Grief and Gratitude
I know many people who have experienced significant losses this year. Jobs ending, loved ones dying, moving to new locations, leaving old situations behind. Sometimes when we are going through the grieving process, it's hard to access a sense of gratitude. In one conversation this morning, I was reminded of an observation I've made in my own experiences of grief that gratitude may be one of the stages of grieving we need to consider. In her groundbreaking research, Dr. Kubler Ross identified several emotional stages of grief - shock, denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance- and saw that these emotional adjustments are common to humans adapting to change. In her case, she was studying grief associated with death, but we've come to understand that grieving occurs with most transitional experiences. If you're struggling to access your own sense of gratitude, try taking some time to reflect on what you miss about the person, place, or thing now gone. Such reflection may