In 1969, Elisabeth Kubler Ross developed the five stages of grief known to the world. The five stages consist of feelings such denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Almost every person has gone through these stages when dealing with the loss of a loved one. 

Losing someone that is important to a person can take a toll on a person’s mental or physical state. The ways people decide to cope with it varies from holding in emotions or expressing anger. Geometry teacher, Robin Wetter, realized the coped with her loss in a negative way when she lost her home as a child.

“I was angry a lot, and as I grew up, I realized I was only hurting myself. I was pushing people away. Then, I would learn to work through it because if I’m working, I don’t have to think about it. When you’re alone with your thoughts, that’s when the grief kind of hits you. Now that I’m older and wiser, you gotta learn you do have to feel that grief, you do have to cry, and you do have to know that it’s okay to cry. Reach out, talk to others that are experiencing the same thing to help get over it, so that the happy memory sticks and you can let the grief go,” stated Wetter. 

Grief is something almost every person goes through and everyone deals with it in different ways. Usually, adults have gone through more than children, so they have more experience when dealing with loss. English teacher, Rachel Minier, hopes that her students will learn healthy ways to deal with grief. 

“Some advice I would give to my students about grieving with loss is that they should talk to people when they need to, if they need to talk about the person, talk about them. If they aren’t in a place to talk about them, then share that too. If somebody tries to talk about them, they need to allow themselves the opportunity to actually grieve and feel whatever they need,” stated Minier. 

Psychologically, the human brain is filled with different chemicals that all ignite a different emotion. AP Psychology teacher, Christopher Allen, knows that overtime, remembering the good things about what’s lost only makes better memories. 

“Grief is a large amount of chemicals in our brain. Emotions are chemicals in our brain and every single time that we think about and grieve about that person or that loss, we actually create less and less chemicals in our brain. So eventually, whenever I think about the loss I had, there’s less of that bad chemical in my brain and there’s more chemicals that make me just remember in a happy way. Soon after, you just start to look at the bright side of things, and you start to look at how things got better and how you were impacted in a positive way. Instead of the negative way of the loss,” stated Allen. 

No matter how old the person is, feeling hurt due to the loss of a loved one is common. According to psychiatrists Mary Ann Emswiler and James P. Emswiler, loss takes a harder toll on children due to the lack of development in their hormones. Counselor, Ashely Wann, believes that when a person is grieving, support is important.

“An important thing to remember when it comes to children is that they may have emotions that they are not aware how to process yet, the biggest thing is just to support them and make sure that whether they’re children or adults, and understand everyone grieves differently. It’s okay to have one feeling in one minute and even to get to a point where you feel like you’re over it and then have something come back. The biggest thing is just to be patient with yourself to have good self care while you’re going through it,” stated Wann. 

Living and losing is something almost every person has to go through during life. The ways it’s dealt with can be different for everyone, but it is still grieving. According to psychiatrist Jeanne Segal Ph.D, time can help with getting over the loss of a loved one, so all one can do is take their time and wait.