The 5 Stages of Grief are Bullshit 😯

It's a little risky to mess with a cultural belief system.

And that's what I'm doing when I tell you this truth:

The 5 Stages of Grief are bullshit.

For over five decades we've been told that the way we move though grief is a linear five stages:

Denial ➡ Anger ➡ Bargaining ➡ Depression ➡ Acceptance

We have been told to expect to go through those stages when we suffer a loss. And so, in your own grief journey, you’ve found yourself expecting to move along in this very ordered and expected (and culturally acceptable) way.

But when that didn't happen, you wondered:

What am I doing wrong?
Really, can't I do anything right?
I can't even grieve in the right order?!
Why am I not over this yet?

Well, guess what?! You weren't doing it wrong! There's nothing wrong with how you're doing grief because...

Grief is a very personal and individual process.
And no two grief journeys follow a standardized path.

Kübler-Ross never anticipated that her work would become generalized to the world as The Way We Grieve

Here's the thing: In 1969 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her book, On Death and Dying, in which she outlined her "Five Stages of Grief." These stages became ubiquitous in our society for how people go through grief after a loss.

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THEY WERE ABOUT!

Kübler-Ross developed her work after studying terminally ill patients. They were grieving, yes, but not the death of a loved one, not the end of a career or relationship, not a miscarriage or a suicide. They were grieving the end of their own lives! Perfectly understandable and also completely different from those griefs mentioned before.

Side note: Even in the actual context her work is now deemed outdated.

Kübler-Ross never anticipated that her work would become generalized to the world as The Way We Grieve.

But our society loves a quick fix. And a linear, predictable path.

Well, dear reader, I'm here to tell you that that's not how grief works!

Grief is complicated. It's chaotic. It takes it's damn time. It ebbs and flows. It leaves you feeling overwhelmed, afraid, angry, sad, relieved, rejected, abandoned, lost, foggy, lethargic, manic, curious, and more.

It doesn't move in a linear path, either. There is no path. There just is living with it and moving through it. At your own pace. In the way that it happens for you.

Here's what I know:

Acknowledging, embracing, honoring, and processing wherever you are in your grief journey is the path.

Using art supplies to get to your heart's truth is the way through.

Curious about how you can do that with me? Head on over to my Work With Me page and see what the possibilities are!