Students bring their pain to class and leave feeling lighter

Grief is universal, yet talking about it can be taboo. 

According to Cynthia Meyersburg, who this fall is teaching a popular Harvard Extension School course on the topic for the sixth time since 2022, people often suppress grief out of fear of upsetting others or because they don’t know how to cope. 

“Our culture is not used to talking about grief or dealing with it,” said Meyersburg. “Having a place where it is OK to talk about it and not feel alone with it can be beneficial to people.”

That’s why Meyersburg does more than introduce students to leading theories of grief and the latest scientific research. She equips them with resources to deal with loss. Among those who take the class are clinicians, clergy, teachers, therapists — but also students experiencing heartache themselves.

This doesn’t surprise Meyersburg, who supplies some stats for context. “Two people die every second. In 2025, 63 million people died. If you multiply that number by five or 10 people grieving for those deaths, it’s an enormous number of people who are mourning.”

Even with a conservative estimate of six loved ones per person, worldwide, 378 million people are currently in their first year of mourning a close loved one, said Meyersburg: “To put that in perspective, that is a number of people greater than the entire population of the United States.”

She added that grief has been part of the human experience since time immemorial. “At our earliest origins we clearly had attachment and grief,” she said, citing evidence the Neanderthals appeared to have buried their dead.

And grief doesn’t only surface after the death of a loved one, Meyersburg said. It can manifest after losing a job or a home, or experiencing divorce, infertility, or anything that disrupts one’s sense of normalcy.

“We also grieve hopes and dreams we had about our lives when they don’t turn out the way we wanted,” she said.

Sophie Nord, A.L.M. ’25, took the class after losing her parents and two other close relatives. Now she wants to be a grief counselor.

“I had been through some heavy grieving in my life, a string of sadness,” said Nord. “The course helped me learn to deal with my own grief better, and it also made me feel less alone, knowing that it has been studied, and that there are many ways to make it through a difficult situation.”  

For a class assignment, Nord wrote a 101-page guide on how to heal from loss and grief that she hopes to publish soon. 

“I learned that grief comes in many forms,” she said. “Knowing how broad and deep the grief pool is has helped me recognize grief in others, even if it’s outside the traditionally accepted definition of the word.”

Kimia Grigoriev ’23, A.L.M. ’23 had lost her husband and her home in a short period of time, and her sadness lasted for years. In class, she learned about complicated grief, also known as prolonged grief, a concept she hadn’t heard before. 

“The class was difficult, but after I got through it, I felt so much lighter,” said Grigoriev, who went on to pursue doctoral studies in psychology focused on trauma and grief. 

Martie Agravante ’27 enrolled in the course to meet a requirement for her bachelor’s degree from the Extension School, but also to learn how to cope with her grandmother’s death and the distress of her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis. 

“The class helped me grieve in a really healthy way,” said Agravante, a psychology concentrator. “I really think everyone should take this class because grief is something we all have to go through and experience in one way or another.”  

The class departs from tradition by not having a final exam. Instead, students create a personal grief portfolio with practical resources they can use when they need them. 

“I try to have my students walk away with things that are useful for them,” Meyersburg said. “Some come with a heavy load of pain and others with a light load, but they all have a better understanding of grief when they finish the class. I don’t ask them to take a final exam. No one should have to take an exam on how they’re dealing with grief.”