“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion to death.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news.
They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly — that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
Anne Lamott
“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place.
But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
“When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail’s response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, ‘My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.’”
David McCullough
“When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity. When your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.
Stephen Levine
“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.
The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
Fred Rogers
Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.
Earl Grollman
Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
Patti Smith
“We can endure much more than we think we can; all human experience testifies to that. All we need to do is learn not to be afraid of pain. Grit your teeth and let it hurt. Don’t deny it, don’t be overwhelmed by it. It will not last forever. One day, the pain will be gone and you will still be there.”
Harold Kushner, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”
Emily Dickinson
“Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time. It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.”
Leo Buscaglia
