Somehow, grief was seen as a more finite, situational process you move through and out of in definable, predictable ways. As usual, it took the experts decades to figure out what us regular mopes always knew:

What is Grief?

Grieving is not a clean cut, predictable, experience with defined stages, clean borders, a linear storyline with distinct, set solutions that can be easily measured. It's a shape shifty bastard that takes all forms, transforms you from the inside out in inexplicable ways. It can look like rage or boredom; it can make you manically join a dozen groups looking for comfort or shut down completely and close out all human connection. On Monday it feels like a tsunami of unendurable waves of pain. On Tuesday it feels like a low-grade fever you can't shake. It makes you hyper productive to avoid the pain or puts you in a sleep-filled coma where every waking moment is agony. And it can blow all the feeling right out of you like a gust of numbness and you feel nothing at all.

And it's a very real, horrific psychological experience all its own.

According to The New York Times, which asks: "When does a broken heart become a diagnosis?" the new report says a bunch of studies show it's time to give grief its proper place in the annals of psychiatric diagnosis and give it its own status as a disorder.
In that spirit, and in an effort to finally get public recognition for the private hell of grief, I offer this Bill of Rights for Grief.

You have the right to take whatever path you take through your grief without judgment.

You have the right to ignore or incorporate any or all of the MOUNTAINS of advice you will get.

You have the right to say: "No thank you."

You have the right to grieve for whatever you have lost, including things you never had but ache for, like phantom limb pain.

You have the right to your own definition of grief. For someone else it may be a journey, a blessing, a teachable moment, a test, a process, a choice. It doesn't have to be any of those things for you. It can simply be where you are at the time. Or it can simply and profoundly suck.

You have the right not to be grateful, inspired or inspiring.

Read the rest here:  A Bill of Rights for Grief