Grief is not a fixed set of stages

• Card 1

  Many people have heard of the “five stages of grief” — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — and assume grief should move through them in order, ending in a tidy resolution. This idea was originally developed to describe experiences of people facing their own terminal diagnosis, not a universal roadmap for all grief, and it has often been applied far beyond what it was meant to capture.

  There is no required sequence, no fixed number of stages, and no timeline you should be hitting. Grief that doesn't look like the “stages” model is not grief done wrong.

• Card 2

  What grief is more often like

  • Non-linear — feelings can return after long gaps, sometimes years later
  • Layered — several emotions can be present at the same time
  • Different every time — grief for one loss may look nothing like grief for another
  • Ongoing in some form — many people describe learning to carry a loss, rather than “getting over” it
  • Shaped by culture, relationship and circumstance, not just personal psychology

• Card 3

  If a stages model has ever made you feel like you were grieving incorrectly, that pressure was never necessary — it can be set down.

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