The Five Stages of Grief: The Wrong Way by Sierra Skye Gemma

Grief can arise from loss, whether large-scale or small, and may not be easily removed once it takes hold. Because of grief’s obstinate nature, many approaches have been developed in order to handle the repressive, and often painful, effects it can have on people’s lives. One of those approaches is Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s theory, The Five Stages of Grief. In Sierra Skye Gemma’s essay, “The Wrong Way”, she juxtaposes her own personal experiences with grief against Kübler-Ross’s hypothesis. Gemma uses her confessional, combined with empirical evidence that contradicts the Five Stages of Grief, to demonstrate that feelings of grief are unique to the individual; therefore, there is no right way to mourn.

Based on the information revealed in her essay, Gemma was quite familiar with loss. The list includes her father, sister, pet frog, cat (temporarily), first marriage, grandmother, and grandfather. However, she does not claim to be an expert (16) in spite of her many experiences. Instead she criticizes supposed experts by stating that “you can be an expert in grief without having grieved at all. As long as you’ve watched enough people do it, you’re good” (18). The reason for her censure may come from the fact that it is impossible to measure proficiency at feeling an emotion. Gemma also implies that the research conducted by purported experts is founded on assumptions about human behavior and grief (16). Therefore, any conclusions drawn from the data collected by those researchers are invalid. The main focus of Gemma’s criticism lies on the widely accepted Five Stages of Grief theory. The first incarnation of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s 1969 hypothesis stated that grieving individuals went through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression ...

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... the right thing to do’ ” (22).

Deciding whether grief is a feeling rather than a process or ability changes the way that people experience loss. If grief is only a series of stages, then people who have not reached the “acceptance” stage might have unresolved issues down the line. If, instead, grief is a simply a feeling, then there is not time-frame or superior method for coming to terms with a loss. For Kübler-Ross, her way of handling grief might have required a clearly defined process. Conversely, the way or level that Gemma mourned depended on the loss as an individual case. Human behaviour contains too many variables to definitively determine which way of grieving is “natural” or “normal”. What can be gathered from “The Wrong Way”, however, is that people develop their own method of coping, instead of conforming to someone else’s, and still find acceptance.