Terry Patten is an author, who supports the marriage of spirit and activism. Excerpt above is from The New Republic of the Heart.
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: How do you relate to the notion that to arrive at maturity, we have to pass through all five stages of grieving? Can you share your personal experience of going through all five stages of grieving? What helps you stay in motion, doing what you can to make a positive difference?
Hog wash! This was never about people who had lost a loved one. It was about people looking at their own death.
This is an outdated model of grief that has resulted in a society that misunderstands what child loss means to a family. Newer models speak to an ongoing relationship that changes but is never accepted. It couldn’t be because love never dies. Check out websites like Modern Loss, An Inch of Gray, the org.Cope to be updated.
I was with Ravi Gulati bhiya few days back and during a conversation, we came to point that accepting as a whole is important, It needs great courage to shift from accepting selective things to accepting the whole.
People arrive at maturity in all kinds of ways. When dealing with a loss, passing through all 5 stages of grieving is a way to arrive at maturity, but it's not a have to. Not everyone responds to loss by going through the stages. Our response to grief depends on where we're at in life and in maturity. Many people live in acceptance and respond with acceptance. They're already mature in that way. A significant loss for me that I'm thinking about resulted in deep sadness, internal anguish, grief, a lot of confusion, some bargaining, and acceptance, pretty much in that order; I don't think I was angry or depressed. Knowing that change -- birth and death, beginning and ending, gains and losses -- is always happening, and growing in acceptance of that, helps me stay in motion and find some equanimity.