Good Grief Quotes
"Every loss is unique. The truth is, the worst loss is the one that is happening to you, the one that has picked you up and thrown you down and left you struggling to put your life back together." | Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn, The Empty Room: Surviving the Loss of a Brother or Sister at Any Age
"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
“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.” | C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
"Yet some people emerge from their grieving process with unexpected gains. By weathering emotional tribulations they had thought unendurable, they have a deeper, surer sense of their strength. By facing despair, and not succumbing, they know their inner capacities in a more complete way. These gains do not in any way diminish the facts of the loss. But, yes, are benefits. Dearly purchased, hard-earned benefits." | Steve Schwartzberg
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.” | C.S. Lewis
"Our grief lives with us long as we live...by the very act of weaving our losses into that tapestry, we ensure that our losses are part of our wholeness." | Deborah Morris Coryell, Healing Through the Shadow of Loss
“I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.” | C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
"Don't let anyone take your grief away from you. You deserve it, and you must have it." | Doug Manning, Don't Take My Grief Away
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the over-wrought heart and bids it break.” | William Shakespeare, Macbeth
"In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom." | Henri J. M. Nouwen
"Most people, even those who believe that they will never recover from their grief, do. In almost all cases you are going to survive. It is not a matter of whether you will survive, you will, it is a matter of how you will live." | Dr. Phyliss Kosminsky, "Getting Back to Life When Grief Won't Heal"
"Traumatic Death...too terrible to remember...too vivid to forget...no matter how hard we try." | Author Unknown
“Twas the final straw that broke the camel’s back, then men noticed the fiendish pack, but who among them saw the next to the last straw. Suicide is never just a result of the final straw.” | Doug Manning