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Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O'Rourke Quotes

Poet

Meghan O'Rourke is an American poet born in 1976. Her work is known for its profound emotion and unique style, exploring themes such as love, death, and identity.

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All Grief Mother Loss Death Thinking Way Dying Illness World Feels

Famous Meghan O'Rourke Quotes

“I was not raised with religion, and I had no faith before my mother died. On the other hand, when she died, I did not immediately feel she was "gone." I don't believe she is in something like heaven, but I also feel that we don't understand much about the nature of the universe. So I hold on to that uncertainty, at times.”

Feels Believe Hands Mother Universe Heaven Gone Died Raised Don't Believe Uncertainty Mother Died

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles.”

Doe Stills Helping Loss Struggle Study Imagine

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Be patient with yourself. Don't make the loss harder by thinking you should be a certain way, or have bounced back, etc.”

Thinking Way Should Certain Loss Harder Patient Etc Be Patient

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss - the loss of the person, and the loss of the self you got to be with that person. And the seeming loss of the past, which now feels forever out of reach.”

Feels Kind Persons Self Past Loss Forever Seeming Embedded

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“For sure, the funeral industry seems intensely cynical to me and I don't think it is HELPING people mourn.”

People Thinking Helping Seems Industry Funeral Cynical Helping People Mourn

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession - it's sad that we don't have a more humane, less commercialized way to approach burial.”

Way Source Cost Approach Stress Funeral Humane Recessions Burial

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“After all dying is one of the most profound and difficult experiences we have.”

Difficult Dying Profound Difficult Experiences

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“We have an idea - a very modern idea - that dying is undignified. But I think this is because we have the illusion that we can control our bodies and our fates.”

Thinking Ideas Body Fate Modern Dying Illusion

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well. It's both the process by which you relearn the world in the absence of someone who was a pillar in it, and the process in which you confront the reality of death.”

Thinking World Wells Reality Spiritual Process Grief Profound Absence Metaphysical Pillars Reckoning Profound Spiritual Reality Of Death

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“One of the things about grief is that it can bring a deeper perspective into your life; in the end, it has, for me, though it's also brought sorrow.”

Ends Grief Perspective Sorrow Deeper

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.”

Pain Parent Grief Blessing Painful Sibling

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“A mother is the portal by which you enter the world.”

World Mother Portal

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.”

Giving Long Ideas Different Illness Beloved Goodbye Saying Goodbye Bye Good Bye Sudden Death Saying Goodbye Is Hard Bye Love Time To Say Goodbye Illness And Death

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.”

Firsts Facts Would Be Grief Sadness Worst Prepared Unpredictable Flu Linear

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.”

Moments Stories Fall Falling In Love Love Story Tales I Fall In Love

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“But there is a discomfort that surrounds grief. It makes even the most well-intentioned people unsure of what to say. And so many of the freshly bereaved end up feeling even more alone.”

People Wells Ends Feelings Grief Surround Discomfort Unsure

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I believe in the importance of individuality, but in the midst of grief I also find myself wanting connection - wanting to be reminded that the sadness I feel is not just mine but ours.”

Feels Believe I Believe Grief Sadness Mines Connections Importance Individuality I Believe In Midst

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.”

Grief Persona Disruption

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“This is part of the complexity of grief: A piece of you recognizes it is an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands.”

States Grief Pieces Subjects Demand Extremes Complexity Altered Altered States

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.”

Self Talent Theory Conscious Self Conscious

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.”

World Mother Sky Wake Up Divides Waking Shells Entry Unimaginable

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death.”

Feels Different Faces Loses Loss Aspect Recognition Loved Ones Consoling

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.”

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.”

Grief Description Describing

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.”

World Energy Difficult Loses Loss Relationship Identity Letting Go Psychiatrist Deceased

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“A mother is a story with no beginning. That is what defines her.”

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“What had happened still seemed implausible. A person was present your entire life, and then one day she disappeared and never came back. It resisted belief.”

Persons Stills Belief Happened One Day

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.”

Way Stories Desire Turns One Day Realms Drag Underworld Descending Orpheus

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it.”

Knows Want Sometimes What You Want

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.”

Persons Seems Remember Lost Support Groups Built Envy Each Day Ritual Devoted Designation Support Groups Jewish Friends Lost Person

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.”

Persons Might Lost Loss Alive Mourn Lost Ones His Loss

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.”

Ifs Grief Conditions Universal Transactions

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”

People Memories Pathways Synapses

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“Suddenly it was fall, the season of death, the anniversary of things-going-to-hell.”

Fall Hell Seasons

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Time doesn’t obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing.”

Holy Disappear Command

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“Much of Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming, the uncertainty about how the inner translates into the outer, the sense that one is expected to perform grief palatably. (If you don’t seem sad, people worry; but if you are grief-stricken, people flinch away from your pain.)”

People Ifs Kind Seems Pain Differences Grief Worry Expected Uncertainty Translate Precise Seeming

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

About the Author

Born: 1976
Known for: Poet
Quotes: 86

Related Topics

Grief Mother Loss Death Thinking Way Dying Illness World Feels

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

The Long Goodbye: A MemoirRelated source material

The Long GoodbyeRelated source material

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic IllnessRelated source material

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