Stoicism does not ask you to suppress grief. It asks you to understand it. Marcus Aurelius lost multiple children and wrote the Meditations while surrounded by death during plague and war. Epictetus, who was born into slavery, taught that accepting impermanence is the foundation of inner freedom. Their writings offer not emotional numbness, but a framework for facing loss honestly.
This page explores Stoic philosophical perspectives on grief and loss. Philosophy can offer meaningful frameworks for processing grief, but it is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling with loss, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) or find grief support through NAMI.
The Misconception
When people say "be Stoic about it," they usually mean: suppress what you feel, keep a stiff upper lip, act as though the loss hasn't touched you. This is not what the ancient Stoics taught, and it is especially misleading when applied to grief.
Marcus Aurelius buried at least five of his children. The Meditations are not the work of a man who felt nothing. They are the private journal of someone who felt deeply and used philosophy to keep grief from destroying him. When he writes about impermanence, he is not performing detachment. He is working through the hardest thing a parent can face. Epictetus, who lived through slavery, exile, and the loss of his own school, acknowledged grief as a natural response. What he cautioned against was not feeling sad, but letting grief harden into a permanent judgment that the universe owes you something it never promised. The Stoic distinction is not between feeling and not feeling. It is between grief that you process and grief that processes you.
What the Stoics Said
In the case of particular things that delight you, or benefit you, or to which you have grown attached, remind yourself of what they are. Start with things of little value. If it is china you like, for instance, say, ‘I am fond of a piece of china.’ When it breaks, then you won’t be as disconcerted. When giving your wife or child a kiss, repeat to yourself, ‘I am kissing a mortal.’ Then you won’t be so distraught if they are taken from you.
Enchiridion 3.1
This is one of the most challenging passages in all of Stoic philosophy. Epictetus is not saying don’t love your child. He is saying love them with full awareness that they are mortal. The instruction to remind yourself “I am kissing a mortal” is a practice in honesty: if you love someone while pretending they will live forever, the loss hits as a betrayal. If you love them knowing they are finite, the loss still hurts — but it does not feel like a broken promise.
We can familiarize ourselves with the will of nature by calling to mind our common experiences. When a friend breaks a glass, we are quick to say, ‘Oh, bad luck.’ It’s only reasonable, then, that when a glass of your own breaks, you accept it in the same patient spirit. Moving on to graver things: when somebody’s wife or child dies, to a man we all routinely say, ‘Well, that’s part of life.’ But if one of our own family is involved, then right away it’s ‘Poor, poor me!’ We would do better to remember how we react when a similar loss afflicts others.
Enchiridion 26.1
Epictetus is pointing out an inconsistency in how we process grief. When loss happens to someone else, we accept it as part of life. When it happens to us, we act as though the rules have been violated. He is not being dismissive. He is asking you to extend to yourself the same rational perspective you already offer others — not to feel less, but to avoid the additional suffering that comes from believing your loss is somehow uniquely unfair.
Whenever you see someone in tears, distraught because they are parted from a child, or have met with some material loss, be careful lest the impression move you to believe that their circumstances are truly bad. Have ready the reflection that they are not upset by what happened – because other people are not upset when the same thing happens to them – but by their own view of the matter. Nevertheless, you should not disdain to sympathize with them, at least with comforting words, or even to the extent of sharing outwardly in their grief. But do not commiserate with your whole heart and soul.
Enchiridion 16.1
This passage is easily misread as emotional coldness, but Epictetus is making a subtle and important distinction. He says to sympathize, to offer comforting words, even to share outwardly in someone’s grief. What he warns against is commiserating “with your whole heart and soul” — meaning, absorbing another person’s pain so completely that you lose your own stability. This is not detachment. It is the difference between sitting with someone in their grief and drowning alongside them.
Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different.
So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment.
Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things you’ll leave behind you, and the kind of people you’ll no longer be mixed up with. There’s no need to feel resentment toward them—in fact, you should look out for their well-being, and be gentle with them—but keep in mind that everything you believe is meaningless to those you leave behind. Because that’s all that could restrain us (if anything could)—the only thing that could make us want to stay here: the chance to live with those who share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is—this cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death, “Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like them.”
Meditations 9.3
Marcus Aurelius is working through his relationship with death itself. He lists it among the natural stages of life — teeth, a beard, gray hair, childbirth — and asks why we treat this particular change as uniquely terrible. The passage grows more complicated toward the end, where he acknowledges the weariness of living among people who don’t share his values. This is not an argument against life but a reminder that death, like everything else, is part of the process.
Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity.
We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold?
Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it’s gone.
And life itself: like the decoction of blood, the drawing in of air. We expel the power of breathing we drew in at birth (just yesterday or the day before), breathing it out like the air we exhale at each moment.
