Entries from Come Sit a While that draw on the words of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) was born in Zürich, Switzerland, one of triplet daughters weighing barely two pounds each at birth. Her father did not expect her to survive. Perhaps because of that fragile beginning, she developed early a fierce respect for the value and dignity of every human life. As a teenager during World War II, she volunteered in refugee camps across war-torn Europe. She walked among the ruins left behind by the Holocaust and later visited the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, where she saw scratches carved into the barrack walls by prisoners facing death. Some had drawn butterflies — symbols of hope and transformation in the middle of unimaginable suffering. Those images stayed with her for the rest of her life. She eventually attended medical school at the University of Zürich and immigrated to the United States, where she trained as a psychiatrist. At a time when hospitals often treated dying patients as medical failures to be hidden away behind curtains and closed doors, Kübler-Ross insisted that the dying deserved honesty, dignity, compassion, and human presence. She sat beside terminally ill patients when others avoided them. She listened when others rushed. She believed that people approaching death had profound things to teach the living. In 1969 she published On Death and Dying , introducing what became known as the “five stages of grief.” Though often simplified or misunderstood, her real contribution was far deeper than a framework. She helped restore humanity to the care of the dying. She taught physicians and families alike that suffering people do not primarily need explanations. They need love. Presence. Reverence. She spent her life walking willingly into dark rooms most people preferred not to enter — and she discovered there a surprising truth: some souls shine brightest precisely there
Entries featuring Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- The Light Within (2026-05-20)
Drawn from 1 entries · refreshed July 24, 2026