While working with over 500 terminally ill patients, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed and shared the Five Stages of Dying in her book, On Death and Dying. World-renowned grief expert David Kessler later worked with Elisabeth to transform those stages into the popularly known Five Stages of Grief. The stages include anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These five stages have been discussed and debated for years.
Some of them may feel familiar to you, some not. Some you may experience daily, others never. There’s no wrong way or right order; the five stages are just a formula to try to explain what you may experience during the grief process in general.
Years after creating and teaching these stages, David’s oldest son died suddenly.The difficult grief experience that followed inspired him to create a sixth stage of grieving: finding meaning. He describes it as another step in the healing journey. In 2019, he released the book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief.
Though, David writes, “It’s not necessary to understand why someone died in order to find meaning.” I still struggle with complicated feelings about Glen’s death by suicide. The key for me has been understanding that meaning doesn’t need to be found in his death; instead, I must find it in the life he lived and the life I continue living.
Excerpt from Michelle Anne Collins