Meditations 6.15
Marcus captures the experience of impermanence as something felt, not just understood. Everything is rushing into or out of existence. We live in a river with nothing to hold onto. The image of the sparrow — glimpsed and gone — is his way of describing how quickly the people and things we attach ourselves to can vanish. This is not resignation. It is an invitation to hold what you have with open hands.
If you’ve immersed yourself in the principles of truth, the briefest, most random reminder is enough to dispel all fear and pain:
… leaves that the wind
Drives earthward; such are the generations of men.
Your children, leaves.
Leaves applauding loyally and heaping praise upon you, or turning around and calling down curses, sneering and mocking from a safe distance.
A glorious reputation handed down by leaves.
All of these “spring up in springtime”—and the wind blows them all away. And the tree puts forth others to replace them.
None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal—the way you fear and long for them….
Before long, darkness. And whoever buries you mourned in their turn.
Meditations 10.34
Marcus is quoting Homer here — “leaves that the wind drives earthward” — and applying the image to human generations. Your children are leaves. The people who praise you are leaves. Everyone who mourns you will themselves be mourned. The passage ends with a stark reminder: “before long, darkness.” This is not nihilism. It is Marcus using mortality to cut through the noise and focus on what actually matters in the time remaining.
What is it you want? To keep on breathing? What about feeling? desiring? growing? ceasing to grow? using your voice? thinking? Which of them seems worth having?
But if you can do without them all, then continue to follow the logos, and God. To the end. To prize those other things—to grieve because death deprives us of them—is an obstacle.
Meditations 12.31
When we cease from activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion, it’s a kind of death. And it doesn’t harm us. Think about your life: childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every transformation a kind of dying. Was that so terrible?
Think about life with your grandfather, your mother, your adopted father. Realize how many other deaths and transformations and endings there have been and ask yourself: Was that so terrible?
Then neither will the close of your life be—its ending and transformation.
Meditations 9.21
Something similar happened to me the other day. I keep an iron lamp by my household shrine. Hearing a noise from my window, I ran down and found the lamp had been lifted. I reasoned that the thief who took it must have felt an impulse he couldn’t resist. So I said to myself, ‘Tomorrow you’ll get a cheaper, less attractive one made of clay.’ [16] A man only loses what he has. ‘I lost clothes.’ Yes, because you had clothes. ‘I have a pain in the head.’ Well, at least you don’t have a pain in the horns, right? Loss and sorrow are only possible with respect to things we own.
Discourses 1.18.15
Human life.
Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
Then what can guide us?
Only philosophy.
Which means making sure that the power within stays safe and free from assault, superior to pleasure and pain, doing nothing randomly or dishonestly and with imposture, not dependent on anyone else’s doing something or not doing it. And making sure that it accepts what happens and what it is dealt as coming from the same place it came from. And above all, that it accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed. If it doesn’t hurt the individual elements to change continually into one another, why are people afraid of all of them changing and separating? It’s a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil.
Meditations 2.17
To begin with, then, you must purify your intellect by training your thoughts: [20] ‘My mind represents for me my medium – like wood to a carpenter, or leather to a shoemaker. The goal in my case is the correct use of impressions. [21] The body is irrelevant to me, as are its members. Death, too, whether of the whole body or a part, can come when it likes. [22] And exile? Where can they send me? Nowhere outside the world, since wherever I end up, the sun will be there, as will the moon and stars. There will still be dreams, birds of augury, and other means of staying in touch with the gods.’
Discourses 3.22.19
When a slave runs away from his master, we call him a fugitive slave. But the law of nature is a master too, and to break it is to become a fugitive.
To feel grief, anger or fear is to try to escape from something decreed by the ruler of all things, now or in the past or in the future. And that ruler is law, which governs what happens to each of us. To feel grief or anger or fear is to become a fugitive—a fugitive from justice.
Meditations 10.25
Putting It Together
These passages reveal two distinct but complementary approaches to grief. Marcus Aurelius works through loss by placing it in the largest possible frame. Everything changes. The river moves. Leaves fall and are replaced. Your children, your reputation, your body, even your grief itself — all of it is temporary. This is not meant to minimize the pain. It is meant to place it within the natural order, to show that loss is not a violation of how things should be but an expression of how things are.
Epictetus takes a different and more challenging approach. His teaching that you should remind yourself "I am kissing a mortal" while embracing your child sounds cold on first reading. But read it again. He is not saying don't love. He is saying love clearly, with your eyes open. Know that what you have is borrowed, not owned. This awareness doesn't diminish love; it makes it more honest. When you know that a moment with someone you love is finite, you are more likely to be fully present in it, not less.
