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.

Examining Your Unresolved Anger: Anger is an understandable response to your loved one’s death. But anger alone—unexamined and unresolved— can impede the grieving process.

By Karen Katafiasz