Quotes About Grief

Grief is paradoxical: you know you must let go, and yet letting go cannot happen all at once. The literature of mourning enacts that dilemma; its solace lies in the ritual of remembering the dead and then saying, There is no solace, and also, This has been going on a long time.

When we are learning the world, we know things we cannot say how we know. When we are relearning the world in the aftermath of a loss, we feel things we had almost forgotten, old things, beneath the seat of reason.

She said that her father's death had been the hardest thing in her life. We are all children until our fathers die.

I never expected anyone in my family to change, and especially not my father, who changed first and most profoundly: He died.

He squeezed her hand one last time. Then Jack was gone and she was alone.

I went to your funeral, Annie. She hardened herself against the thickness in his voice, and reached for the door handle. Was it nice? He slid in front of her, his back against the door. His hard smile was at her eye level. I don't know. I only got through it with the help of a fifth, so I was too drunk to see much of anything.

I couldn't find anyone to tell me each minute, whatever I experience is a valid, beautiful moment—however tragic it is. That's what I needed to hear: Grief is a sacred time in our lives, and an important one. What

The second thing that helped was stories—hearing honest accounts about how people felt, what they went through, and what helped them, not contrived stories saying how they thought they were supposed to feel and what they thought they should do. I promised myself then that if I ever came out the other end of this tunnel, I'd write a book about grief that I wouldn't have tossed across the room.

1. Finish business from our childhoods, as best as we can. Grieve. Get some perspective. Figure out how events from our childhoods are affecting what we're doing now.

Don't complicate grief. It's not abnormal. There isn't a right way to grieve. Becoming aware of a feeling neutralizes that emotion. That feeling disappears and another one takes its place.

Stop looking for Big. The magic happens when you stay small. Ninety-five dollars bought more than the secret to grief. It paid for the secret to life. Whatever we don't have isn't the missing piece. The moments we live for their own sake turn to moments of joy. Something way more profound and lasting than happiness is peace.

Healthy are those who mourn," writes Donald L. Anderson, a minister and psychologist, in Better Than Blessed. "Only very recently have we begun to realize that to deny grief is to deny a natural human function and that such denial sometimes produces dire consequences," he continues.

Trust ourselves and the grief process. We won't stay angry forever. But we may need to get mad for a while as we search over what could have been, to finally accept what is. God, help me learn to accept my own and others' anger as a normal part of achieving acceptance and peace. Within that framework, help me strive for personal accountability.

Van, Van, we're only simple, fallible mortals - we aren't saints, we aren't angels - we fall on our faces and make errors and sometimes people die of them - sometimes people we love dearly -

When you mourn for too long, you start to forget how to feel joy.

But Fuchsia might as well have been carved from dark marble. Only her tears moved.

Alone. The saddest word in the world.

To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.

My grief was a heavy, despairing sadness caused by parting from a companion of many years but, more important, it was a despair rooted in the fear that love did not exist, could not be found. And even if it were lurking somewhere, I might never know it in my lifetime. It had become hard for me to continue to believe in love's promise when everywhere I turned the enchantment of power of the terror of fear overshadowed the will to love.

Boys learn to cover up grief with anger; the more troubled the boy, the more intense the mask of indifference. Shutting down emotionally is the best defense when the longing for connection must be denied.

Through the practice of compassion and forgiveness, I was able to sustain my appreciation for her work and cope with the grief and disappointment I felt about the loss of this relationship. Practicing compassion enabled me to understand why she might have acted as she did and to forgive her. Forgiving means that I am able to see her as a member of my community still, one who has a place in my heart should she wish to claim it.

It is far too easy to stay stuck in simply describing, telling one's story over and over again, which can be a way of holding on to grief about the past or holding on to a narrative that places blame on others.

The unhappiness of men in relationships, the grief men feel about the failure of love, often goes unnoticed in our society precisely because the patriarchal culture really does not care if men are unhappy.

My grief was a heavy, despairing sadness caused by parting from a companion of many years but, more important, it was a despair rooted in the fear that love did not exist, could not be found. And even if it were lurking somewhere, I might never know it in my lifetime.