Why There’s No Right Way to Grieve

Most of us have been told, in one way or another, that grief is something to get over. We hear it in well-intended phrases about moving on or finding closure, which suggest that mourning follows a predictable pattern and ends in due time, though grief rarely cooperates with that schedule. Bereavement scholars describe grief, however painful, as a natural, deeply human response to loss rather than a problem to be fixed, and one that looks different for each of us. Understanding why there is no single right way to grieve can change how we make sense of our own losses and how we show up for one another.

Grief Rarely Moves in Stages

Grief is often pictured as a staircase, with denial on the bottom step and acceptance at the top. This notion is largely credited to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whose 1969 book, On Death and Dying, outlined five stages observed in terminally ill patients as they came to terms with their own deaths, rather than people mourning a loss. While this work gave us a helpful starting point, the stages have been widely misread as a sequence everyone who grieves "should" move through—a belief experts now caution against. As noted in On Grief and Grieving, Kübler-Ross's final book with coauthor David Kessler, the stages “were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages.”

In reality, grief comes in waves, returning when we least expect it and, now and then, and offering moments of unexpected beauty along the way. We might keep it all together at the funeral and feel the loss more sharply months later, or find that an anniversary or a favorite song stirs everything up again years down the road. There is no set timeline for mourning, and the kindest response, for ourselves and for others, is to let grief take the time it takes.

Grief Is More Than Sadness

Most of us have learned to read grief by its outward signs, watching for tears at the service or a heaviness in someone’s voice. Yet grief is not one-dimensional, and sadness is seldom the only emotion it brings forward. Often, it is a messy, swirling mix of heartache and hope, confusion and anger, and even moments of stillness. There is a societal assumption that someone is only grieving if they cry or talk openly about their pain, but people cope in very different ways. Some of us stay busy, while others need to tell and retell the story, and research suggests people move between the two, facing the loss at times and taking a break from it at others. No response is more genuine than another, and no manner of response measures how much someone mattered to us.

We Grieve More Losses Than We Realize

We tend to associate grief with death, but it can come with loss of any type. It can arrive with the end of a relationship, a job that once gave our days meaning, a dream we had for ourselves, or a sense of who we are. Scholars sometimes refer to these as living or non-death losses, and although they may not look like mourning from the outside, they can be all-consuming and painful in ways that catch us off guard.

Much of their weight comes from the way one loss can ripple outward into other parts of our lives. Losing a job can also cost us our daily routine and sense of purpose; a breakup can take with it shared friends and a future we had imagined together. Reminders can appear in the most ordinary moments, sometimes long after others expect us to have moved on. In fact, grieving these losses can share many features with mourning a death.

Living losses can be harder to bear when others overlook them entirely. Kenneth Doka (1989) coined the term disenfranchised grief to describe loss that is not openly acknowledged or socially supported. This kind of grief often goes unrecognized by those around us because the loss is not viewed as significant, leaving people unsure whether their grief will be understood or even accepted. Such losses can pass without sympathy cards or casseroles, or a ritual to mark them. Without that recognition, we may be left to mourn on our own, sometimes without knowing that the heaviness we feel is grief. Recognizing these losses as grief, in ourselves and in others, can be the first step toward honoring them. Importantly, there is no typical loss, and so there is no typical way to grieve.

Grief Can Heal Without Closure

Closure is widely considered the goal of grief—a point at which a loss is finally resolved and we can put it behind us. Pauline Boss (2022) argues that closure is largely a myth, and that healing comes from learning to live with the absence rather than resolving it. In other words, moving forward does not require letting go.

Keeping a loss close, through stories or traditions, can be part of grieving well. We might continue telling a friend’s funniest jokes or cook a grandmother’s recipe each holiday, small acts which are a common feature of mourning. Once we stop treating closure as the finish line, no one can say exactly where grief should end, which frees us to offer ourselves and others a little more grace.

Becoming Grief Literate

Understanding grief in these ways is central to grief literacy, an approach to loss recognizing that all of us can learn to be there for people who are grieving, ourselves included. This matters all the more since support from friends and family frequently fades precisely when it may be needed most. The smallest gestures can make a difference, such as replacing the classic “let me know if you need anything” with a specific offer, like picking up groceries or checking in on a difficult anniversary. We can extend that same care to ourselves, whether by acknowledging our own grief or giving it the time it needs.

There is no right way to grieve. There is, however, room for more kindness toward ourselves and one another.

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