In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens...

You can go on losing after loss.

I put her burnt bones into my mouth and swallowed them whole.

Sjel, vær trofast til det siste!Seirens seir er alt å miste.Tapets alt din vinning skapte; -evig eies kun det tapte.

Never dreaming, was I, poor Jack Duluoz, that the soul is dead. That from Heaven grace descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail to tell me; no example inside my first and only skin....

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

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...

I’m in self-imposed exile, cradled between split branches, in my favorite tree in the woods behind school. I’ve been coming here every day at lunch, hiding out until the bell rings, whittling words into the...

It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something...

I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she’s gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never,...

You get all these friends when just when you don’t need friends anymore.

I hadn’t understood at the time. If sinners were so unhappy,why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why.Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my pastwas my life.

it is a sad truth in life that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed.

Time can’t be found, only lost.

The guy who broke up with me… he was exactly like you, in the beginning. Charming, and nice. They’re all like you in the beginning. But I always end up like this. And I can’t...

WHEN SOMEBODY GOES AWAY THERE’S THINGS YOU WANT TO TELL THEM. WHEN SOMEBODY DIES MAYBE THAT’S THE WORST THING. YOU WANT TO TELL THEM THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER.

When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped...

You’d have thought that after suffering such a loss nothing else would matter to her but that didn’t seem to be how it worked. She was fearful about everything now. It was as if she...

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow...

In the midst of the darkness of loss, I found light. Admittedly, in those first weeks, it might have been but a single small spark I sensed deep inside of me, but that spark guided...

I’ve seen too much sacrifice to believe that God is behind all of it, and I’ve seen sacrifice that has no indicia of the hand of God at all. Loss is not always part of...

My mind couldn’t fit itself around the shape of his absence.

Some of us walk around with a necklace of hope, an armour of sanity, but at the end of the day, they always come off. We reveal our naked, vulnerable, real selves.

We’ve all lost something along the way.

Grief denied will surface in borrowed clothes, the mad, sad clothes of paranoia, fear or loneliness

Love left to languish will bear poisonous fruit.

think when it’s all over it just comes back in flashes, you know? It’s like a kaleidoscope of memories; it just all comes back. But he never does. I think part of me knew the...

The truth is that any figure of Africans imported into the Americas which is narrowly based on the surviving records is bound to be low, because there were so many people at the time who...

An observant friend will recognize the signs of the rise of grief: eyes that easily well with tears, a smile that is difficult to sustain, a tendency to withdraw. And ultimately, perhaps we each need...

She loved beyond measure, When I was young I thought her cold. But in time I came to understand that she was too tender for the world she’d been born into,” I said. Sorrow gave...

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, and be the one who ended up in that accident, completely dead… but you know what? It wouldn’t change anything. All I can do now that...

I am afraid of losing what I have already valued.

The circumstances of our lives are pieces of a larger scheme in the puzzle of life, and in His Perfect Wisdom, the pieces fit.

Someone is going to tell you to get use to this. That feeling of being scared and sad. They’re going to say it’ll be better when you learn to ignore it. Don’t listen to them....

Destroy me. Take pity and send me on my way.

Avevo appena scoperto l’orribile notizia che ogni essere umano scopre un giorno o l’altro: quello che ami, tu lo perderai.

Sometimes I hear the world discussed as the realm of men. This is not my experience. I have watched men fall to the ground like leaves. They were swept up as memories, and burned. History...

Everything changed…even the things we didn’t want to.

Zaznał pełnych litości spojrzeń, zająknień, współczującego kiwania głową, doświadczył niby to solidarnych męskich uścisków i niby to kamrackich walnięć w bark. Nasłuchał się apeli, by się trzymał i był twardym. Powodujących, że od razu miękł...

There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.

As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.

one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.

It was too perfect to last,’ so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic – as if God no sooner saw...

And that’s what makes you angry. What makes you hate. You don’t want to believe that sometimes bad things happen just because they do.

His consolation was that at least he had known her as the world had not, and the pain of living without her was no more than a penalty he paid for the privilege of having...

Þæs ofereode, þisses sƿa mæg.

There was nothing to see in the room, but his brain pulled multiple vivid memories to the forefront of his mind. Entering the house as husband and wife, with Angela holding onto his arm. The...

His name was Theo.

Perhaps, this is what love has always been, whether it is for a woman of for a cause — the readiness to give and not ask for anything in return, the unquestioning willingness to lose...

Why she was the happy one when she was dying, and I just can’t seem to manage anything when I’m living.