As a widow, grief is something with which I am very well acquainted. My journey has been up and down, in and out of each of the five stages of grief several times over. I might go through one stage and onto the next, only to backtrack to the previous one. At times I felt my grieving was coming to an end, only to find I was back at square one after a difficult season of life. It’s been messy and often confusing. One thing I have learned through it all is that it takes time. There’s no shortcut with grief.
I have been delaying writing a series on the topic of grief because I wanted to make sure I had enough information and said things the right way. But the Lord has reminded me why He wanted me to start this blog in the first place. It’s to share my story to help other widows, not to have the perfect words. So this series, along with the rest of the blog, will be flawed, but I pray it is beneficial.
The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Each stage stage of grief comes with its own challenges and changes, and no one person’s experience is the same as another’s. Please keep in mind I am not a doctor or a trained mental health professional, so the information and advice I share is what I have learned through research and my personal encounter with grief. 
As we explore this topic together, I want to give you some basic information about each stage, share my experience of how this looked in my life, and offer some simple strategies, tips or things I found helpful to assist you as you navigate your own grief journey.
Please remember that everyone’s experience with grief is unique. My path is going to look much different than yours, but I hope that by sharing what I have gone through and things I have learned, it may give you a little clarity to your own struggles and guide you to find hope and healing.
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