Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

Deep in earth my love is lyingAnd I must weep alone.

I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story...

Losing people you love affects you. It is buried inside of you and becomes this big, deep hole of ache. It doesn’t magically go away, even when you stop officially mourning.

I began to feel that nature itself was nurturing me, reminding me that life still offered beauty and calm, and that I was also made out of these elements.

Isn’t she doing this too? Connecting and disconnecting. Facing grief then turning from it. One minute she is caught up in minutiae. Will her feet get sore standing in heels at the church? Have they...

As she cried, I could feel growing there, as had once before, a presence between us: the tiny perfect form of Sherry nestled between her parents’ bodies. Our bodies were shaped by her absence, by...

I see we have a problem.’ Lucas gripped her other arm and gave her a non-too-gentle shake. ‘Are you in a relationship? or…’ Those dark eyes searching hers narrowed into slits. ‘Are you married?

Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long...

Death is never easy when you know the people doing the dying.

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.

It is true that the grief journey is very lonely, but it is also up to you to decide just how lonely you will make it.

Let’s be honest, the world’s always been a scary place with very little charm.” I try to brush it off as I’ve brushed off the flu, as I brushed off the death of my father...

It’s being without him that I’ll never get used to.

It is extraordinary how the house and the simplest possessions of someone who has been left become so quickly sordid. Even the stain on the coffee cup seems not coffee but the physical manifestation of...

The role of Cherishing in Bereavement – I think that the key to healthy grieving is to cherish those who have passed on, so that you celebrate their lives and the times you did have...

You don’t know who is important to you until you actually lose them.

Father, be near as we are surrounded by this cloud of deep suffering. Open our eyes to see that you are all things, the light and the darkness, not only those things that seem good...

Remember to view yourself and your humanness with a kind heart.

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

Grief can destroy you –or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it...

I would still rather feel things and live life to the fullest rather than hide in a cave and attempt to protect myself from the uncertainties of the world.

Holding the knife with the blade against my palm, it became so clear how my life would only contain shadows now. Shadows of things gone; not just the people themselves but everything connected to them....

The God I serve is able to save us both. To give us the winning lottery ticket so all our money problems will go away. To mend our broken hearts. To bring us close to...

Everything assumes a different intensity when you are feeling the pain of loss. Be prepared. A minor annoyance that you might once have managed with a shrug now becomes a nuclear crisis! You are no...

zoom lens effect,” in which the focus is entirely on oneself, to the exclusion of external considerations.

You shall find it greatly mitigates the sorrow of bereavements, if before bereavement you shall have learned to surrender every day all the things which are dearest to you into the keeping of your gracious...

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...

In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better....

I believe I gather strength from the generations of women who came before me – that together we all hold the suffering of the world.

You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and...

The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn’t recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in...

Each loss brings growth with it, and learning to handle new experiences and taking charge of your needs is part of the transformative process.

Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.

…this is what death does to you, it takes and takes, so that all that is left of your memories is a faint tracing of spilled ash.

The few certainties in our existences are pain, death and bereavement.

And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.

It is okay to release your feelings when you feel the waves coming. It’s all part of the process of having to let go of your relationship with your loved one as you once knew...

Love is love,” I told her, as I tell all of my patients who are ashamed to find themselves shattered by the death of a dog. “Loss is loss.

I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the...

Some of the choices you make might not always turn out to be the best ones, but at least you are learning as you go.

Grief is the ultimate unrequited love. However hard and long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels….

The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you’re faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow,...

It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It...

They should make earplugs for people who are grieving, so we don’t have to hear the stupid things people say, but I’d look like a dork in them.” -Corinna

A feeling of pleasure or solace can be so hard to find when you are in the depths of your grief. Sometimes it’s the little things that help get you through the day. You may...

If suddenly you do not exist,if suddenly you no longer live,I shall live on.I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die.I shall live on.For where a man has no voice,there, my...

Christmas is such a time of struggle anyway, crammed with busy and hurry and the expectation that you will be joyful, no matter what. Then, if you’re like me, when you just sit quietly, just...