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Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott

Book by Anne Lamott · 3 quotes · Grief, Humanity, Augustine

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Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott Quotes

“But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don't ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both? The good news is that if you don't seal up your heart with caulking compound, and instead stay permeable, people stay alive inside you, and maybe outside you, too, forever. This is also the bad news, not because your heart will continue to hurt forever, but because grief is so frowned upon, so hard for even intimate bystanders to witness, that you will think you must be crazy for not getting over it. You think it's best to keep this a secret, even if it cuts you off from certain aspects of life, like, say, the truth of your heart, and all that is real. The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to.”

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Book:Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott
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“Years after her death, I started thinking mean things about myself, and that holding on to her shirt was pure neurotic clinging. That it was ridiculous. Part of me understood that my hold on it had to do with the excruciating mess and weirdness of my family: how only a handful of people in your lifetime help redeem this mess, so that when one of them dies, hope dies. You never fully recover. You can't.”

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Book:Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott
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“I'd given talks for years about how when it comes to grieving, the culture lies--you really do not get over the biggest losses, you don't pass through grief in any organized way, and it takes years and infinitely more tears than people want to allot you. Yet the gift of grief is incalculable, in giving you back to yourself.”

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Book:Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott
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