What Grief is Not

Photo by Tasha Lyn

I am often asked to define grief. I have been thinking a lot about the improvisation (improv) principle of ‘YES, AND’ lately. The idea of improv in the performing arts and storytelling is that meeting any suggestion with a YES, AND then building on it, leads to creative spontaneity. 

So what do grief and improv have to do with one another?

When I am asked to define grief, I do so in various ways. I always try to include that grief is social. At the same time, I always want to remember to say that grief is not about stages. But I don’t like when someone is asked to define a term and they start with what the term is not. Here’s where YES, AND comes in. I am going to start defining grief as a reaction to loss YES, AND I am going to start adding what it is not. 

What is grief not?  Foremost for me: grief is not stages or staged.

Why does this matter? Why is it so important that I add this negative to my definition of grief? Because the stages of grief are everywhere. They are the most widespread idea (myth!) about grief that is out there. 

The five stages made popular by Elisabeth Kubler Ross were originally about people facing terminal illness. They make sense in that context. Kubler Ross deserves kudos for that and for advancing popular conversation about death and dying. I want to give credit where credit is due. 

But the stages were  not originally meant to be about grief. I think that they got taken up about grief to fill a void. We don’t talk about grief, and grief is messy. Thinking that there are stages helps us to understand and makes grief seem more manageable. However, we can’t manage grief; we have to experience it. 

The idea that grief has stages is everywhere.  In popular media, it is found in movies, television, books. Charles Corr wrote about how it also persists in health care textbooks all around the world despite many more sophisticated ideas about what grief is and how people experience it. Reproducing this idea that grief has stages can do harm. People sometimes seek counselling because they believe that they are not grieving ‘correctly’ because they have not experienced one stage or another.

Grief is hard YES, AND, grief can be beautiful. Grief is a lot YES, AND there are not stages. At Grief Matters, we want to explore other understandings of grief and expand the conversation. How do you understand grief?