Grief - What is it and how to cope with it
The 5 stages to cope with it
Early in the evening, a news flash appeared on my television: Dionysis Savvopoulos, one of my favorite songwriters and artists, had passed away. Immediately, a form of indirect grief erupted within me.
“So many songs, so many memories, a wonderful book, and this man has passed on to the other side of life,” I thought.
I felt a little better, and that’s when I decided to share with you the stages of grief and some of the details that make them up. What do you say, are you ready for this?
The first stage of grief, although not everyone experiences all stages in the same way, is denial. The person denies that their favorite singer, for example, has passed away. They do not accept it, they do not acknowledge it, they say “no, it can’t be,” “there must be some mistake.”
The second stage is anger. “But why now?” “At such a critical moment, he died too?” In other cases, the person may blame society, the police, or even themselves, feeling anger towards themselves or others.
In the third stage, we reach negotiation/agreement. “Okay, Dionysis Savvopoulos is no longer with us.” The person feels various emotions, followed by grief (or sometimes clinical depression).
Thus, in the fourth stage, we arrive at sadness. The person cries, mourns, and tries to accept it. Until finally, they do so, even if indirectly, closing this cycle of mourning.
Kübler-Ross says and emphasizes that these five stages are not linear, meaning that they do not occur in the order I mentioned, nor does it mean that someone will go through all of them.
Now that we have seen the stages of grief, we can look at some ways of dealing with it:
Therapeutic diary
Talking to a mental health professional
Exercise
Finding meaning (e.g., lighting a candle)
But no matter what I write, grief is so personal and human that there is no “secret recipe” for dealing with it. What is certain is that a supportive network is needed, and the person needs to feel that they belong to a group and, of course, not be isolated.
In closing, I am attaching a song by Dionysis Savvopoulos, showing you that our works ultimately remain in this life...
Dedicated.