Vickey Gutierrez

The journey of grief began in 1917 when Freud published his paper “Mourning and melancholia”, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross discovered the five stages of grief while attending University of Chicago as assistant Professor of psychiatry.

Grief isn’t just about death, it could be about a loss of a relationship, routines or even aspects of your identity.

“Many people experience grief because of different reasons, some grieve because of a moving, or losing a friendship they cherish so much, or even a family member and many more reasons to come with,” social worker Erica Hade said.

Stages of grief aren’t linear, they could be experienced at different moments in time randomly.

“It’s very hard to say, I do find myself grieving randomly and write here and there to express myself. I randomly start tearing up in unexpected moments, zone out of reality even,” 23-year-old Vickey Gutierrez said.

One of the best ways to deal with grief may be with a support system with people who care for you, friends, a community group, online network, or something else.

“Within our school we have a lot of mental health professionals for support, students can start out going to their counselor, students even have an assigned social worker and can go to them for more comfort. We also have two organizations that provide mental health support inside the school like Youth Crossroads, and we have the school-based clinic, both have times provided both individual group counseling and group counseling where you can connect with people who similar experiences with grief. We can also help people connect with grief support in our community partners outside of school,” Hade said.

Grief is a normal human response to a significant loss.

“When students come in when they experience grief, it is different than any other health concerns and something important, it is not something that we want to go away because it is a sign someone was really important to us. It is important to normalize the experience of grief and provide support,” Hade said.

It isn’t only about sadness, people grieve in different ways like anger, denial, shock, guilt, relief and even loss.

“I usually let out my emotions in poetry, I found it very rare when I officially let myself grieve in all its glory. Sometimes I cry, feel sad and lost, but when I feel it the most I start writing. I let my emotions pour out on a piece of paper,” Gutierrez said.

The death of a loved one changes you in profound ways. A piece of you is missing, never to return, so the idea that grief would change you makes sense. Because of this deep grief experience, you will never be the same.

“Personally, I can definitely say grieving has changed me. Before my father passed, I used to be unmotivated, staying in my comfort zone. Once my father had passed, I had to step up my game causing me to get out my comfort zone. I got my first job, became basically a mother to my younger sibling and became an adult.” Gutierrez said

Grief is often referred to as “grief-work.” It requires more energy to work through than most people expect and the pain at a significant loss may never completely disappear, but it should ease up over time.

“I don’t really think one person can just stop grieving, the pain never really goes away or stops. I can definitely say that I am still grieving over my father after almost 5 years, the pain might hit differently at some moments but I’ll always grieve,” Gutierrez said.

When death comes to a family there are times things one never knew could unravel, causing hardships within the family and can cause the person to view people differently and force them to grow with it.

“Grieving means to me a new emotion, something you can learn from if you allow yourself. Yes it will hurt and never really stop but you can definitely learn from it and learn how to grow with it,” Gutierrez said.

Grief is intimately connected to the relationship, to fully interpret the grief response we need to understand what the relationship brought to our life and therefore what has been lost from our life.

“Grief is something that demonstrates how powerful that connection between humans can be. When we care about someone, we feel a deep loss internally because we bond with people and that helps us be successful in life. It is a very important part of being human and I think grief is a reminder of how important that is. It a natural process that everyone will experience at some point and helps us connect with others and talk it through,” Hade said.