Grief Is an Endurance Event
You have been told that grief has stages. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. A clean sequence. A road with a destination.
This is a lie. Well-intentioned, widely believed, and false.
Grief is not a sequence. It is a landscape. You do not move through it in a straight line. You cross and recross the same terrain. You find yourself in anger on a Tuesday morning and acceptance by Tuesday night and denial again on Wednesday. There is no map and there is no destination and no one can tell you how long it will take because “it” does not end.