Quotes from David Kessler

Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn't mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.

But like it or not, change happens and, like most things in life, doesn't really happen /to us/ - it just happens.

Maturity is when you accept the fact that two contradictory ideas can exist together.

You don't have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined.

When someone dies, the relationship doesn't die with them.

If I had my life to live over again, I would find you sooner so that I could love you longer.

Your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift, or a blessing. Loss is simply what happens to you in life. Meaning is what you make happen.

Healing doesn't mean the loss didn't happen. It means that it no longer controls us.

The will to save a life is not the power to stop a death.

Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.

Life gives us pain. Our job is to experience it when it gets handed to us. Avoidance of loss has a cost.

A loved one's death is permanent, and that is so heartbreaking. But I believe your loss of hope can be temporary. Until you can find it, I'll hold it for you. I have hope for you. I don't want to invalidate your feelings as they are, but I also don't want to give death any more power than it already has. Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.

wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. Lose your child and you're… nothing. —Tennessee Williams

People often say, "I don't know how you're doing it." I tell them that I'm not. I'm not deciding to wake up in the morning. I just do. Then I put one foot in front of the other because there's nothing else to do. Whether I like it or not, my life is continuing, and I have decided to be part of it.

You have to cry your own tears because no one can do it for you.

While death may look like a loss to the living, the last hours of a dying person may very well be filled with fullness rather than emptiness.

When it comes to food, we are, in essence, following an eating script that has been written into the circuits of our brains.

grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it's true. You don't have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined.

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them? —Rose Kennedy

but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

I guess the real question is, Why not me? Why did I think I was going to get through this life without sorrow, pain, or grief?

Deep inside of us we all know there is someone we were meant to be.

Ultimately, meaning comes through finding a way to sustain your love for the person after their death while you're moving forward with your life. That

Your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift, or a blessing. Loss is simply what happens to you in life. Meaning is what you make happen Only you can find your own meaning Meaningful connections will heal painful memories