The staircase that was never there

Almost everybody has heard the five stages. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It is the most widely believed thing about grief there is.

It came out of work with people who were dying, not with people who had been bereaved, and the idea that grief moves through a fixed sequence has not held up in the research on bereaved people since.

We are setting it aside gently rather than making a fuss about it, because of what it does to a person. If you believe in the staircase, every bad Wednesday becomes evidence that you have slipped back a step, and there is a step you were supposed to have reached by now.

There is no step you are supposed to be on. There is no schedule and there is nothing to be behind on.