Quotes About Coping

I was on the brown plaid sofa, watching TV and Scotch-taping my bangs to my forehead because Jeanette said that kept them from drying frizzy. Across the room on the Barcalounger, my mother was having her nervous breakdown.

When we allow ourselves to feel these painful feelings, give them an accurate name, and when we share the grief with safe and supportive others over time, we are able to complete our grief work and thus be free of it.

An important part of successful recovery is learning to accurately name what happened for us and the components of our inner life as they come up for us, including our various feelings, and learning to tolerate emotional pain without trying to medicate it away.

We actually have four additional choices, which we may learn as we grow older: (1) to hold it in until it gets unbearable; (2) unable to let it out, we get physically or emotionally sick, and/or we may "blow up;" (3) to blot the pain out with alcohol, other drugs or other addictions; or (4) to express the pain and work through it with safe and supportive people.

Sometimes I wonder how you can stand being just a dog..." "You play with the cards you're dealt... Whatever that means.

We must each of us bear our own misfortunes.

I tell TAMMY it will be all right. She says what will be all right? I say whatever you are crying about. She says that is exactly what she's crying about. That everything is all right. That the world isn't ending. That we'll never tell each other how we really feel because everything is okay. Okay enough to just sit around, being okay.

we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature – or go insane.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.

You got to harden yourself. Make, like, a shell around you. But not everyone can do it. If they got nothing to hang on to some of them screw up. They're not in the game no more.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.

Every day," she'd told him, "you have to decide how to fail, and make the best of it.

Every day," she'd told him, "you have to decide how to fail, and make the best of it." At the time, he'd found it cynical. Now he honestly found it helpful — if for no other reason than he knew it was normal and he knew he wasn't alone.

Every day,' she told him, 'you have to decide how to fail, and make the best of it.' At the time, he'd found it cynical. Now he honestly found it helpful — if for no other reason than he knew it was normal and he knew he wasn't alone.

As an old acquaintance of mine used to say, "If you can't duck it, fuck it." I'm pretty sure he knew it was duct and not duck, but I'll forgive him for the sake of the rhyme.

I started playing poker in 2003 during my pregnancy, to distract myself from my awful morning sickness. For months all I did was cry and play Texas Hold'em.

the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.

It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.

I had problems a therapist couldn't solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.

but thinking about it didn't do a thing. Thinking about it was a long dive into a bucket of shit that didn't have a bottom.

I would suffer. I would suffer. I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

It's a lie you've told yourself that has flattened down whatever hurts.

This is not the way I wanted it to be, that single honey said, but it was the way it was.