When you lose a loved one, your own life significantly changes. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross provided a framework for understanding the grieving process when she first identified the profound responses of patients with terminal illness. The emotional stages they experienced—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—can also explain how people grieve a loved one’s death. This five-part CareNote series on the stages of grief provides landmarks for your own road to healing.

Bargaining: Continuing on Your Healing Path: Bargaining has an appropriate center spot in the five stages of grieving. It may include what seem like a few steps back, when fragments of denial and anger can rise again to the surface.

By Karen Katafiasz