Quotes About Loss

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." Professor Neimeyer's

We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend. C. S. Lewis wrote, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." We can't rise strong when we're on the run.

Grief seems to create losses within us that reach beyond our awareness--we feel as if we're missing something that was invisible and unknown to us while we had it, but is now painfully gone...Longing is not conscious wanting; it's an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we've lost.

When you are grateful for what you have, I know you understand the magnitude of what I have lost.

Heartbreak is an altogether different thing. Disappointment doesn't grow into heartbreak, nor does failure...It comes form the loss of love or the perceived loss of love...Heartbreak is what happens when love is lost.

or when I loved so fiercely that rather than feeling gratitude and joy I could only prepare for loss—I

Until we can tolerate vulnerability and transform it into gratitude, intense feelings of love will often bring up the fear of loss.

Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don't just lose a job, you don't just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are—our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." We can't rise strong when we're on the run.

Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant.

The Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia is another tremendous resource. Their definitions are very helpful when thinking about grief. I think the most important line is "When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over." It doesn't mean that we're sad the rest of our lives, it means that "grief finds a place" in our lives. Imagine a world in which we honor that place in ourselves and others rather than hiding it, ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't exist.

That's what anxiety feels like to me. Escalating loss of control, worst-case-scenario thinking and imagery, and total uncertainty.

Am I fearful of losing something I value to another person, or do I want something someone else has? If

Most of us have experienced being on the edge of joy only to be overcome by vulnerability and thrown into fear. Until we can tolerate vulnerability and transform it into gratitude, intense feelings of love will often bring up the fear of loss.

sadness is important and we need it. Feeling sad is a normal response to loss or defeat, or even the perception of loss or defeat. To be human is to know sadness.

Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. — ELIZABETH GILBERT

Here are some of the most commonly shared experiences and a few notes on the context: Watching children grow up Leaving a job Divorce/Ending a relationship Graduating

Heartbreak comes from the loss of love or the perceived loss of love. My heart can be broken only by someone (or something, like my dog, though a part of me really believes my dog is a person) to whom I have given my heart.

The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.

When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over." It doesn't mean that we're sad the rest of our lives, it means that "grief finds a place" in our lives.

Heartbreak is what happens when love is lost.

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.

I think the most important line is "When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over." It doesn't mean that we're sad the rest of our lives, it means that "grief finds a place" in our lives. Imagine a world in which we honor that place in ourselves and others rather than hiding it, ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't exist because of fear or shame.

She is standing in a garden trying to peg together scraps of memory on a washing line, but the wind snatches them away, scattering them out of her reach.