Coping with Loss and Grief

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Any significant change that a person experiences such as getting married, obtaining a divorce, getting or losing a job, moving or losing a home, losing self-respect, losing a loved one through death, or passing from one stage of life to another may produce feelings of loss, grief, emptiness, and sadness. These changes and losses also involve feelings of anger and guilt.

Such feelings are natural and normal. Often persons who experience such a loss as well as those around them tend to deny or ignore these feelings, considering them abnormal and even wrong or bad. Such denial can lead to emotional or physical difficulties. Sometimes it leads to a breakdown in communications and relationships with others, thus blocking the natural means of recovering from the grief caused by these changes.

Experienced counselors agree that the most healthy way to work through these feelings for most people is to talk about them with someone else. This can be a family member, a close friend, a clergyman/woman or a professional counselor.

Ronald Pitzer
Family Sociologist

Originally published in November 1988

College of Human Ecology in cooperation with the University of Minnesota Extension Service

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