10 Powerful Ways to Read People Like a Book
Read People Like a Book: A Deep Dive into Patrick
Grief is a deeply personal journey, and no one experiences it the same way. The five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, were introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying. This model has been widely accepted and used to understand the emotional process of loss. I mainly agree with this model, but there are some exceptions, like my own family. When my mother received the news of our loss, she seemed to follow the Kübler-Ross stages exactly as they were laid out, moving from one phase to the next as if she were following an invisible script. But for me, and even more so for my younger brother, grief didn’t follow any structured path. Instead, it felt unpredictable and messy.
Denial: My Prolonged Numbness
When the news first came, my brain refused to process it. I lingered in the denial phase longer than anyone else in my family. It was as if my mind had completely shut down my ability to cry, grieve, or even acknowledge reality. I walked around detached from reality and what was happening, feeling like I was trapped in some dream that I would eventually wake up from. While my mother was visibly moving through the stages of grief, my emotions felt frozen in time. I was a numb nut job, convincing myself that none of this was real, that somehow, everything would go back to normal. Giving myself a hard time, because I did not grieve like others, feeling bad not because I lost my father, but because I was different.
Looking back, I wonder if this was my mind’s way of protecting me, an attempt to postpone the inevitable pain that I wasn’t ready to feel.
The Immediate Acceptance of a Child
Unlike me, my younger brother reacted in a completely different way. He was only five years old, and from the outside, it seemed as though he skipped every stage of grief and landed straight in acceptance. He didn’t cry, he didn’t lash out, and he didn’t seem weighed down by the crushing sadness that the rest of us carried. Instead, he continued playing, laughing, and carrying on with life as if nothing had changed. At first, this baffled me. How could he take such devastating news and move on? Did he not understand what had happened? Did he not care? But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that children grieve differently from adults.
How Children Process Grief Differently
According to The Child Mind Institute, children often grieve in fragmented, unpredictable ways. One moment, they may be crying, and the next, they are playing as if nothing happened. This doesn’t mean they aren’t sad or that they’ve “finished” grieving, it’s simply their way of coping. Unlike adults, who often experience prolonged periods of sadness, children tend to dip in and out of grief, allowing themselves moments of distraction so that they don’t become completely overwhelmed. In my brother’s case, his ability to deal with the loss so quickly wasn’t necessarily a sign of emotional maturity, but rather a built-in defense mechanism. His mind protected him from the full weight of grief by allowing him to process it in small, manageable pieces.
Why Do People Experience Grief Differently?
Reflecting on our different reactions to grief, I started to wonder why it appears in such different forms. Why did my mother move through each stage of grief so predictably? Why was I stuck in denial, unable to cry or fully feel the weight of the loss? And why did my brother appear to bypass the stages entirely? Grief is influenced not only by personality but also by factors like age, life experiences, and even neurological differences. While Kübler-Ross’s model offers a usefulframework, it doesn’t imply that everyone will follow these stages in the same way or the same order. Some people cycle through the stages repeatedly, others may remain stuck in one stage for years, and some, like my brother, process grief in a unique manner.
There Is No “Right” Way to Grieve
Going through this experience has made me realize that grief is not a formula, it’s deeply personal and unpredictable. The five stages can serve as a guideline, but they do not dictate how we will experience loss. Some people move through them in order, while others skip around or find themselves stuck in one phase longer than expected. And for children, grief can look completely different from what we expect. What I’ve learned is that there is no “wrong” way to grieve. Whether you’re numb, angry, crying, or even laughing, grief takes whatever shape it needs to. The only thing that truly matters is allowing yourself the time and space to process it in your own way.
