Ever since Elizabeth Kubler Ross published her best-sellling book, “On Death and Dying” both professionals and laypersons have embraced her explanation of the “five stages of grief”.
The model has been used as a faulty standard to measure grievers’ “progress” for decades.
Trouble is, she got it wrong.
And it is especially wrong for bereaved parents or anyone who suffers traumatic or sudden death.
Grief does NOT look like this:
It looks like this:
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thelifeididntchoose 
So true. I wrote something similar in my blog last year, likening it to the errors of change theory (which is modeled on the 5 stages of grief.) If only there really was a prescriptive road map.
https://theresilientjourney.net/blog/f/the-problem-with-change-theory
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In all fairness, I don’t think this was ever intended to be a “model” for grief. People just latched on to it as something that could be easily memorized and tucked away for a rainy day. I hope that no counselor or health care professional would have such a shallow understanding. I suspect Dr. KR would be horrified to see how her writings have been misrepresented. Hopefully, most folks, upon experiencing a loss, will come to understand that it’s that scrambled ball of yarn vs. a neat, linear path. https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/
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