June 12, 2023
“Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but out of the blue, it’ll flare to life.”
– Maria V. Snyder
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the pioneering book “On Death and Dying,” which detailed the “five stages” people experience when they are grieving or diagnosed with a terminal illness. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.” She said, “They are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”
That’s important to remember. While the experience of grief is universal, it is also unique to each of us. When you set out on the healing journey, don’t expect to reach one of these stages at a designated time. Some of us will take longer than others. Most of us will feel some effects of grief all our life. And the order of those stages will not follow a preordained pattern.
You may not get over your anger so quickly. There are those who harbor feelings longer, even toward themselves, but it should be something they work on. Depression may come and go, and mostly come, but you will develop tactics to deal with it so that joy and hope return.
Acceptance is surely worth striving for, but like most things on the healing journey, striving is not the way to approach it. There are no “goals” to achieve. There are changes to confront and there is a new life to figure out. Yes, healing takes time, so never think that your journey should be following a preordained structure or that somehow you should be doing things more quickly. Any journey always has the unexpected, but the road ahead will lead you to where you are meant to go, without even knowing it.
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The experience of grief is universal, but it is also personal.