That I was only beginning the process of mourning did not occur to me. Until now, I had only been able to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.

After Quintana’s transfer from UCLA to the Rusk Institute in chapter 12, Didion ends her period of constant crisis management and takes stock of her own process of recovery. She makes a distinction between the passive experience of grief and the active process of mourning. Grief happens naturally, and it can continue indefinitely if the grieving person doesn’t actively engage with the trauma that set off the grieving process. Mourning is an active state. It requires attention and focus to critically examine one’s emotions, take small steps toward rebuilding a daily routine, and start engaging with the outside world.

Up until this point in the book, Didion has been engaging in a grief process. Her emotions had been unpredictable and her reactions irrational, and she was vacillating between heightened vulnerability and sedated detachment. Even as she attempted to take control of the situation and get a handle on things by studying determinedly, she had remained prey to her wildly swinging emotions. Because she had been in a constant state of crisis management, she had been unable to step back to evaluate her feelings and figure out concrete ways to move forward with her life. In signaling her switch from the grief process to the mourning process, Didion takes the steps of self-evaluation that will help rebuild her life, now that her circumstances have changed so completely.