Self-portrait of photographer E.A. Scholfield in a rocking chair with a dog, c. 1860-1880
There's an excellent article on grief in The New York Times by psychiatrist Mark Epstein entitled "The Trauma of Being Alive." I highly recommend it with one caveat; I wish it had gone further debunking the myth of the "five stages" of grief.
It's crucial to know that the book the "five stages" are based on, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's On Death and Dying, is about dealing with a terminal diagnosis and facing one's own death.
It's NOT about grieving.
There are no five stages.
The article "Stages of Grief: The Myth" by Russell Friedman looks at how Kübler-Ross's groundbreaking though unscientific 1969 exploration of death became conflated with grief (and the author's own anger issues) and since its publication has devastated people in their efforts to grieve.
In my own experience, I found the "five stages" cut and pasted into every pet bereavement website I visited after Darby died. And it really messed me up. It wasn't until I read Russell Friedman and John W. James's The Grief Recovery Handbook and I discovered that the "five stages" are bunk, that I began coming to the surface.
Please visit Russell and James's website The Grief Recovery Method for more information.
Hat tip to Deb Brown of Art from Ashes, a company that makes handcrafted glass remembrances from loved-ones' ashes, for sharing the NYT article with me.