The Healing Journey

August 30, 2024

“Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed.”
— David Kessler

All of us have suffered from grief at one time or another in our lives, and yet many of us know so little about it or how to help people who are dealing with the loss of a loved one. National Grief Awareness Day, which we observe on August 30, was created to help the countless individuals who try to cope with grief and those who try to comfort them. It was begun in 2014 by Angie Cartwright to encourage an open discussion of bereavement, which is a universal human experience.

The organizers gave a brief history of the study of grief: “In part due to the frequency of death and grief, the topic was poorly researched or treated until the 1900s. In 1917, psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wrote: ‘Grieving is a natural process that should not be tampered with.’ This encapsulates the sentiment well: Grieving is a part of life and needs no special attention. As the century wore on, however, there came to be more interest in grief and its stages.

“Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously wrote her book ‘On Death and Dying’ in 1969. The book laid out the ‘Five Stages of Grief’ that many are familiar with today, under the name ‘The Kübler-Ross Method.’ This was accepted, and grief was managed along a distinct timeline for years. Simon Shimshon Rubin put forth the Two Track Model of Bereavement to further explain the phenomenon in 1981. However, it was only from 1996 to 2006 that great headway was made in understanding grief as something that resisted strict and chronological definition. In the 2000s, a more fluid understanding of grief, especially as a multifaceted and complex issue, has come to be understood and treated.”

Simply put, grief is universal and yet grief is unique. On your healing journey, you will share common experiences with others, and yet there is no cookie-cutter pattern when you are grieving. Don’t be afraid to go where the journey leads you … and it will lead you to healing.

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