a defining feature of my work and career – I met them where they had to be.”
Blending lived experience, academic insight, and compassion, Living in the Liminal Space offers a framework for understanding and supporting those navigating unresolved loss.
This book challenges social workers, counsellors, psychologists, and therapists to view ‘living grief’, or grief when the person may not have died, not as paralysis but as a space where resilience and connection can flourish.
Prof Wayland continues to work with families of missing persons, advocating for better support systems, and counselling them through prolonged uncertainty and often intense media attention.
Founder of The Missed Foundation Loren O’Keeffe, who met Prof Wayland after her brother Dan disappeared in 2011, says the social worker’s perspective is unique.
“I wouldn’t have survived the during and post-missingness without her. At least not anywhere near as well,” Ms O’Keeffe said.
“Sarah was the first and perhaps only person who truly understood every aspect of what was happening for us.”
Living in the Liminal Space is out with Lived Places Publishing.
Prof Wayland will launch the book with The Missed Foundation and Loren O’Keeffe at CQUniversity Sydney on Thursday 6 August, marking the end of National Missing Persons Week 2026.
