When someone you love dies, it completely shifts your world, leaving you searching for structure and certainty. This need for understanding is likely why the "five stages of grief"- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - proposed by psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book "On Death and Dying" gained popularity.
Anger is another natural reaction to loss.
However, these stages were never meant to define a strict process for grieving. Grief expert David Kessler, who co-authored "On Grief and Grieving" with Kübler-Ross, emphasized that grief isn't linear or sequential. People may move through these stages in any order, sometimes even revisiting them repeatedly. The stages are merely a framework to help people understand their feelings.
Beyond the original five stages, Kessler introduced a sixth stage-finding meaning. After his son’s death, he sought to understand how meaning fits into the grief process. Meaning doesn’t remove pain, but it can help cushion it, offering a path forward for those grieving to honor their loss while continuing with life.
