Quotes About Support

what good people can do in the face of great sorrow. We help some time pass for those suffering. We sit with them in their hopeless pain and feel terrible with them, without trying to fix them with platitudes; doing this with them is just about the most gracious gift we have to offer. We give up what we think we should be doing, or think we need to get done, to keep them company.

He's your friend that you get to sleep with and wake up with. That's what married life is at its most basic. A friend, your teammate, a person you trust and look forward to talking to, about anything. Someone who seems to really, really like you, who you like too.

The harm is in the unwanted help or helping them when they need to figure things out for themselves. Help is the sunny side of control.

Goodness and courage are how the divine presents itself so often—whether in drag, as close friends, or as EMTs.

One of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people.

Take care of yourselves; take care of one another.

Awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage.

Hospice is the Calvary, Hospice means death is not going to be nearly as bad as you think

We said that we believed that the truth would set us free, and the truth was that the Sunday-school staff was burned out, that there were almost no people of color, and that if we didn't get more help, we'd have to close down.

It turns out that welcome is solidarity. We're glad you're here, and we're with you. This whole project called you being alive, you finding joy? Well, we're in on that.

Try to be a good sport, baby. Sharon feels as bad as you do. It's all right for you to be mad, but...try to be as good a sport as you can. I'll tell you. It's a run-of-the-mill shitty thing. Life is full of them. And it is ALWAYS feels better to be kind.

All it takes is one safe person to listen, to hear, to noodge us to start over and not give up.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath.

So I practice the fifth Get: I get in touch with others. I tell my partner the truth about how crunchy I feel inside, how unevolved or vindictive. Or I pick up the three-hundred-pound phone and tell a close friend. Or I get in the car and head to where one of my precious communities has gathered. This might be a park, my church, my Sunday school room; with hikers, sober people, townsfolk.

You can raise and care for your nearest and dearest the best you can, put them in the best schools, rehab, condo, or memory care, and never, ever give up on their having the best possible life available. But if you do so thinking you can rescue them with your good ideas and your checkbook, or get them to choose a healthy, realistic way of life, that mistake will make both of you much worse than you already are.

When you're feeling low, you don't want anyone even to joke that you may be in some kind of astrological strike zone where you'll be for the next seven years. On a bad day you also don't need a lot of advice. You just need a little empathy and affirmation." ~ @ANNELAMOTT

when all is said and done, we are all just walking each other home.

You can't run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero's journey." -- Anne Lamott, "Twelve Truths I Learned from Writing to Life

Not that my mother is not a real person, but whenever I show her a copy of my latest book, she gets sort of quiet and teary, and you can tell that what she's feeling is "Oh, honey, did you make that yourself?" like it's my handprint in clay—which I suppose in many ways it is.

no matter how much we screwed up--and we all did, big-time--we always cared, showed up, and stayed close. We gave everything we could...This beauty was not lost--it cannot be. All that we gave remains.

Look around and see whom you can serve. This will fill you.

How old is too old when you've a right knack with the sick?

No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone, his own burden, his own way.