Quotes from Kerry Egan

When someone tells you the story of their suffering, they are probably still suffering in some way. No one else gets to decide what that suffering means, or if it has any meaning at all. And we sure as hell don't get to tell someone that God never gives anybody more than they can handle or that God has a plan. We do not get to cut off someone's suffering at the pass by telling them it has some greater purpose.

I think it's because it's startling every time - every single time - that such beauty and such loss coincide in every life, in every soul, in every memory.

We shower so much love on babies and children,"she said. "But as we grow up, it stops. No one showers love on grown-ups. But I think we need more love as we get older, not less. Life gets harder, not easier, but we stop loving each other so much, just when we need love most.

You have to live in the grey, or you have no kindness in your heart.

When your ability to determine what is real is taken away by a drug, it's terrifying. But it's far worse when it's denied to you by other people.

But maybe, in seeing that other people have done it, you'll find your own way to let your life be kind to you.

people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence. We

Perhaps the death knell of love is not anger or even indifference; it's losing the desire to know more about your partner.

Become who you want to be while you can enjoy it. Don't put off doing the work of becoming who you want to be. Waiting will not make it easier, and time is short.

We shower so much love on babies and children," she said. "But as we grow up, it stops. No one showers love on grown-ups. But I think we need more love as we get older, not less. Life gets harder, not easier, but we stop loving each other so much, just when we need love most. I—" Her voice caught in her throat, but she took a big breath and kept going. "I need more love now that I'm so old. I need love.

If you think it'd not work to stay steady, to remain present, to not pull back in the face of terrible suffering, then you have never been in the face of terrible suffering. It's something I've failed at. I try not to flinch, I try not to be overwhelmed, I try not to run away. But I have.

We listen to the stories that people believe have shaped their lives. We listen to the stories people choose to tell, and the meaning they make of those stories.

It's discovered through these acts of love. If God is love, and I believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love. The first, and usually the last, classroom of love is the family. The

When people tell their stories again and again, turning them over and over, they're trying to make or find meaning in them. That meaning is something they have to discover for themselves. As painful as the process might be, there is no circumnavigating it, either with the most thoughtful ideas you can offer or with the most hackneyed clichés. The meaning a person finds will almost never be the same one you can come up with. It will always be richer, more nuanced, more surprising.

God never calls you to do something without also giving you the ability to complete it.

Because that's what secrets are about—shame. Shame, along with the belief that keeping a secret will protect you or someone else, comes from the idea that there is some part of us so monstrous, so terrible, so inhuman, that it must not be known.

Kindness is not the same as niceness or putting our heads in the sand, or avoiding conflict. It is acknowledging that no life is as it seems on the surface. It is understanding that we never know all the layers in a life and choosing to speak and act from that difficult gray place in all of us.

I say don't find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that's what keeps you striving & discovering, and it forces you to remain humble in your judgments & accepting of the differences in others.

Kindness is not the same as niceness, or putting our heads in the sand, or avoiding conflict. It is acknowledging that no life is as it seems on the surface. It is understanding that we never know all the layers in a life, and choosing to speak and act from that difficult gray place in all of us." ? Kerry Egan, On Living

For a long time, I thought my own life experiences marked me as strange and cursed. But after hearing so many stories, I came to realize that I was like everyone else, and that while my experiences might be unique to me, the pain was quite ordinary, and I was not alone in it. That was more healing than anything else.

I've learned over the years that these heavy, painful, anguish-filled moments...these moments when I so badly want to say something to break the tension, are exactly the moments I need to stay silent. They are the moments I need to hold still, and hold that sacred space open. Because when I can hold still and hold on in that place, no matter how hard it is for both of us, something can happen.

You learn working in hospice that a person can, in fact, live too long.

Promise yourself," she said that last time we met, "promise that you'll have a great life, no matter what happens.

There's always a solution, I see that now," she said. "I just didn't understand it at first. It's not the solution I wanted. But there's always a solution. It's just not the one I assumed it would be.