If you were to try and figure out the most popular trope in YA literature, it’s a good guess “falling in love” would be at the top of the list. But, I think there’s a strong probability “grief” would be a very close second because is it really a YA story if the protagonist doesn’t experience some sort of terrible loss?
After all, what is being a young adult and growing up if not grieving the people, places, pets, and other personal items that have played some role in your formative years but won’t be moving into the next phase of your life with you? We’ve all been desperate to escape something familiar, only to realize we might not have appreciated what we had until we left it behind. Sometimes we grieve the unknown…we grieve the things we didn’t try, the chances we didn’t take, the experiences we didn’t have, the relationships we didn’t value or invest in. Other times, we grieve the choices we made, the lies we told, the things we stole, the kisses we gave, and the hearts we hurt. Especially during the turbulent young adult years, there’s no end to the experiences that can provoke profound, gut-wrenching grief.
Grief doesn’t have to look a certain way, and as a society, we’ve started to make some positive gains here. We understand people grieve over different things and that doesn’t make their grief any more or less real. We grieve the loss of people who are still alive but not able to be there for us the way we wish they were (Katniss’s mother at the beginning of The Hunger Games). We grieve the loss of loved ones who died before their time (Rudy in The Book Thief). We grieve the loss of who we were or who we might have been (Caeden in The Licanius Trilogy). Other times, what I see as a loss, you might see as a gain, and what I see as tragic, you might view as a welcome relief. We grieve the loss of our parents; we grieve the cruelty of the parents we’re forced to live with. We grieve the loss of a sibling; we grieve growing up alone. We grieve the end of a relationship, wishing it wasn’t over; we grieve within a relationship, wishing we had a way out. While the feeling of loss is universal, the reason that prompts our grief is highly personal and unique to each individual.
While we’re definitely making progress on allowing people to grieve over whatever upsets them, we still have a long way to go when it comes to how long we think the grieving experience is supposed to last. Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book in 1969, On Death and Dying, and in it she proposed the “Five Stages of Grief”: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This was revolutionary at the time, recognizing that there wasn’t one single response to grief, but it also led people to believe everyone passes through these five stages in a linear, orderly way. We now know that isn’t true, because the truth is far more complicated, and there’s no pre-determined end date to grief:
Expectation: Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance
Reality: Denial Anger Denial Depression Bargaining Acceptance Anger etc.
Prior to becoming an author, I was a pediatric neuropsychologist who worked with children and teens with cancer, specifically brain tumors, and I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about grief. In my personal life, however, I’ve learned something about loss that surprised me: grief is not just a one-time experience. My husband and I use the term “traumaversary” to describe this phenomenon…it’s the anniversary of something terrible, something you’d rather not remember but can’t forget. Sometimes watching a particular date on the calendar creep closer can make you feel like you’re right back in that terrible situation even though months or years have passed. Sometimes you may not consciously realize the importance of a particular date, but you feel it in your body…you feel anxious or frightened or angry without being able to identify why until you stop and think about it for a minute and then go, “Oh…remember this time last year (or five years ago)?” The grief might not come on as strongly as it initially did, or it might come roaring back with a vengeance, but some griefs I’m not sure you ever get over…you simply learn to live with them.
Listen, I’m the queen of happily ever after’s, but that doesn’t mean I want to read (or write) books where nothing bad ever happens. We need books where characters experience loss and have to navigate grief so we can relate to them, so we can live vicariously through them, and so we can heal through or alongside them, learning new, healthy ways to live with the pain or seeing how certain coping mechanisms weren’t effective and actually made things worse. In our moments of deepest despair, stories remind us we’re not alone, and finding comfort in the pages of a book is truly one of the greatest gifts you can receive when it feels like nothing in your life will ever be the same again.