When her husband died of cancer 10 years ago, Becky Aikman says she experienced grief and adapted to her loss -- but not in the way some people seemed to expect.
proactive：有前瞻性的，主动地
About a year after his death, when Ms. Aikman felt it was time to start rebuilding her life, she attended a widows support group meeting. She arrived and found a tissue box on each chair, she recalls. The group leader talked about the five stages of grief, each woman described her husband's death and everyone cried.
Afterward, Ms. Aikman spoke to the leader and, pointing out that the group was called 'Moving Forward After Loss,' she asked, 'Couldn't we focus on the future or moving on?' He told her he didn't think she fit in and asked her not to return.
'There is an expectation that a proper widow maintains this cliche of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow,' says Ms. Aikman, now 58 and living in Brooklyn, N.Y. 'She doesn't go out, doesn't laugh, doesn't date. The idea is that you have to do a penance almost, for years.'
cliche：陈词滥调，腐朽的 perpetual：永久的，不断的 penance：苦修，忏悔
Almost five decades after psychologist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's 1969 book 'On Death and Dying,' the grieving process is still popularly understood to happen in five stages -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
But in recent years researchers and experts have found little evidence that these stages exist. People who bounce back after a death, divorce or other traumatic loss often don't follow this sequence. Instead, many of them strive to actively move forward.
traumatic：外伤的，创伤的
'The traditional model of bereavement is that there is work to do,' says George Bonanno, a grief researcher and professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College, and the author of 'The Other Side of Sadness.' 'There has never really been any evidence for that.'
bereavement：丧友，丧亲
Each person's grieving is unique, of course. But in a 2002 study of older men and women who had lost spouses, Dr. Bonanno found that in 50% of the participants, the main symptoms of grief -- shock, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, depression -- had lifted within six months. 'The majority of people can function pretty soon afterward,' he says.
intrusive：侵入的，打扰的
Instead of five stages, Dr. Bonanno compares grief to a swinging pendulum. People get very upset and then feel better -- over and over again. A person may be crying and then suddenly laugh at a funny joke or memory. In time, the periods between pendulum swings get longer and gradually the pain subsides.
pendulum：钟摆，摇摆不定
People often feel guilty about moving on, says Camille Wortman, professor of social and health psychology at Stony Brook University, in New York, whose research focuses on grief. 'This is why it doesn't work to just try and feel better,' she says.
It's important to ask yourself, 'What matters most in my life at this time?' Dr. Wortman says, and then focus on the answer. It might be your children, your health, your job or a passion for music or art. 'Stay in touch with your values,' she says. 'This can activate positive emotion, which provides a respite from grief.'
respite：缓解，休息
The advice boils down to: Get out and try something fun. Psychologists call it 'behavioral activation.' The idea is that feeling bad can lead to a downward spiral: You stop going out, quit exercising, sleep poorly, gain weight. Doing enjoyable things can reverse this trend.
Steve Govoni has been widowed twice. After his first wife died in 1998, he read about how the stages of grief are like a slow climb out of a valley. Mr. Govoni had two small children and a demanding job as a supervisory analyst. 'Languishing in that valley wasn't a viable option, so I just soldiered on,' he says.
soldier on：坚持下去，迎着困难干
In time, he met a wonderful woman and remarried. Then last March, his second wife died after an 18-month battle with cancer. This time, Mr. Govoni decided to tackle his grief head-on. He looked up old friends, took his son to Rangers games on his visits home from college and worked on enlarging his wife's gardens. He took his daughter to Broadway plays and volunteered as the photographer for her high-school drama productions.
'Grieving is never easy, but the combination of doing a job I love and maximizing quality time with friends and my daughter made it easier to move on,' says the 64-year-old senior financial writer, who lives in Rowayton, Conn.
Ms. Aikman, a newspaper reporter at the time of her husband's death, used her journalism skills to research better ways to move through grief, with the idea that she might even write a book. She found out that grief doesn't go in stages, but in waves. 'So I learned that this feeling of taking two steps forward and one step back was normal,' she says.
She wondered: Why not form a support group of her own? She put out the word and found five other women who had been widowed between six months and two years. They planned to meet once a month on a Saturday night, emotionally the toughest night of the week, Ms. Aikman says. After their first meeting, the women made plans to try new activities together instead of sitting around talking about loss. 'We needed to change if we wanted to be happy.' Ms. Aikman says.
The women took a cooking class; went on a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that focused on works about recovery and renewal; spent the weekend at a spa; shopped for lingerie; helped one member move into a new home; volunteered at a camp for children who had lost a parent; and invited several widowers over to compare experiences. Their grand finale was a trip to Morocco.
renewal：更新，恢复
Through it all, they talked about how to move forward, to date, to deal with children, to merge families when they remarried. They discussed grief, too, of course -- but only when it came up naturally in conversation.
Ms. Aikman eventually wrote a book about the women and their friendships; 'Saturday Night Widows' came out last year. Ms. Aikman says she has heard from hundreds of people who are relieved to learn their grieving process wasn't strange even though it doesn't fit the stereotype. Many people said they'd been inspired to try something new -- getting a dog, taking a trip, buying a car. One woman went to a jazz club alone, another learned to snowboard. Quite a few decided to form their own support groups.
'If you want to be happy, you have to grow and change,' Ms. Aikman says. 'And pushing yourself into new experiences is the way to do that.'
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