Ring of Grief

The Ring of Grief, also known as the Ring of Kvetching, is a concept developed in the early 2000s by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman. This tool has gained recognition in the world of grief and has been widely discussed and analyzed. While various charts online depict specific individuals categorized within different rings like parents or spouses in the ring outside the griever, I like a more flexible interpretation that acknowledges that not everyone experiencing grief has the same supportive relationships.

The ring or circle of grief serves as a visual representation of support for someone grieving. Depending on what ring you fall in, it is up to you to provide comfort to those in the circles moving toward the center. For example, when I ran FGP and helped families when a child died, I was on the outer ring and it was my job to provide support to anyone in the other rings. The people in those rings should not need to comfort me because I am on the outside ring. One way to look at it is that it is like a target and the center of it is the griever and that it is where we want to aim all of our support.

For me, this is a simple way to look at grief. It is a reminder that the person we call the griever (person experiencing a death, divorce, life-threatening diagnosis, major life change, etc) shouldn’t have to support me during their hard time. They should be the target of the support.

So, if your dog dies, you shouldn’t have to comfort your mom who saw the dog once a year for the last 10 years. It doesn’t mean that your mom can’t grieve the loss, but it does mean you shouldn’t have to support her through it. Instead, she needs to lean on her people in her own rings for support.

Another example is that when I was diagnosed with cancer, I needed my people to support me. If they were upset by this news, they had to lean on their own people in the rings for support, not me. This can be hard sometimes for people especially if the person experiencing the grief is someone you lean on for support. It is important to give the person who is at the center of the target the ability to experience their grief without pressure of “being strong” or supporting you or someone else in the grief rings.