Heartache: Navigating grief on campus

Many students who suffer a loss in their personal lives often grapple with grief.

According to a study by Cristina Bistricean and Munyi Shea, they discovered that about 37% to 44% of college students experience loss during their first and second year.

During our nation’s loss of our president, the late Hage G. Geingob, it is vital to remind us that, as youth, we are allowed to feel grief.



How do we move on from it?

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist and pioneer in near-death studies who wrote the 1969 book 'On Death and Dying'. She proposed that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Many studies have found that these stages can be true but do not necessarily follow a pattern as Kubler-Ross described and that they are indeed different for everyone.



A student perspective

Nathan Nyatondo is a pharmacy student at the University of Namibia’s School of Medicine. He gave some tips on how to process grief in these trying times.

“I think it is important to let it wash over you. It is a natural process in life where you have lost somebody significant,” said Nyatondo.

He said if there was a clear answer to grief, it would be bottled and sold almost as if it were an antidote.

He believes that the lessons and memories that we have are what live on. Even though the person is not here anymore, even though we cannot see them physically, we can always hold on to what they have taught us and the times that we have shared with them.

“But just understanding that they are in pain [even if] not understanding exactly what they are feeling goes a long way,” said Nyatondo.