Stage of Grief Models: Rando

Therese Rando's Six R's

Researcher and Clinical Psychologist Therese Rando also has contributed a stage model of the grief process that she observed people to experience while adjusting to significant loss. She called her model the "Six R's":

• Recognize the loss: First, people must experience their loss and understand that it has happened.

• React: People react emotionally to their loss.

• Recollect and Re-Experience: People may review memories of their lost relationship (events that occurred, places visited together, or day to day moments that were experienced together).

• Relinquish: People begin to put their loss behind them, realizing and accepting that the world has truly changed and that there is no turning back.

• Readjust: People begin the process of returning to daily life and the loss starts to feel less acute and sharp.

• Reinvest: Ultimately, people re-enter the world, forming new relationships and commitments. They accept the changes that have occurred and move past them.

Though different in approach and ordering of stages, each of these three models of the grief process share common similarities. They all understand grief to involve an often a painful emotional adjustment which necessarily takes time and cannot be hurried along. This much appears to be universally true, although each person's grief experience will be unique.