Almost 30 Years On: Why the Stages of Grief Didn’t Help Me and What Did
For many people, the stages of grief do not reflect how loss is actually lived, especially when grief does not follow a neat or predictable path.
After my husband died from illness, I learned quickly that grief was hardest when everything went quiet.
Keeping busy with work and study helped me get through the days, but nights and weekends were heavy. At that time, there were no online grief communities, no social media support groups, and very few accessible resources. I read widely, trying to understand what grief was meant to look like and how I was supposed to live with it.
Like many people, I encountered the stages of grief early on. They were presented as a helpful framework: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. A sequence. A pathway.
But they didn’t fit my experience.
Grief did not unfold in stages. It didn’t move forward neatly, and it didn’t resolve itself with time. Instead, it returned, shifted, softened, and intensified in ways that had no obvious order. When people encouraged me to “move on,” what I needed was not direction, but acknowledgement.
Why the Stages of Grief Don’t Work for Many People
The stages model can be comforting at first. It offers structure when life feels chaotic and language when words are hard to find.
But for me, and for many people I now work with, it also created pressure. I felt pressure to grieve correctly, to locate myself on an imagined timeline, and to explain why I was not “further along.”
Rather than supporting grief, the model quietly introduced self-judgement.
What helped instead was letting go of the idea that grief had a correct shape.
Turning Toward Nature
During that period, time in nature became increasingly important. Being outdoors brought me back into my body and into my senses. It connected me with earlier memories of safety and belonging and allowed grief to be present without needing explanation.
Several years later, I undertook a ten-day rafting trip down the Franklin River in lutruwita, Tasmania. The trip pushed me well outside my comfort zone. It was physically demanding, unpredictable, and at times frightening.
The river didn’t move in stages. It flowed, paused, surged, and altered course as it met resistance. Watching and living alongside that movement, something in me settled. I stopped looking for progress and began paying attention to what was present.
That experience shaped the direction I took next.
What Helped Over Time
No single model supported my grief. What helped was a combination of responses:
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returning to work and study, which offered structure and direction when my internal compass was unsteady
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learning new skills and rebuilding daily life in the absence of my partner
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travelling, sometimes to places we had planned to visit together, as a way of honouring both loss and continuity
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spending time in nature, where grief could exist without demand
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allowing creativity and exploration without needing mastery or achievement
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support from family, friends, and trained grief and bereavement counsellors
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encountering grief frameworks that allowed movement and complexity, rather than linear progression such as the Dual Process Model
What mattered most was learning how to carry grief within a changed life, rather than trying to resolve or complete it.
Where This Led Me
Over time, and alongside remarriage and raising children, I continued to live with grief, not as something unresolved, but as something woven into who I am.
Years later, I shifted into the helping professions, undertaking postgraduate training in counselling and psychotherapy and specialising in grief, dying, death, and bereavement. My work is informed by both lived experience and formal training, but grounded above all in respect for how individual and non-linear grief truly is.
If the Stages of Grief Haven’t Helped You
If you’ve found the stages of grief model unhelpful, it doesn’t mean you’re grieving incorrectly. It may simply mean that your grief needs a different kind of support.
Grief is not something to get over or finish. It is something that asks to be understood, respected, and carried into a changed life.
If you’re looking for grief counselling and psychotherapy that meets you where you are, without timelines or expectations, you can read more about my approach to grief and loss support here.
Next Step
If you’re unsure whether counselling is right for you, or you’d like to talk through what support might help now, you’re welcome to book a brief enquiry call.
We can start with a conversation and see what support feels helpful.
