5 Helpful Things to Know about Grief

Throughout history, people have attempted to understand and define grief and bereavement in orderly, tangible ways. In the 1960s and 70s, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed a model that explained death and dying as a five-stage process ending, finally, in acceptance.

Her stages of death and dying were later used to describe the process of grief, as well. Many misinterpreted Kübler-Ross’s model to be a distinct, linear process with each stage following the other until one day we eventually find closure and move on with our lives.

“We need time to move through the pain of loss. We need to step into it, really to get to know it, in order to learn.” – Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

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Kübler-Ross explained, however, that this wasn’t her intention. “The five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance…are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”

The truth is that grief is a complex, messy, beautiful, and difficult process that is unique to everyone who goes through it and will feel different from one day to the next. Although there may not be five simple, linear stages to grief, here are five helpful things to know about grief and how to navigate through it.

Five Helpful Things to Know about Grief

1. There are different types of grief

The word grief is almost always used in correlation to someone passing away and those left behind trying to process the loss. However, it would be more accurate to say that grief is simply about processing loss, in general.

People grieve all kinds of situations and losses, and it’s helpful for them to know that their feelings are valid because the pain they feel is deep, even if they are grieving something other than the death of a loved one.

For example, if we had to grow up early and shoulder adult responsibilities from a young age, we might grieve our lost childhood. Many people grieve the loss of a former period of life or a dream they were never able to achieve. This type of unofficial loss can be difficult to process and is often less understood by others, which may add another layer of grief.

A celebrated retirement can feel like a loss of productivity, status, or position within the community. New parents may unexpectedly experience a sense of loss of the freedom and adventure the couple shared in the early days of their marriage.

Every change we experience in life, no matter how celebrated or positive, brings with it some form of loss. Not everyone will feel these changes as a loss, but having grace for ourselves when we do will help us to have compassion for others, as well.

Someone once said, “Grief is leftover love with nowhere to go.” As simplistic as that might sound, there is a lot of truth in it. We grieve the deeply meaningful experiences or people we can no longer connect with except in memory.

2. Grief can be private or shared

Although grief often takes place in private, it can also be shared and processed through the community offering social and emotional support to the grieving. Our culture and social setting influence how we grieve, as well as our attitudes toward loss.

Some cultures approach death and loss stoically, with little emotion, discouraging grief and encouraging gratitude for the time shared with the one who passed. Taken to the extreme, this lack of emotion can feel as though grief is embarrassing or shameful. Other cultures lean passionately into the outward expression of grief, turning the process into art, ceremony, and music.

In Western culture, we tend to adopt whatever cultural influences our families and lineage carry, and nowhere is this more apparent than at weddings or funerals. One of the reasons we have funerals is for our community to support the grieving, honor the deceased, and say our goodbyes.

However, for those personally affected, a funeral may serve as a kind of official, public beginning to a process that continues for a long time privately. It is in the quiet, everyday moments, long after everyone else has paid their respects, that we begin to process our grief.

It can be helpful to share memories and have conversations about the loss with others; however, some family members or friends might struggle to process the loss of a loved one. It may feel easier to resist talking about them because of the pain that memories can arouse. It’s hard to know what to do in these situations.

The tug-of-war that often occurs between the desire to embrace fond memories and the wish to suppress our grief in the hopes of easing our pain, can be a prolonged struggle for those who are grieving. This is the often messy and sometimes wonderful nature of grief.

3. Though it is a difficult process, grief can also be beautiful

When we lose someone or something that gave our life its shape and color, we feel the loss in the form of a gap or a missing piece. Life without the person or ‘thing’ we are grieving can feel empty, cold, and colorless. Grief is not always about finding closure and moving on with life.

Sometimes it is about learning to adapt to life without being crippled by the feelings of loss. In the case of the loss of a person, it could mean finding ways to keep the memory of that loved one alive.

In the 2009 Pixar movie “Up,” the main character, Carl, is an elderly person living alone in the house that once belonged to him and his beloved wife Ellie. Carl has much to grieve, from a child who never was born, to a life of adventure that was never lived, and now a wife lost to sickness and old age. He sits in an empty house surrounded by the memories of all that was and the dreams of what could have been.

He might have passed away there himself if fate had not intervened. It is only when he gets swept up into an adventure and begins to live the life he had always planned with his beloved Ellie, that he can properly grieve the past. He is eventually ready to let go of the physical memories in his house because he has internalized them to carry them in his heart.

When we grieve something or someone, we honor them. We are allowing ourselves to be as deeply affected by their loss as we were by their presence. Grief is a painful, difficult, and messy way to keep a memory in place, but some people and some dreams are worth it.

“Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.” – Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

4. Grief is a process that we must lean into, and sometimes, away from

It would be so much easier if grief truly were a linear five-step process that we could engage with until we were ready to move on. As it is, though, grief has a way of coming and going in waves, sometimes for years.

We might be triggered by holidays and anniversaries, songs, or any number of meaningful things. Just as we feel we have fully processed all there is to process, one of these triggers might catch us off guard and we find ourselves right back in our emotions.

It is possible to get grief fatigue. This is just what it sounds like. While some people struggle to allow themselves to grieve at all, others find themselves constantly triggered by memories. It’s okay to block them out at times if you are feeling overwhelmed.

We are not betraying our loved ones by retreating from the pain of losing them. Grief can be physically exhausting work and sometimes we may simply feel too spent to deal with it. And that is fine. Taking a break from our grief can help facilitate the healing process.

5. Grief is a personal thing that can’t be compared

There is such a thing as grief guilt. We may feel shame or guilt for not experiencing our grief the way we expected to or because our outward grief process doesn’t look like someone else’s. Sometimes the pain is simply too great for us to fully process, and we need a little longer than others, for the full weight of the loss to sink in.

Other people process things quickly and their grief may feel overwhelming immediately. For a while, it might seem that they are more affected by the loss than we are. Or we may wonder why we can’t “keep it together,” when others are processing their grief more inwardly. Grief looks and feels different to every individual, and we can never know how we will experience it until we do.

Grief guilt can also occur when we begin to feel ready for re-entry into the world around us, like going back to work and venturing out socially. For those who have lost their spouse or partner, grief and guilt often occur when a new relationship is developing. Remember that there are no hard and fast rules for grief and healing. We all have to walk the journey at our own pace.

Getting Help

Grief is messy and difficult, but it’s also helpful and necessary. It provides a foundation to process our emotions. In some cases, it fills painful gaps with beautiful memories. In others, it reconciles painful experiences for a place of healing or acceptance to bring peace. If there are five stages to grief, we know that they are not linear, neat, or tidy.

Grief is a deeply personal process that honors the loss of something special, be it a person, a relationship, our past, or unattained plans and dreams. Grief can also be physically exhausting. As damaging as it can be to try to curtail the grieving process, it is just as harmful to become consumed by it.

You may find yourself fighting tension in the grief process. Part of you may ask, “What’s next?” while the other part wants to sit in the memories, however difficult they may be. Neither urge is harmful and ultimately you have to find the balance between both. Life does go on, but it doesn’t have to go on without the memories of the person, place, or thing you lost. As importantly, hoping for new relationships and experiences is not a betrayal of the ones we have lost.

If you or someone you love are struggling in the grief process it can often help to speak with a counselor. It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to finding a counselor, but we can help. Reach out to our offices today and we can connect you with a professional who can walk with you for as long as you feel you need it.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Death: The Final Stage of Growth (1975)