Grief Is Unique

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was a renowned psychiatrist who spent her life working with the dying. In her book, On Death and Dying, she identified five stages of grief. These stages, collaboratively, are known as the Grieving Process. She passed away in August of 2004, leaving her last book, On Grief and Grieving, to be published post-mortem.The five stages of grief are as follows:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

1. Denial is simply what we do to SURVIVE when we experience loss. This doesn't have to be a major loss--but then again, what is considered a major loss is speculative and changes from person to person. If you've found yourself in a state of shock; and if you're wondering how YOU'RE going to go on, you're in denial.

2. Anger IS a feeling. Most people think it's not. However, anger is completely normal and NECESSARY if one is to heal. Anger is essential to closure. This doesn't mean that you're angry all the time, but that you will experience anger among many other emotions. Sometimes you feel empty, deserted, emotionless. But slowly, anger can turn into a bridge to connect you to whomever, whatever, you have lost. Anger feels better than nothing at all.

3. Bargaining occurs when you find yourself pleading with anyone, anything, with God, for more time! If only you'd done this, or that, maybe this thing or that person would still be here. Maybe you're wishing that you were the one who was gone. Maybe you think you deserve to be gone. We'll do ANYTHING to stop feeling the pain of loss.

4. Bargaining occurs in the past. You're thinking about a loss and everything that connects you to it, even though it's already happened. Depression is the opposite. You have to be completely focused in the here-and-now. This is why the emptiness--the depression--sinks in. You're at a loss of where to go, what to do, how to spend your time. We withdraw. If you've lost a loved one or maybe a spouse, you're asking what the point is to going on alone. It's depressing to realize that something very important and precious is gone and is NOT COMING BACK. You can't do anything to change what has happened.

5. Acceptance is the last stage of grief, although it doesn't ALWAYS occur last. People grieve in different ways. Maybe acceptance is the first stage and then someone progresses to denial. People can go years without ever entering a certain stage or lingering in another. Acceptance doesn't mean that living without loss is okay and feels good. No. It means that you've accepted the physical loss of something in the world. You accept that you can't ever replace what was lost, but that the connecting bridge to the emotions, to the soul, to new people and new meanings still exists and will become stronger over time.

Today, my friends, I am going through the grieving process. However, I feel like I've experienced all the stages at once. My mind is jumbled. I experienced the denial before we even left Haiti. Maybe I experienced grief Monday, June 17, when we were leaving FOR Haiti. How could I have already been thinking about coming home on June 24? Well, it's simple. Every trip ends. I didn't realize how much I didn't WANT to come home until we were already back. I felt empty. Those seven hours in the Miami airport were almost too much to bear. I never bargained. I wasn't bargaining. I was only depressed, maybe a little angry. I experienced denial for two or so days, maybe I'm still experiencing it, but now it's overlapping with the depression. I haven't been sleeping well since I got home. I woke up today exhausted, sore, miserable. I don't know how to spend my time. I want to be alone to process but I need to be with people because the loneliness hurts more. I've experienced the deepest, darkest stages of depression over the past five years. Depression is nothing new to me and I've wished to NEVER, ever be in the same place and condition I was from 2009-2011. Life was a blur, a giant black hole and I was slowly having the life (literally) sucked out of me. I was hopeless. And for no reason. Unlike this time, nothing I could think of triggered the imbalance. This time, I've got Haiti fever and it has spiked so high that I'm beginning to shut down. Everywhere I look is the pain of loss--the loss of feeling connected to my team, the loss of being back where nothing makes sense, the loss of feeling guilty for what I have here. I don't have to people to hang out with and even if I did, I feel like I'd represent a lump of coal. I feel I've lost the ability to communicate with people. I showed my aunt and uncle from Texas photos from Haiti last night and I stumbled across the same loss of words and feeling. All it did was bring the trip right back into plain view. I don't want to forget, but I don't want to remember.