A BOZEMAN THERAPIST’S PERSPECTIVE ON UNDERSTANDING GRIEF

“True comfort in grief is in acknowledging the pain, not in trying to make it go away. Companionship, not correction, is the way forward.” Megan Devine, It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand

Though loss is something everyone alive will experience at some point, we live in a culture that is, on the whole, grief averse. Grief is generally considered a taboo subject, pushed to the margins of our conversations and collective consciousness. We have largely lost touch with our social and systemic supports for navigating losses of all kinds. When loss touches our lives, we often find ourselves without a map to help make sense of our experiences. 

In her groundbreaking work On Death and Dying (1969), Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This framework has become deeply embedded in our cultural understandings of grief, and is often referred to as a roadmap for navigating grief and loss. This stage model can feel reassuring and even hopeful when our worlds are turned upside down by grief. 

Problems may arise, though, when we do not recognize ourselves within these stages. While the stage model implies a universal and linear progression through grief, this is not reflective of most people’s experience. Grief is messy! Because the way each person grieves is as unique as the way each person loves, it is difficult to prescribe universal expectations for this process. Attempts to do so often leave us feeling like we are doing grief wrong, reinforcing the pain and isolation with which we are already struggling. 

It seems important to note that Kübler-Ross herself never intended for the five stages to be applied in this way. The stages were based on her observations of terminally ill patients reckoning with their own mortality, not those navigating life after a significant loss. In her later years, Kübler-Ross said she came to regret writing the stages in a way that allowed them to be interpreted as linear and universal. In On Grief and Grieving (2004) she clarified the five stages are “not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or goes in a prescribed order.”   

In other words, there is room for whatever emotions and experiences you are navigating in the face of your loss. The stages of grief reflect experiences that are common, but not required, universal, sequential, or comprehensive. As grief expert Megan Devine reflects, the stages “were not meant to dictate whether you are doing your grief ‘correctly’ or not. They were meant to normalize a deeply not-normal time. They were meant to give comfort. Ms. Kübler-Ross' work was meant as a kindness, not a cage” (Devine, 2017). 

Grief is not a race to the finish line of acceptance, but a deeply personal and ongoing process of learning to live in and with the realities of suffering and loss. We need places to tell our stories and acknowledge the truth of our experiences. Generally speaking, grief is incredibly lonely and isolating. It touches our lives in indelible ways that others, despite their love, care, and best intentions, do not always understand or know how to support. Through a relationship with a trusted therapist we can get to know and understand all the different parts of our grief, and how to attend to them as we move forward with (not on from) our loss. 

References

Devine, M. (2017). It’s ok that you’re not ok: meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn’t 

understand. Boulder, Sounds True. 

Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. New York, The Macmillan Company. 

Kübler-Ross, E. & Kessler, D. (2014). On grief and grieving. New York, Simon and Schuster.