At some point in our lives, we all experience failure, rejection, and death of a loved one. Examples include: failing a test, getting rejected by the person we like, and finding out that someone close to us has passed away. When we experience these, we undergo grief.  We start feeling intense emotions, we get caught up in a loop of mess, and we start questioning ourselves.

I never really understood the dynamics of these occurrences until I learned about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief. She explained that people go through at least two of the five stages, and in any order. She has also noted that even though not everyone goes through the same stages, the same pattern of behaviour is displayed by individuals going through grief.

To understand more about the five stages, we’ll take this scenario:

Hayley is an A-average student who has never failed a test in her life.

It was just a regular friday morning at my school back in the Philipines and as a regular school tradition, we had P.E./swimming in the early afternoons. I was hoping for a fun, exciting, and an adrenaline rushing time of my life, and that is exactly what happened to me!

My class went up the schools' hill and went to this huge swimming pool for lessons. The boys went to the boys changing room to change into their swimming gear and the girls did the same thing. Since there were more boys than girls, I was the last one to change, while everyone else was doing stretches with the two swim coaches.