ABSTRACT
NATURAL OR NECESSARY LOSSES To be born, a baby must leave the womb; to grow up and leave its mother, a baby needs to be weaned. The child entering school and learning about the world needs to leave its parents, and then adolescents have the task of leaving their own family in order to set up their own separate lives. These 'leavings' constitute much of the loss which human beings in our culture experience as part of the natural process of growing up and eventually of death.
