The five stages of grief are so embedded in our cultural understanding of loss that people use them to evaluate themselves. Am I in the anger stage? I thought I was past bargaining. I had a good week — does that mean I started over?

Here's what you need to know: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross never intended the five stages as a linear roadmap through grief. She developed them through her work with dying patients — not bereaved ones — and later said she regretted how rigidly the model had been applied.

Grief doesn't move in five neat stages. In this blog post, San Diego Grief Counselor, Christy Garcia, explores what grief actually looks like.