Grief (novel)
During the course of the novel, the ideas of the stages of grief are introduced. The stages are denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. The narrator, as well as other characters in the story, slowly passes through these stages in trying to deal with death.
Christina Rasmussen
Rasmussen's model of grief operates on the assumption of psychological resilience, echoing the theories introduced by George Bonanno, a professor of clinical psychology at the Teachers College of Columbia University. Her theories conflict with popularized concepts of grief stemming from the 1917 and 1969 publications of "Mourning and Melancholia" and "On Death and Dying" by Sigmund Freud and Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, respectively. The defining characteristic of the model proposed by "Second Firsts" is the view of loss as a catalyst for change and self-growth.