Beyond the Stages: How My Understanding of Grief Shaped My Research Journey

Part 1 – When the Familiar Frameworks Don’t Fit

The Framework Problem

I don’t recommend anyone work on a dissertation twice—but that was my journey.

The first time around, I discovered the Human–Animal Bond as a field of study. The second time, everything deepened. I’ll explain what a theoretical framework is later, but here’s the short version: as my topic evolved, so did the lens through which I understood it.

I was familiar with grief.

And because of that, I was familiar with grief theories, especially one of the most well-known: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief from On Death and Dying. I’ve presented on that theory and used it in workshops.

So when a classmate in one of my research courses suggested—twice—that I use Kübler-Ross as my framework for a study on pet loss, they truly thought they were being helpful.

But something in my gut said no.

I understood the intent behind Kübler-Ross’s work and also its limits. Most early grief theories were designed to make sense of something chaotic, but they often did so by simplifying it. And the grief I was exploring, which involved the intersection of personal, cultural, and species bonds, refused to be simplified.

Pet loss is complex. Grief within the African American community is complex. The experience of both together? Even more so.

Whatever framework I chose had to be as fluid and nuanced as the lives it represented.

This post is about finding a framework that honors both the research question and the community. It’s about the frameworks I considered, and why they didn’t fit.

My Own Framework Journey: How I Fell in Love with Grief Work

Before I explain what a theoretical framework is and why it matters, I have to share how I got here. My relationship with grief began with lived experience and deepened through both learning and loss, not in a classroom or a research proposal.

My first formal encounter with grief theory came in a human services course called Grief and Bereavement. That’s where I met Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages. For the first time, I had language for loss and a roadmap for something that had always felt unpredictable. The stages offered a sense of order, a belief that there was a path through pain.

I even did an inventory of my own grief.
When my dad died, I subconsciously treated the stages like milestones:
Denial? ✔ Anger? ✔ Bargaining? ✔
I believed that if I could just reach “acceptance,” I’d be finished.

Then my mom died, and the map no longer worked. Grief wasn’t linear; it circled, dipped, and surged. Some days (or months or years) I was fine; others, I was shattered. I wasn’t progressing through stages—I was swimming, sinking, and surfacing all at once.

When my sister was murdered, grief broke every frame. There was nothing orderly about it. Nothing predictable. The theories I had studied and taught couldn’t hold what I was living.

As time went on, grief became more than something I studied; it became a calling.
I still remember returning to campus after my sister’s funeral. Someone in my dorm asked where I’d been.

“My sister died, and I was at the funeral,” I said.
They paused and asked, “How was it?”
I managed an awkward, “It was… sad.”

That moment stayed with me. It reminded me how uncomfortable most people are with grief and how much room there is to grow in how we meet another’s loss.

So I began facilitating. I led workshops at 12-step conferences, guided “Walking with God Through Grief” at my church, and eventually earned certification as a Grief Educator through David Kessler’s program. (Kessler, a colleague of Kübler-Ross, co-authored On Grief and Grieving, expanding her original framework.)

And Samson, my feline companion of 17 years, was by my side for most of it. But his loss became the heart of my dissertation.

I studied pet loss.
I studied what it meant to be African American and grieving a pet.
In many ways, I was studying myself.

I was immersed in this work. I believed in it, and I still do. While no theory can fully capture the depth of loss, an appropriate theory can aid in naming it. Personal losses shaped my understanding in ways no classroom could. Ultimately, grief is messier, more complex, and more real than the stages ever suggested.

This realization didn’t make me abandon stage theories entirely, but it made me question them. It made me ask:

• What frameworks truly capture the reality of how people grieve?
• Whose grief were those original frameworks designed to understand?

Those questions became central to my research and to this ongoing exploration of what it means to love, to lose, and to keep finding meaning beyond the stages.

Coming Next

In my next post, I’ll unpack what a theoretical framework really is, explore the grief theories I considered, and share how I finally found one that could hold both the science and the soul of my research.