Where the two approaches converge is on the question of what grief should become. Neither Marcus nor Epictetus suggests you should skip the pain. But both insist that grief should not become a permanent residence. Marcus puts it practically: "before long, darkness" — your own life is also brief, so don't spend it trapped in mourning for what has already gone. Epictetus asks you to apply the same standard to your own losses that you naturally apply to other people's: when a friend's relative dies, you say "that's part of life." He is not being callous. He is pointing out that you already have the framework for understanding loss. You just forget it when the loss is your own.
The most subtle passage here is Enchiridion 16. Epictetus tells you to sympathize with someone who is grieving, even to share outwardly in their grief. But he adds: "do not commiserate with your whole heart and soul." This is easy to misread as emotional withholding. What he actually means is closer to a boundary: you can be fully present with someone in pain without absorbing their pain as your own. A counsellor who breaks down alongside every client cannot help anyone. Epictetus is teaching emotional presence without emotional collapse.
None of this makes grief easy. What it offers is a path through it: feel what you feel, examine the judgments underneath, remember that impermanence is the condition of everything you love, and eventually — when you are ready — return your attention to living in a way that honours what you lost.
When to Seek Professional Help
Grief that persists without relief, that makes it impossible to function, or that feels fundamentally different from anything you have experienced before may be complicated grief or depression. Philosophy is not a substitute for professional care. If you are struggling, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988), or visit NAMI to find support near you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Stoicism help with grief?
It depends on what you mean by help. Stoicism will not make grief disappear, and anyone who tells you it will is misrepresenting the tradition. What it offers is a framework for understanding why loss hurts the way it does and for moving through the pain without being permanently trapped by it. The core Stoic insight about grief is that much of our suffering comes not from the loss itself but from the judgment we layer on top of it: that it shouldn’t have happened, that it’s unfair, that we can’t go on. Examining those judgments doesn’t erase the pain, but it can prevent the pain from becoming something even worse.
Do Stoics mourn?
Yes. The idea that Stoics don’t mourn comes from a misunderstanding of the word itself. The ancient Stoics drew a clear line between natural emotion and destructive passion. Grief at losing someone you love is natural. What they cautioned against is the additional layer of suffering we create by insisting that the universe should have been different. You can mourn someone deeply and still accept that they were mortal — in fact, the Stoics would say that accepting their mortality is what makes your grief honest rather than self-deceptive.
What did Marcus Aurelius say about grief?
Marcus Aurelius never wrote a treatise on grief. What he did was return, again and again, to the fact of impermanence. Everything changes. Generations rise and are forgotten. The people who mourn you will themselves be mourned. He compares human life to leaves blown by the wind, to sparrows glimpsed and gone. His approach to grief is embedded in this larger worldview: loss is not an exception to the natural order. It is the natural order. Accepting this does not mean the pain goes away. It means the pain no longer carries the additional weight of feeling like a cosmic injustice.
What did Epictetus say about grief?
Epictetus is more direct than Marcus Aurelius, and at first reading he can seem harsh. He tells you to remind yourself, while kissing your child, that you are kissing a mortal. He says that when someone dies, you should remember that they were “borrowed, not owned.” But beneath the directness is a compassionate logic: if you love someone while pretending they will live forever, you are setting yourself up for a crisis when reality arrives. His instruction is not to love less, but to love more honestly.
How do Stoics deal with the death of a loved one?
There is no single Stoic protocol for bereavement. What the tradition offers instead is a set of principles that different people have applied in different ways. Some find it helpful to practice premeditatio malorum — briefly contemplating that the people you love will die, so that you cherish them more fully now. Others find comfort in the Stoic reframing of death as change rather than annihilation. What nearly all Stoic writers agree on is that the goal is not to stop grieving but to eventually return to living well — to honour the dead by how you continue, not by how long you remain broken.
Is it unhealthy to be Stoic about grief?
This is the most important question on this page, because the answer depends entirely on what you mean by “Stoic.” If you mean suppressing your emotions, performing toughness, refusing to cry or talk about your loss — then yes, that is unhealthy, and it is also not Stoicism. The ancient Stoics explicitly rejected the idea that wisdom means feeling nothing. What they taught is something more nuanced: feel your grief fully, but examine the stories you are telling yourself about it. Is the grief itself destroying you, or is it the belief that you should not have to experience this? That distinction matters. Grief is a natural response to loss. The judgment that loss should not exist is an added burden that the Stoics would encourage you to set down — not immediately, not forcefully, but eventually, when you are ready. If you find that you cannot set it down, if grief has become a permanent state that prevents you from functioning, that is not a failure of willpower. It is a sign that you may need professional support, and seeking it is entirely consistent with the Stoic commitment to acting wisely.
Curated by Stoic Sage. Passages from Gregory Hays’s translation of the Meditations and Robert Dobbin’s translations of Epictetus. AI-assisted explanations reviewed for accuracy.