David Kessler, a grief expert, proposes a sixth stage of grief beyond Kübler-Ross's original five: meaning. He explains that meaning doesn't erase pain but channels love forward through small acts like singing a loved one's favorite song or cooking their recipe. Loss never becomes okay, but meaning gives love a place to live on.
You might have heard of the 5 stages of grief, but there's a 6th stage that a lot of people haven't heard about. It's the stage of meaning. I'm grateful that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's foundation and her family allowed me to add a 6th stage to her iconic stages. And as she would say, and we all know, the stages aren't linear. There's no certain order and there's no one right way to do grief. And when people hear about the stage of meaning, Sometimes they'll go, there's no meaning in a horrible death. They're right. There's no meaning in a murder, a child's death, a loved one's death. Meaning is what do we do with the love now? Meaning is who do we become now? Meaning doesn't have to be you run a 5K course or do a big scholarship in their honor. Meaning can be in the small things. It can be the way you still talk to them in the car. Maybe how we sing along to their favorite songs. Like we did when they were alive. Maybe it's just wearing their favorite shirt. It's that recipe you keep making for the family because it has so many memories of them. It doesn't make the loss okay. The loss will never be okay, but it gives our love somewhere to go. What is one small way your love still shows up? How have you found meaning?
