There is no step-by-step process

The stages of grief were never intended to be a roadmap.

Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous five stages of grief may help us to name our feelings and experiences inside of grief, but they were never meant to be a step-by-step prescription for how to move forward.

Stages of Grief: The roadmap you expected started with denial, then moved to anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. The road you got has a starting point and a tangled line instead of neat and tidy stops along a timeline.

The “stages” originated from Dr. Ross' observations of the experiences of terminally ill patients. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance reflect how people tend to cope with the reality of death and dying. They were never intended to offer a roadmap for grief.

“There are really only two stages of grief, ... who you were before and who you are after.”Ted Rynearson

The phases that we have around what grief has been described to us as, may or may not fit. Your experience may be very different, and that's okay, and we have to give each other permission around that, so we can really present ourselves as supportive and safe.

Because we can make it unsafe for each other with having an expectation around what's someone else’s grief journey is. And I think that’s important, um, for parents, I think it’s important for peers; I think it’s important for communities to throw away their expectations around what they think grief is.

Our grief is our own, and we will move forward with it in our own way, in our own time.