The Grief Expert Who Discovered a Sixth Stage | David Kessler
August 10, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThe Grief Expert Who Discovered a Sixth Stage
David Kessler, one of the world's foremost grief experts, spent decades teaching the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—originally observed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in dying patients and later adapted by Kessler for all forms of loss. Then his younger son David died unexpectedly. "As brutal as you would imagine," Kessler says. "I was on the floor." The experience forced him to confront something he had been teaching for years: acceptance felt like a low baseline. "If you just accept something, then what? Life sucks. This happened. My life sucks." That realization led him to propose a sixth stage: finding meaning.
Grief as Change We Didn't Want
Kessler defines grief broadly: "Grief is about change. Those of us who can manage change well actually are happier in life. If you get stuck in the breakup, the job loss, whatever it is, you're not going to do well." The five stages work not just for death but for any unwanted change—divorce, job loss, moving, betrayal. But the stages are not a linear checklist. "People thought like there's one big acceptance," Kessler explains. "There's a million acceptances that we're always going through."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:31) **Grief is about change** - David Kessler defines grief as a change we didn’t want, and says managing change well is key to a happier life.
- 2 (03:17) **The five stages of grief (plus the sixth)** - Kessler explains the classic Kübler-Ross stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) and why he added a sixth stage: meaning.
- 3 (05:58) **When the grief expert lost his own son** - Kessler describes his personal devastation and the shock of needing to use his own tools.
- 4 (08:50) **Finding meaning: the sixth stage explained** - The meaning is not in the horrible event itself, but in who you become afterward.
- 5 (10:56) **A Christmas grave-side turning point** - Kessler’s older son wanted to cancel the holidays forever; Kessler had to argue for still living.
- 6 (13:59) **Why we can’t order our feelings** - You can’t suppress grief and selectively feel love — feelings come as a package.
- 7 (16:52) **Grief and love are a package deal** - You cannot fully love without being willing to fully grieve.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Your grief is not the thing keeping you stuck. Running from it is.
David Kessler spent years working alongside Elisabeth Kubler-Ross before everything he taught got tested against his own life, when his son died unexpectedly and the grief expert became the one who needed help.
He talks about sitting in a grief group with his own books on the table and still not being able to say the words out loud. About discovering there is a stage past acceptance, one built on meaning instead of just getting through it.
You will hear why anger is often just pain wearing a disguise, why your triggers are actually a map back to what needs healing, and why the people who seem to have it all together are usually the ones running the hardest.
This conversation will change how you think about every hard thing you have survived and every hard thing still ahead.
David’s books:
Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief
You Can Heal Your Heart: Finding Peace After a Breakup, Divorce, or Death
Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die
Online Grief Group and Grief Education
In this episode you will:
- Learn the sixth stage of grief that goes beyond acceptance and into real meaning
- Discover why your triggers are actually a map to your deepest healing
- Overcome the fear of speaking your pain out loud to the people who love you
- Recognize the difference between grief and clinical depression
- Build the courage to feel your feelings instead of outrunning them
For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1965
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