Three Guiding Principles to Use When Creating a Grief Model

When you go on a journey, you usually have some idea where you’re going. Especially if it’s a long journey where you leave the home you know to travel to a place you aren’t familiar with.

After a significant loss, you are asked to leave the home you know and travel to a place you know nothing about. How do you best prepare for that kind of a journey? Is there a map or a compass you can use to help you find your way?

When I was forced to leave home after Vicky died, I went looking for a map and guidance that would help me. Did such a map exist? Who would help me navigate this perilous journey?

This is my attempt to describe what I learned when I went looking for a map. It’s not a neat and tidy package but is more a collection of wisdom I gleaned from others.

While it’s true that the grief journey is personal and unique for everyone, it’s also true that certain principles and practices can help guide you on that journey.

Three Guiding Principles to Use When Creating a Grief Model

1. Where you are now is not where you will be in the future

When on a journey, it’s nice to compare your progress to the destination you are headed towards. When grieving, you can feel like the kid in the back seat who says every five minutes, “Are we there yet?” In the language of grief, it goes more like this, “When will my grief journey end?”

It’s helpful to know where we are compared to where we will be in the future. No, grief doesn’t exactly end but for most people, you so eventually reconcile your grief into your life. That’s been my experience and I’ve seen that happen in a wide range of grieving people I’ve worked with.

Let me go back to the phrase, for most people. Not everyone reconciles or integrates their loss into their life. According to the research, the percentage of those who stay stuck in their grief is about 15%. These people have what is called complicated or chronic grief. They need professional help to deal with their grief.*

The goods news is, 85% of those who suffer a loss will integrate that loss into their life. In light of that reality (assuming you’re not in the 15%), you can hope that where you are now is not where you will be in the future. It will give you grounds to have a life giving grief model.

2. The grief journey is not limited to or defined by five linear stages

One well known grief model is the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. These stages can be part of the grief journey (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), but they do not describe or encompass the wide range of emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, and behavioral reactions people have while grieving.

George Bonanno talks about this in his book, The Other Side of Sadness.

There is something else rather curious about the “stages” idea: Like much of the conventional wisdom on bereavement, there is not much in the way of empirical evidence to support it. Admittedly, the stages concept has its appealing features. It serves as a neat and tidy way to think about grieving. It provides a comforting outline of what people might expect while they are going through difficult times. But one could argue that if the stages aren’t accurate, then such an idea may be dangerous. Perhaps it does more harm than good.

The major problem with these ideas is that they tend to create rigid parameters for “proper” behavior that do not match what most people go through. As a result, they foster doubt and suspicion about successful coping, and when we cast suspicion on a bereaved person just because we think she coped with death too well or got on with her life too quickly, we only make her loss more difficult to bear. — p. 29-30 George Bonanno

I knew that I needed a grief model that went beyond the five stages and gave me a road-map that was more expansive and relevant to my reality. When I created my own GOOD Grief Model, it was my way of putting into words what I had learned from others and my own experience.

3. Resiliency makes any grief model proactive instead of passive

One of the light bulb moments I had early on in my grief journey was the realization that I did not need to simply react to what was happening to me but had the power to choose how I would respond.

The choice involved using my resiliency muscles instead of being a passive observer to the pain of grief. It was Lucy Hone in her book Resilient Grieving who made this principle clear to me.

At the very core, we understand that resilience is not armor that protects us from pain. Rather, resilience enables us to feel pain (anger, anxiety, guilt) and to move through these emotions so that we can continue to feel joy, awe, and love. Fundamentally, resilience is about marshaling what is within us to make it through, and maybe even transform, what is before us. — Lucy Hone

An adequate grief model guides and encourages the person grieving to be proactive in grief instead of a helpless victim of your circumstances.

Resiliency includes practices like a growth mindset, gratitude, tempered optimism, purpose, self-care, and healthy connection. All of these habits help put you on the path that will lead to transformation and healing.

Reflection Questions

• How would you draw or describe your current grief model?

• How would you compare your grief journey to the five stages in the Kubler-Ross grief cycle?

• Viktor Frankl said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” What does this quote say to you?