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...

I used to feel afraid of the future, always assuming the worst. But now I’ve realized that my worst fears have already happened, and I’ve survived them! I’ve walked into the fire and made it...

The death of Robert G. Ingersoll, on July 21, 1899, was one of the most widely — noted events of that year in the civilized world. It was also one of the most widely and...

Change the way you think and you will change the way you feel.

Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the...

Sometimes, there was no getting over it. Sometimes, you lived with the empty place inside of you until you imploded on it, loss as singularity, or until the empty place expanded and hollowed out the...

There is nothing like feeling truly “awake” and aware of my life and what it means to me. So I look ahead and think, “There is still so much to be done, and I will...

For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms.

Time is ungovernable, but grief presents us with a choice: what do we do with the savage energies of bereavement? What do we do with the memory – or in the memory – of the...

The truth is, we never know what life will bring us and we don’t have as much control as we might think we have. But we CAN choose how we walk through life and how...

Cordelia! stay a little. Ha! What is’t thou say’st? Her voice was ever soft.

When my late father died — now I’m in mourning for my late mother — that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc.,...