Nothing big ever happens, good or bad, unless the floor falls out first.Let your longing wind you down through that spiral. And know that falling can be the most wickedly awesome and totally safe thing...

When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades...

Suppressed grief suffocates, it rages within the breast, and is forced to multiply its strength.

When I’m naked, I can see my heart beating.

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it...

They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted,...

In Louisiana, one of the first stages of grief is eating your weight in Popeyes fried chicken. The second stage is doing the same with boudin. People have been known to swap the order. Or...

All I was aware of was this hole, this gaping hole where my heart should have been. I read somewhere once that your heart is supposed to be the same size as your clenched fist,...

I don’t dare touch her. Loss is a knowledge I’m sorry to have. Perhaps the only thing worse than experiencing it, is watching it replay anew in someone else–all the awful stages picking up like...

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.

All you need is one safe anchor to keep you grounded when the rest of your life spins out of control

Missing Alina was worse than a terminal illness. At least when you were terminal you knew the pain was going to end eventually. But there was no light at the end of my tunnel. Grief...

It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.

Mrs. Sussex said Byron’s loss would grow more bearable. But here was the nub: he didn’t want to lose his loss. Loss was all he had left of his mother. If time healed the gap,...

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Sorrow fades,” he muttered as he retrieved the last fragment, “grief dies, but Art lives forever.

I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last bath is out...

Beware! Balance rules the cosmos. It is not concerned with good or bad. You can be struck by misfortune and be buried in grief if that is what it takes to restore the imbalance you...

I pulled a dirty black sweatshirt from the laundry basket on my son’s floor and tried to drink in his scent, to savor the essence of my sweet boy. I inhaled it long and hard,...

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,Which finds no natural outlet or relief,In word, or sigh, or tear.

There are times when a boy breaks your heart and you quietly cry in your mother’s arms wishing you hadn’t met him. Then there are times when a boy breaks your heart and you sob...

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Alvin didn’t cry, didn’t curse, didn’t holler…. He was too far gone to roar on that day or even to crack. Only I did…. Only I cracked, alone, later in the one place in our...

I never thought that freedom would feel so much like grief.

Everything you experience is a blessing and pushes you toward realizing your true self.

Seems,” madam? Nay, it is; I know not “seems.”‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor...

I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of...

She did not know it, but she was actually in despair at the poverty of human emotions. Was it not irrational that there was nothing to do except weep when ten people died, just as...

In this quiet place on a quiet streetwhere no one ever finds usgently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain.–from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street

Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him.

It is extraordinary that nobody nowadays under the stress of great troubles is turned into stone or a bird or a tree or some inanimate object; they used to undergo such metamorphoses in ancient times...

In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and...

Grief is better than happiness, because in grief a person draws close to God. Your wings open. A tent is set up in the desert where God can visit you. Wealth that arrives in grief...

Just for a moment. Then you’d know what all I can’t find how to say.

Your tale is of the longest,” observed Monks, moving restlessly in his chair.It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man,” returned Mr. Brownlow, “and such tales usually are; if it...

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the...

These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through. Now he hears the ice creak...

Oh Julie, wouldn’t I know if you were dead? Wouldn’t I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart?

I let myself relax into the pattern of the recipe.

I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I’d be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came...

I was twenty-two, the same age she was when she’d been pregnant with me. She was going to leave my life at the same moment that I came into hers, I thought. For some reason...

My life is now divided into two periods: With June and After June. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of it.

I suppose that the human mind can only stand so much grief and anguish. After that the fuses blow.

I began to recognize that there was a part of me that was stronger than I ever could have imagined. I didn’t know how I was still standing. I surprised myself. I was waking up...

When my grandpa died, I had this same fear. I love Grandpa so much. He was Mom’s dad, and he was my favorite person in the whole world. He lived up north, between Grayling and...

Life has a way of filling up one’s time with many different things to do. So much so that you turn a blind eye to the things that really matter.

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.

He lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul.

I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don’t think it is years...

Mad – empty – crazy – lost – dying… I was all of these things and nothing as well, because even though I breathed and moved, I was not alive.