Free grief worksheet
Getting Through Grief
There is no schedule you are supposed to be on, and the five stages are not what most people think they are. This is a gentle, research-grounded worksheet for when you are the one grieving — take it a section at a time, or not at all today.
PDF · 7 pagesFree · no cost, everSumarie Engelbrecht
If you need support right now. If you are having thoughts of not wanting to be alive, or of harming yourself, please reach out now rather than working through a worksheet. SADAG runs a 24-hour suicide crisis line on 0800 567 567, and emergency services are on 10111.
Sound familiar?
This is for you if
It has been months and people seem to expect me to be further along
I feel fine for a whole day and then it floors me again
I do not want to move on — moving on feels like losing them twice
Everyone has stopped asking how I am
I do not know whether what I am feeling is normal
The five stages were never a timetable
Kubler-Ross described what she observed in people facing their own terminal diagnosis, not a sequence that bereaved people move through. The model was never validated as a grief timetable, and studies following bereaved people over years find little evidence of a fixed order. Acceptance, rather than denial, is often the most common early response.
This matters because the stages have become a standard against which people measure themselves and conclude they are grieving wrongly. If you have not moved through them in order, or at all, nothing has gone wrong. Grief tends to come in waves rather than phases — sometimes years apart, often triggered by something small and unexpected.
Oscillation is the mechanism, not avoidance
The dual process model describes grief as a movement between two orientations: turning toward the loss, and turning toward the business of ongoing life. People oscillate between them, often within a single day, and that oscillation is not a failure to face things. It is how the system paces something that cannot be absorbed all at once.
This is worth knowing, because a good afternoon frequently produces guilt — as though enjoying something means you have stopped caring. It does not. Taking a break from grief is part of grieving, and the people who do it tend to fare better than those who feel obliged to stay in it continuously.
You are allowed to keep them
Older models of grief treated the goal as detachment — severing the bond so you could move on. The continuing bonds research overturned that. Maintaining a relationship with someone who has died, in an altered form, is common among people who adjust well, not a sign of being stuck.
Talking to them, keeping their things, marking their dates, asking what they would have said — none of these are problems to be corrected. The guide is explicit about this, because a lot of people are quietly doing it and assuming they should not be.
Common questions
Questions people ask
There is no fixed period, and intensity is not a measure of progress. Most people find the acute period eases over the first year or two while waves continue for much longer. What tends to change is not the depth of the feeling but the space between the waves.
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This guide is for information and is not a substitute for individual counselling. Written by Sumarie Engelbrecht, HPCSA Registered Counsellor (PRC 0042480).