Five Stages of Grieving: Stage 5 - Acceptance

Stage Five – Acceptance
The road through the grieving process can be a long and tiresome one when you are trying to cope with the loss of a loved one. However, after a while you will come to the stage that is known as acceptance. There is no time frame for how long it will take to get to this point as it varies from person to person. Years may pass before you come to the acceptance period, and you may feel that it is something you may never be able to reach, but you should not lose hope.  Acceptance is the point in the process when you accept that death is a natural part of life and that it is something that must happen to everyone at some point. When people have lost someone after a long battle with an illness, this point may come more easily as they often go through the other stages of grief before the actual death occurs. However, if you are experiencing the sudden loss of someone, reaching the acceptance stage can be a lot more difficult because you were completely unprepared for the situation and thought your loved one would be around for quite some time.

Dealing with Acceptance
It is important to note that once you reach the acceptance stage, it does not mean that you will never again slide back into a depression. It’s not as if you wake up one day and suddenly realize that everything is okay and you can move on, and you should not be disappointed in yourself if you do not do this. Too many times people assume that one day everything is going to return to normal and that their lives are going to be put back together the way they were before the death occurred. In truth, you may never actually feel the same way as you did before the loss, and that is okay. Acceptance does not mean that life magically returns to normal; it just means that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and you might feel some relief from the heavy burden that grief causes.