Elisabeth’s wheelchair photographed shortly after she passed; photo by her son, Ken Ross.
Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: A Legacy of Compassion, Courage, and Transformation
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was born on July 8, 1926, in Zurich, Switzerland, the youngest of triplet sisters. Even as a child, Elisabeth was fiercely independent and drawn to helping others, an inclination that ran counter to her father’s expectations that she pursue a more traditional, domestic path. But her deep sense of purpose and empathy for the suffering led her to defy convention and enroll in medical school at the University of Zurich—where she also met her future husband, American medical student Emanuel “Manny” Robert Ross.
Her calling became clearer in the wake of World War II. In 1945, at just 19 years old, Kübler-Ross volunteered with the International Voluntary Service for Peace, helping rebuild devastated communities across Eastern Europe. One experience would change her forever: visiting the Maidanek concentration camp in Poland. There, she saw butterflies etched into the walls of the children’s barracks—final testaments of beauty and hope amid unimaginable horror. That moment ignited her lifelong belief that death is not to be feared, but understood as a profound, even beautiful, transformation. The butterfly would become her enduring symbol of change, transcendence, and the human spirit.
After completing her medical degree in Zurich in 1957, she immigrated to the United States in 1958, working in hospitals in New York, Colorado, and ultimately Chicago. It was there, in the impersonal corridors of American hospitals, that she witnessed firsthand how terminally ill patients were often abandoned—not just physically, but emotionally. Doctors avoided them. Nurses distanced themselves. Family members were unsure how to talk about death. “Nobody was honest with them,” she would later say, “so I made it my mission to listen.” That simple yet radical idea—to give dying patients dignity, voice, and presence—became the foundation of her life’s work.
In 1969, Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, a landmark book that introduced the now-iconic “Five Stages of Grief”: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The book emerged from a series of interviews she conducted with dying patients, an approach unheard of at the time. Her insistence that the dying had wisdom to share—and deserved to be heard—challenged the medical status quo. Though controversial, her ideas resonated deeply with both the public and health professionals, leading to widespread acclaim and global attention. Life magazine featured her work, and On Death and Dying became a bestseller and a cornerstone of hospice care and grief counseling curricula around the world.
Her growing influence was impossible to ignore. In 1972, just three years after the publication of her book, Dr. Kübler-Ross was invited to testify before the United States Congress about the state of the nation’s death care system. Her invitation marked a rare and extraordinary recognition—especially for a foreign-born physician and a woman in a male-dominated medical field. In her testimony, she spoke passionately about the need for honesty, empathy, and dignity in the treatment of dying patients, calling attention to the systemic neglect and emotional isolation they often endured. Her voice helped catalyze policy discussions and further opened the door for the hospice and palliative care movements in America.
Throughout the 1970s, Kübler-Ross became a global phenomenon. She lectured to packed auditoriums of thousands each week, delivering powerful, heart-centered talks that merged medical insight with spiritual wisdom. She shared the stage with influential contemporaries such as Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher and author of Be Here Now, and grief expert Dr. William Worden. These public dialogues expanded the conversation about mortality, consciousness, and the soul, helping to shift society’s perception of death from a clinical event to a deeply personal and spiritual journey.
Her influence was instrumental in the rise of the modern hospice movement in the United States and abroad. One of her most significant collaborations was with Dr. Balfour Mount, a Canadian physician who is widely recognized as the father of palliative care in North America. Inspired by her work, Dr. Mount invited Kübler-Ross to lecture at McGill University in Montreal, where her teachings profoundly shaped the creation of Canada’s first hospital-based palliative care unit. Together, they helped advance a more holistic model of end-of-life care—one that addressed not only physical pain but also the emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs of patients.
She was also an early and bold advocate of pediatric hospice care—a concept that was considered both controversial and emotionally taboo at the time. Believing deeply that children deserved the same compassion, honesty, and dignity as adults, she became a guiding light for the cause. She made the first donation to Children’s Hospice International (CHI), founded by Ann Armstrong-Dailey, helping to bring visibility and momentum to the movement for compassionate pediatric end-of-life care.
Always thinking of the most overlooked, Kübler-Ross also initiated the concept of prison hospice in the mid-1980s. In 1984, she began working with incarcerated populations in Vacaville, California, and later in prisons in Ireland and Scotland. Her work in these facilities laid the foundation for what would become a major shift in how dying inmates are treated—emphasizing their right to dignity, presence, and humane care, even while incarcerated.
Never content to rest on past achievements, she continued to explore the boundaries of life and death. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she founded the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Center and Shanti Nilaya (Sanskrit for “home of peace”) in California—a healing retreat and teaching center where she led workshops on grief, spirituality, and the afterlife. In 1985, she relocated to a 300-acre farm in Head Waters, Virginia, which she named Healing Waters. There, she dreamed of building a haven for society’s most vulnerable—children born with AIDS who had been abandoned by their families.
But in 1995, her efforts to create an AIDS hospice for babies met fierce resistance from the local community. Fear, misinformation, and stigma surrounded the AIDS crisis at the time, and opposition escalated into tragedy when her Virginia home was burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances. The arson attack devastated her emotionally and physically. Although she continued her work for a time, the fire marked a turning point, and shortly thereafter she suffered the first in a series of strokes that would leave her partially paralyzed.
She eventually retired to Scottsdale, Arizona, to be near her son, Kenneth. Yet even in her physical decline, her spiritual light remained undimmed. Friends, admirers, and public figures—among them Muhammad Ali, Oprah Winfrey, Susan Sarandon, and Shirley MacLaine—visited her to pay tribute and express gratitude. Despite being confined to a wheelchair, she continued to teach, write, and mentor others.
Her body of work includes over 20 books, translated into 44 languages, and touching millions of lives. Titles such as Questions and Answers on Death and Dying, The Wheel of Life, and Life Lessons (co-written with David Kessler) continue to offer comfort and wisdom. She received more than 20 honorary doctorates, was a founding member of the American Holistic Medical Association, and co-founded the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement.
In 1999, Time magazine honored her as one of the “100 Most Important Thinkers of the 20th Century,” a testament to the profound impact of her vision. Dr. Kübler-Ross passed away on August 24, 2004, at the age of 78—but her legacy only continues to grow.
Since her passing, the Kübler-Ross model has spread far beyond medicine into mainstream culture and global industry. The “Five Stages of Grief” have been referenced in everything from television and literature to visual art and, increasingly, music. In 2024 alone, over 30 bands and recording artists released albums or EPs named after the five stages, reflecting a renewed fascination with the emotional landscapes she first charted. Meanwhile, in the business world, the Kübler-Ross Change Curve—an adaptation of her grief model—is now a foundational tool used by hundreds of the world’s largest corporations for change management, employee training, and organizational development.
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross taught the world that death is not the enemy—it is a teacher. Her courage, empathy, and unyielding curiosity opened the door to a more humane and spiritually rich understanding of life’s final chapter. Today, her butterfly remains a universal symbol of transformation, reminding us that in death, as in life, there is beauty, meaning, and hope.