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Navigating the Waves of Grief
Understanding Its Complexities and Finding Balance
“In those early days and weeks and months, it was always there, not just below the surface but on the surface, simmering, lingering, festering. Then, like a wave, it would rise up and pulse through me, as if it were going to tear my heart right out of my body. In those moments, I felt like I couldn’t bear the pain for one more minute, much less one more hour.”
The above comes from Sheryl Sandberg’s memoir, Option B, which detailed the sudden loss of her husband and her subsequent travels through the grieving process that she learned to navigate in the days and years following his passing.
There are few guarantees in life, but loss is at the top. We will all face it at some point — the loss of a friendship, of a time period, of a parent or loved one. Loss runs deep through human nature and is core to the fundamental questions of the human condition.
And all loss brings with it in some form or fashion grief.
In the late 1960s, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross came up with the theory of the five stages of grief:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
