Everyone’s grieving process is different because we are all different. Some women feel a great deal of pain and loss initially while others are consumed with anger and have trouble feeling sorrow. No matter how you are wired, though, you will need to experience all of the aspects of the grieving process in order to move towards healing.
These include:
• Denial
• Bargaining
• Anger
• Despair
• Acceptance
I do want to make one more comment about the grieving process. It is not linear. That means that you don’t necessarily start out with denial and then do the bargaining thing and then feel anger which changes to despair and eventually get to acceptance. Unfortunately, grieving is much more complex. So, you are more likely to find yourself numb one day, furious the next, kind of okay a couple of days later, then back to trying to change yourself or change your husband to get rid of the problem, and the next week so depressed you can’t get out of bed. The grieving process is circular. You will cycle through all of these feelings many times (sometimes multiple times in a day). And you know what? You are not going crazy and you are not “unspiritual” if you keep experiencing all of the elements of grief over an extended period of time.
You may be wondering at this point how long it is going to take. I know I did! You are not going to like the answer, so brace yourself.
There is no set time to grieve.
Each heart heals differently. From my own experience and the experiences of others I know, you can expect to be working through the grieving process for a minimum of six months. That’s a best-case scenario in which your husband is working on his stuff, you are both involved in individual, joint, and group counseling, and you have a strong identity in Christ. A more average time for grieving would be one year, and some women do not move out of the grieving process until close to the second year.
–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One