Content Note: This episode discusses grief in many forms, including pregnancy loss, queer and trans community loss, and intergenerational trauma. Please take care of yourself as you listen.

Episode Summary: In Episode 13 of The Inked Therapist, Del Knight dismantles the five-stage model of grief and replaces it with something more honest — and more useful. This episode covers what Kübler-Ross actually intended and how her framework was distorted into a checklist; what grief actually looks like in the body and why it is non-linear, cumulative, and relational; the decolonial critique of private, time-limited mourning and what Indigenous, Black, and global majority traditions have always known about grief that the Western model suppressed; ancestral and intergenerational grief and why your grief may be bigger than the visible loss; and disenfranchised grief — the losses that go unacknowledged and unsupported because the culture doesn't recognize them as real.

Topics Covered: Kübler-Ross and the five stages · Continuing bonds theory · George Bonanno and grief research · Non-linear grief · Grief in the body · Grief vs. depression · Somatic grief · Decolonizing grief · Indigenous and African mourning traditions · Día de los Muertos · Closure as a colonial concept · Ancestral grief · Intergenerational trauma and epigenetics · Disenfranchised grief (Kenneth Doka) · Ambiguous loss (Pauline Boss) · Pet loss · Pregnancy loss · Queer and trans grief · Grief for identity, future, and land

Clinical References: On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross · The Other Side of Sadness by George Bonanno · Continuing Bonds by Klass, Silverman, Nickman · Disenfranchised Grief by Kenneth Doka · Ambiguous Loss by Pauline Boss

Companion Blog Post: 'Grief Is Not a 5-Step Checklist'

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Next Episode: Episode 14 — Thinking, Feeling, and Sensing