On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss

by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Dr. Kübler-Ross let us know that none of us is alone in the devastating wake of feelings that come with the departure of those we love.

Unfortunately, anticipation can also magnify the possibility or reality of a loss.

As denial fades, it is slowly replaced with the reality of the loss.

It is important to remember that the anger surfaces once you are feeling safe enough to know you will probably survive whatever comes.

Then more feelings hit, and anger is usually at the front of the line as feelings of sadness, panic, hurt, and loneliness also appear, stronger than ever. Loved ones and friends are often taken aback by these feelings, because they surface just as you were beginning to function at a basic level again.

Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal.

We often choose it to avoid the feelings underneath until we are ready to face them.

If we ask people to move through their anger too fast, we only alienate them.

Underneath anger is pain, your pain.

Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything.

When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing.

But in grief, depression is a way for nature to keep us protected by shutting down the nervous system so that we can adapt to something we feel we cannot handle.

The reality is that your grief is there and available for processing, on or off medication.

As difficult as it is to endure, depression has elements that can be helpful in grief. It slows us down and allows us to take real stock of the loss. It makes us rebuild ourselves from the ground up. It clears the deck for growth. It takes us to a deeper place in our soul that we would not normally explore.

We will never like this reality or make it okay, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with

In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, reassign them to others or take them on ourselves. The more of your identity that was connected to your loved one, the harder it will be to do this.

Acceptance is not about liking a situation. It is about acknowledging all that has been lost and learning to live with that loss.

When you compare losses, someone else’s may seem greater or lesser than your own, but all losses are painful.

Losses are very personal and comparisons never apply. No loss counts more than another. It is your loss that counts for you.

Your task in your own mourning and grieving is to fully recognize your own loss, to see it as only you can. In paying the respect and taking the time it deserves, you bring integrity to the deep loss that is yours.

We can go from feeling okay to feeling devastated in a minute without warning.

Figure out what rests your emotions and do it without judgment:

Find what brings you some solace and lean toward it.

Be careful not to take on new relationships with lots of emotions. You may not be ready, and they can often complicate things. Your emotions, just like your body, need to repair.

Regrets are of the heart, the yearning for more and the chance to always do it better.

The worst thing you can do is to stop short of really letting it out. Uncried tears have a way of filling the well of sadness even more deeply.

Unexpressed tears do not go away; their sadness resides in our bodies and souls. Tears can often be seen as dramatic, too emotional, or a sign of weakness. But in truth, they are an outward expression of inner pain.

Angels are the extraordinary coming through the ordinary. We need them more than ever in grief, and they always come to help.

When a loved one dies, all the roles they fulfilled are left open. Some we consciously or unconsciously take on ourselves. For other roles, we consciously or unconsciously assign them to someone else, or someone may take them on. Still other roles may be left unfilled.

Telling the story is part of the healing of a traumatic event, no different from the trauma of large-scale disaster. In your world it was a large-scale disaster, most likely the biggest you have ever experienced.

Telling the story helps to dissipate the pain. Telling your story often and in detail is primal to the grieving process. You must get it out. Grief must be witnessed to be healed. Grief shared is grief abated.

world. Tell your tale, because it reinforces that your loss mattered.

deaths. The stories we tell give meaning to the fact that our loved one died, which is why, in American Indian cultures, stories

are given the highest priority.

Your sorrow is the inevitable result of circumstances beyond your control, and that is always hard to live with.

We have no control over certain situations, and believing that we do is a form of arrogance. It is not for us to ask why someone dies or why someone lives. Those decisions are left to God and the Universe. And yet, though there is no answer to this question, there is a reason for what has happened: the survivors have been spared in order to live.

The real question is this: If you have been spared in order to live, are you living? Can you be fully living if you don’t grieve your loss?

We mourn for those who cared for us the way they should have. We also mourn for those who did not give us the love we deserved.

You cannot grieve only one loss. You may have lost your beloved, but the grief brings into your awareness all the losses that have occurred in your life, past and present. The past losses are the deaths that came before. The present losses are all the changes you have to accommodate in your life to fill the void left behind by your most current loss.

wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten over him yet. How can I explain to them that grief is not finite? There is nothing static about loss; it keeps changing, just like we do.”

Now that you are inconsolable, it feels like the new “you” is forever changed, crushed, broken, and irreparable. These temporary feelings will pass, but you will never be restored to that old person.

When these things do happen, we not only must grieve the loss, we also must grieve the loss of the belief that it shouldn’t have happened at all.

In the grieving process, we also need to take time to mourn the life we were supposed to have.

Your belief system needs to heal and regroup as much as your soul does. You must start to rebuild a new belief system from the foundation up, one that has room for the realities of life and still offers safety and hope for a different life: a belief system that will ultimately have a beauty of its own to be discovered with life and loss.

A lack of an expressive outlet is one of the toughest parts of isolation. With anger, you can get mad at someone and yell. With sadness, you can cry. But isolation feels like being in a room with no doors or windows—a place with no way out. And the longer you get stuck there, the harder it becomes to share the pain and sorrow that create the portals for your movement into the next phase of grief. In isolation, hope disappears, despair rules, and you can no longer glimpse a life beyond the invisible walls that imprison you.

If you are old enough to love, you are old enough to grieve.

Isolation is part of your grief and may serve as an important transition back into life. Ultimately, isolation is a darkness to experience, but not a place in which to live.

A secret ultimately doesn’t change the person you knew. Every facet of a diamond is real, but each is a different view, so don’t let all that you held dear about your loved one be negated by some other part of them. What you knew was real.

Spirituality is not a cure for disease. It’s our reconnection with ourselves, with our soul, and with life, even in the face of death. It is the way we seek peace.

In our modern-day culture we have come to believe that an all-loving, all-caring God will offer us a world in which death is optional.