Grief, Loss
and Bereavement
To love and live fully requires an openness and willingness to experience loss and grief.
What is Grief?
Loss is inherent in life and spans all areas of life including biological, situational and relational. We lose our teeth as children and our hair and firm skin as we age. We can lose a sports competition, our job, or our home. And of course, the loss of a relative or friend or even an acquaintance can be most painful. Whether you have experienced loss personally or have witnessed others, loss changes us forever.
Loss triggers a psychological and emotional response called grief which is composed of a myriad of emotions such as shock, denial, anger, guilt, sadness and relief that everyone copes with in their own unique way. And while the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross outlined universal stages of grieving, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, there is no one direct way to travel through them.