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.
What the Stoics Said
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
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
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
It doesn’t matter how good a life you’ve led. There’ll still be people standing around the bed who will welcome the sad event.
Even with the intelligent and good. Won’t there be someone thinking “Finally! To be through with that old schoolteacher. Even though he never said anything, you could always feel him judging you.” And that’s for a good man. How many traits do you have that would make a lot of people glad to be rid of you?
Remember that, when the time comes. You’ll be less reluctant to leave if you can tell yourself, “This is the sort of life I’m leaving. Even the people around me, the ones I spent so much time fighting for, praying over, caring about—even they want me gone, in hopes that it will make their own lives easier. How could anyone stand a longer stay here?”
And yet, don’t leave angry with them. Be true to who you are: caring, sympathetic, kind. And not as if you were being torn away from life. But the way it is when someone dies peacefully, how the soul is released from the body—that’s how you should leave them. It was nature that bound you to them—that tied the knot. And nature that now unties you.
I am released from those around me. Not dragged against my will, but unresisting.
There are things that nature demands. And this is one of them.
Meditations 10.36
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
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
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
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
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Stoicism help with grief?
Yes, but not in the way people often assume. Stoicism does not ask you to suppress grief or pretend loss does not hurt. It offers a framework for processing it. Marcus Aurelius, who buried multiple children, reminds himself throughout the Meditations that all things are impermanent and that loss is a form of change — the same change that governs all of nature. Epictetus teaches that while we cannot control what happens, we can choose not to let grief consume us entirely. The Stoic approach is to grieve honestly while remembering that the person you lost would not want you to destroy yourself in mourning.
Do Stoics mourn?
Absolutely. The Stoics never taught emotional suppression. Marcus Aurelius grieved openly for the people he lost, and his Meditations are full of reflections on death and impermanence. Epictetus draws a distinction between natural grief — which is a healthy response to loss — and excessive grief, which becomes a judgment that the universe should have been different. The Stoic mourns, but returns to the insight that the loved one was borrowed, not owned, and that gratitude for what was shared is more fitting than despair over what ended.
What did Marcus Aurelius say about grief?
Marcus Aurelius returns to themes of loss and death throughout the Meditations. He reminds himself that everything is transient — people, reputations, empires. He reflects on the generations who lived before him, all now forgotten, as a way to put his own grief in perspective. Rather than seeing death as tragic, he frames it as natural, part of the same process that brought the person into existence. His approach is not cold but realistic: accept the loss, honor what was, and return your attention to living well in the present.
What did Epictetus say about grief?
Epictetus addresses grief with his characteristic directness. In the Enchiridion, he teaches that when we lose someone, we should remind ourselves that they were mortal — that we knew this all along. He uses the metaphor of returning something borrowed: we never truly owned the people we love, and their departure is a return to nature. In the Discourses, he acknowledges that grief is natural but warns against turning it into a story about how life is unfair. The goal is not to feel nothing, but to grieve without being destroyed.
How do Stoics deal with the death of a loved one?
Stoics prepare for loss through a practice called negative visualization (premeditatio malorum): briefly contemplating that the people you love will one day die, so that you cherish them more fully now and are not completely blindsided when it happens. When loss does come, they grieve — but they also practice reframing. Marcus Aurelius reminds himself that death is not evil, merely change. Epictetus suggests focusing on gratitude for the time shared rather than resentment for the time lost. Both emphasize returning to your duties and living in a way that honors the dead.
Is it unhealthy to be Stoic about grief?
Only if you mistake Stoicism for emotional suppression. The ancient Stoics never advocated for bottling up feelings. They taught the opposite: examine your grief, understand it, and then choose how to respond. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations are deeply personal and emotional. Epictetus acknowledges the pain of loss explicitly. What Stoicism warns against is not grief itself, but allowing grief to become a permanent state that prevents you from living. The Stoic approach is to feel fully, then find your footing again.