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and the five stages of grief//love

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In my experience with Anaya, and especially when coming from a place of trauma, falling in love paralleled the stages of grief.

Hear me out.

When I met Anaya I was at the tail end of a particularly hairy grief stage, vacillating between depression and acceptance. Part of the reason I frequently share the realities of being a late bloomer is because there is something to be said about experiencing things for the first time that may seem obvious to some folx but are rather new to both me and my nervous system. The idea of safety and stillness. The ability to breathe, to no longer look over your shoulder. The feelings of grief that come with a tremendous love.

I think there are more than 5 stages of grief and I think we bounce around in//back and forth that space as well. But for ease and access- these are the most well known and widely discussed, we’ll go with these five.

Denial

Grief goes beyond death and dying and if grief is most simply broken down as love with no where to go I think it makes sense that we experience similarities when processing both love and grief outside of one another. Most often we think denial as in the person we love being gone or dead and with love the denial is the same-

this love couldn’t possibly be for me.