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The five stages of grief. Can you name them all? In a line-up, perhaps you could point out anger and denial, but the rest would be a bit blurry (like how you could always spot Robbie in Take That, but it was hard to tell Howard and Jason apart). 

And yet the five stages of grief theory is hardwired into our culture. Even if the nearest you have got to death is the school rabbit dying on your watch, you will be familiar with the idea that there are distinct emotions you go through after someone dies: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and then acceptance. The appealing concept that grief is a straight line, flowing seamlessly from one emotional state to the other, culminating in an end point, where you are free of its mess and pain. 

In 1998, when I was 15, my dad died from pancreatic cancer and I was thrown into the land of grief. A part of me trusted that if I followed the five stages map (of which, even back then, I was aware) I would eventually get out of this hell. I knew there was an exit door – I just had to find it. 

Cariad Lloyd speaks through how she handled her grief as a young teenager. She explains how she just felt anger, and missed the other four stages of grief

Cariad Lloyd speaks through how she handled her grief as a young teenager. She explains how she just felt anger, and missed the other four stages of grief 

But something was awry on my grief map. I had pelted headfirst into anger, sparks of fury flickering off me. I was angry at him, at death, at cancer, at everything. I waited for this stage to end… but it didn’t. I knew that was ‘wrong’, you weren’t meant to feel angry for ever, but I was still full of fire for years after. As I finished school in London, headed to university, tried to become who I was meant to be, I still felt the blaze inside. 

I checked my five stages map and saw I’d already missed the first stage, denial. My dad had been diagnosed in February and was dead by April. Had denial happened then? When was bargaining? I was stuck inside the anger room, screaming to be let out, which only extended my stay. I felt confused but mostly ashamed; there was a road out of grief, so why couldn’t I follow it? My pain was my fault, I concluded. I would never get to the precious land of acceptance. 

Years rolled by. I learned to carry my pain as best I could, convinced I’d failed my grief exam. I started doing comedy full time, got married, yet even aged 34 and pregnant with my first child, I experienced rage at my loss. I was mad that people could die. I knew that wasn’t how grief was meant to work. I was still getting it wrong all these years later. 

In 2016 my podcast was born; every comedian I knew had one. I mused that if I did my own, it would be about the thing I’d been thinking about for years: death. Who would listen to that? But the idea wouldn’t leave me so, with my baby two weeks late and not budging, I began Griefcast. I put four episodes out and assumed it would end there. But as the emails from listeners rolled in, I discovered I wasn’t alone in the feeling of doing grief ‘wrong’. As I began to talk to more Griefsters (as we call ourselves on the show), including Robert Webb, David Baddiel and Sara Pascoe, the same sad refrain came up again and again. They too felt they hadn’t done grief ‘right’. How could we all be getting this wrong? Why didn’t anyone seem to have reached stage five – acceptance? 

WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP?

This is a question I’m asked regularly by people wanting to support someone who is in the depths of grief and the answer is… 

Show up, be there, but don’t try to ‘fix them’… 

Why? Because the truth is you can’t make them ‘better’, you can’t take away their pain – that’s all they have left of the person who is gone. It will never go away, but you can make sure they know they’re not alone with it. 

Stop asking, ‘is there anything I can do?’ and just do it 

From picking up the kids from school and helping with admin to emptying the bins and throwing away the old flowers rotting in vases – there are so many practical ways you can be there for someone, don’t make them list them for you. Extra marks if you put the kettle on yourself and wash up your mug before you leave, too. 

And always Remember… 

One of the biggest complaints is how after six months, a year, two years, the world seems to forget that someone died. The birthdays, the Mother’s Day/Father’s Day, Christmas or simply those days where everyone is with their loved ones and posting it online. Remember those grieving, put the anniversary into your diary and let them know you haven’t forgotten them. 

It was then that I finally delved into the origins of the five grief stages: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 1969 book On Death and Dying. The author was a Swiss-born American psychiatrist who worked closely with terminally ill people and was a passionate advocate of the hospice movement. She wrote the book not to help grieving relatives, but rather to help those in the medical profession support their dying patients. Her main wish was that people with a terminal illness be told they were dying; a practice which back then wasn’t commonplace. Kübler-Ross believed if patients were informed of their diagnoses, they would go through five distinct stages, the final one being a calm acceptance. It was never meant for those left behind, and that was a revelation that flooded me with profound relief. I wanted to scream: ‘It’s not for us! It’s for people who are dying. DYING.’ I wasn’t bad at grief; this theory was never intended for me. 

You can see, of course, why we’re still handing out this theory to grievers like extra tissues. Because it’s a hope – a hope that there will be an end, a desperate want that if you check off all these boxes you won’t have to feel like this any more. After I had finished the book, I became zealous in telling everyone it wasn’t for us. They could free themselves from a map that would never get them where they wanted to go. 

Today, most grief professionals don’t use the five stages. Kübler-Ross herself, years later, said the theory had been misinterpreted. Since starting the podcast and writing my book, the most helpful real-life theory I have discovered is the Dual Process Model. Conceived by psychologists Dr Margaret Stroebe and Dr Henk Schut, this is an idea that there are two states in grief you oscillate between: the grieving state, where you cry, wail and snot everywhere, and the restoration state, where you rest from grief, forget, watch telly, even find yourself laughing at something silly. So many of us have felt the sting of guilt at starting to rebuild our lives, when actually the Dual Process Model shows that is how grief works. You put it down, you process it, some days you feel it, some days you need a break. The oscillation is how we learn to live with our grief. Many Griefsters I spoke to felt bad for being in restoration. It was seen as forgetting the person they had lost, rather than a vital strategy for building a life around the terrible pain, a way not to get over grief but to carry on with it by your side. 

Now, after six years of Griefcast, nearly 200 episodes with guests including The Rev Richard Coles, Aisling Bea, Adam Buxton, Marian Keyes, Poorna Bell and Stephen Mangan, plus a book based on everything I’ve learnt, I have found there is indeed something that links the grieving. It isn’t the straight path we take to get over it because we don’t ‘get over’ it, we assimilate it, learn to live with it and, ultimately, be happy coexisting with it. That’s what unites us. The five stages have been a guide for so long, but there are other ways to grieve and none is wrong. 

So grieve in whatever way works for you and, however you do it, know that you’re not alone.

  • Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury, £18.99* 
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This post first appeared on Daily mail