"That first year after my husband died, I was lost in the flood of my grief, and I thought it would never get any better. Then, over time, I realized that it was a little better. It didn't hurt as much. So I thought I was finally over it — over the worst of it anyway. And then Roger's birthday came around again. And here I am right back in the flood. I don't know what's happening. Nothing makes sense."

— Jeanne, Caring Place Parent

"For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?"

— C.S. Lewis from A Grief Observed

Spirals of Grief

The "stages" of grief overlap and mix together, without a real ending point. Instead of a straight line through grief, the feeling is much more circular. We experience the most intense feelings, which then subside for a while. And then the intense feelings return. But although the feelings are similar, there is a change, an improvement. Adding the two motions together produces a spiral path. Many things can trigger a return to intense grief, including special days, something we see or hear, taste or smell, along with developmental issues, especially for children. Understanding grief as a spiral can help us to understand the changes that occur, and can allow us to begin to manage our grief.

It is common to hear references to the "stages" of grief. But it's often assumed that a grieving person travels through each stage, one after the other, finishing each and then moving on to the next, until finally the whole process is completed, and the grief is over with.

"It sort of felt like somebody dropped a nuclear bomb on my life." — Stephen, 12

In listening to the children and adults at the Caring Place, it seems that most people do not experience grief in separate stages. The feelings and the work of grief overlap and mix together; there is no real ending point. Instead of feeling like we’re moving on some straight line through our grief, we feel much more often that we’re going round and round.

If grief is a journey of discovering what is lost, what is left and what is possible, it is not a particularly simple or direct journey.

Grief as a Spiral

In the midst of this journey of discovery, we may sometimes feel wracked with the most intense feelings we have ever experienced. At other times the feelings lessen in intensity. We feel like maybe we can finally catch our breath. But then, sometimes without warning, the intense feelings flare up again, and we feel like we're right back where we started. Our reactions to the grief, our grief "stages," seem to occur over and over again at different times and in different intensities, a confusing situation when we believed that we had already completed these stages.

Grief does not go away. We are face to face with the loss again and again, as we move further from the time of the death, as we ourselves grow and mature, and as events in our lives change. This re-experiencing of the grief can bring back some painful moments, and some not so painful moments, and can also be occasions of reworking the meaning of the death at different points in our lives.

But as we come around again and again to these feelings and reactions of grief, we begin to notice that although they feel similar to previous times, they really are not the same. There is change, however small, however painful, however filled with tears. And this change can lead to a sense of hope. Knowing that we will come around again, anticipating our reactions, can also lead us to plan and prepare for the event, the sadness and the memories.

The feelings of grief are painful. But they are also productive. When they're experienced, healing can occur. The feelings are honest responses to loss. Sitting with those feelings, allowing those feelings to wash over us, allowing them to be expressed — feeling our feelings — allows us to move towards healing.

What the process of grief is about is accepting the reality of the loss, experiencing the pain of the loss, and not giving up the relationship with the one who died, but finding a new place for that person in our emotional lives, and so going on to live more effectively in the world. That relationship continues through memories.

The grief doesn't disappear, because the loss itself doesn't disappear — that hole remains inside. Grief can be managed as we become reconciled to grief's presence in our lives, reconciled to the loss, reconciled to the new reality of life without the one we love. Instead of turning away from grief, holding it down, pretending the pain is not there, grief can be faced, even embraced.

Triggers of Grief

All of us have difficulty in facing the intensity of this kind of pain indefinitely. Even soon after the loss, we will spiral back and forth between intense pain and exhaustion or numbness. As the months pass and we move upward on the spiral, the grief softens in intensity — not in a straight line, but following the circular path of the spiral.

After months and years, larger spiral patterns emerge. After moving to the back of the spiral for some time, we may think we're finished with the intense grief for good. But then something triggers our grief, and sooner or later we're back on the front of the spiral again. But that won't be forever either. And what we have learned as we travel this spiral road of grief will be available to us at any point we reach further down the road — when the grief flares up in intensity, and also when it's on the back burner, still simmering, but not boiling over at the moment.

"If you read the books or the magazines, everybody says you go through the phases of grieving, and you almost feel that when you come to a certain point that it should end. You've gone through all the steps — boom it's over, it's done with.

But you realize that it's never over. It's an ongoing struggle. A lot of days are better than most. A lot of days are worse than others. You're continually blazing a new trail." — Chris, Caring Place Parent

Many things can trigger a return to intense grief — a birthday or other holiday; the anniversary of the death; seeing some clothing once worn by the one who died; catching a smell of perfume, or food cooking; hearing an old song; the death of a pet or another relative or friend.

Developmental issues can also trigger a return to the front of the spiral, especially for children — when a girl has to start junior high school without her mom; when a boy turns sixteen and realizes he doesn't have his dad to teach him how to drive; when a child reaches adolescence and begins to think about the whole world in a deeper way; when a young girl joins the Girl Scouts without her older sister to lead the way; when the surviving parent begins to date. Any or all of the feelings of grief can come pouring back into the lives of children or adults years after the death occurred, sometimes with an intensity that's frightening.

Managing Our Grief

Understanding the road of grief as a spiral can help us to anticipate what might be coming, and to understand the changes that occur. It can allow us to begin to manage our grief, and to organize our experiences.

Instead of convincing ourselves that we're getting over our grief at the first sign of movement towards the back of the spiral, we can realize that this softening of intensity is not forever. And when we spiral back around to the front, we don't need to be frightened that we're right back at the beginning, that we haven't learned anything in managing our grief. Realizing that the grief will follow a spiral path can lessen our anxiety, since coming around to the front again doesn’t devastate us because we have some anticipation of it.

As one father at the Caring Place told us:

"It has been a number of years since my son died. I don't live in the difficult days of the beginning anymore, where I was just trying to hang on, where it took all my energy just to put one foot in front of the other and get through the day. Things aren't as difficult now. But I know that at any moment, that grief can swing around and smack me full in the face again. It happens. And I deal with it in ways that I've learned to. I don't run from it. I use it as a way to remember Ian. And then the grief backs off. What I know about my life is that grief comes and goes. And knowing that, I’m not surprised when it comes around again."

It's nice to think that grief could be as clear and simple as a set of stages that come to a definite end, a process that we can just get over with. But "getting over" grief is not what the grieving and mourning processes are about. What is important is learning how to manage the grief over time, and learning to live with our grief while spiraling back and forth on our lifelong journeys.