“Judgment is the death of trust, vulnerability, and openness. When others judge us in our grief, they consciously or unconsciously signal to us that they are not safe places for us to share everything we’re thinking and feeling. It’s natural in the aftermath of loss, as in life in general, to gravitate toward people who are nonjudgmental and receptive. We all need witnesses to our stories, especially when we lose someone we love.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“You may quickly realize after the death of a loved one that the day they died is not the hardest part. It may be the worst day of your life, but it is not the hardest part. The hardest part is returning to life again. Because while you had no say in your loved one’s dying, you do have a say in your living. And choosing to live after someone you love has died is one of the hardest choices we make. It’s okay if life after loss feels more like a struggle than the day your loved one died . . . because often, it is.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“There is no linear way out of grief, and life after loss is not an event with a finish line. While you may notice recurring themes or experiences in your grief, they don’t always appear in order, and they don’t always make sense
to your brain. Grief is more like a zigzagging mountain trail than a line on a graph. It’s a mix of uphill and downhill paths, with some switchbacks tossed in for good measure. Know that it’s okay to feel like you’re “back at square one,” because in grief, there are no squares at all.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Grievers often bear the disproportionate burden of needing to “teach” others how to support them in grief... and not everybody is a willing or capable “student.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Society doesn’t give us permission to grieve, but we can.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“We live in a world that tells us sadness is a pointless, useless emotion. There’s visible and invisible pressure to do something with sadness so that it’s not sad anymore. But sadness doesn’t need to be alchemized into action or positivity right away. Sometimes it’s okay to just sit with and feel your sadness, free from the obligation to make it something else. Sadness is a healthy, more-than-normal response to losing someone you love. So, let yourself have your sadness, freed from the pressure to transmute it. Know that sadness, just like every other human emotion, will pass.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Grief does not want to be held, blocked, or braced against. Grief does not want to be quarantined, scrutinized, or shamed into disappearing. Just like every other emotion, grief wants to be able to move through you, free from judgment, criticism, or camouflage.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Letting grief become action is about the body. It’s literally about taking grief outside of yourself and letting grief’s emotions and identities be expressed in the physical world around you. Whether there are witnesses or not, it’s tangible evidence that grief has called you to make or do something. The act of doing something is a visible marker that grief has had and is continuing to have an impact on your life.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Letting grief become action is about the body. It’s literally about taking grief outside of yourself and letting grief’s emotions and identities be expressed in the physical world around you... The act of doing something is a visible marker that grief has had and is continuing to have an impact on your life.”
“Hope is often framed as optimism, but I like to think of it more as endurance. To hope is to believe that the future might look different from how things look right now. Sometimes that hope looks a lot like a mix of faith and waiting. Each day you live life after loss is another opportunity to exercise your muscle of hope.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“You are allowed to live and feel the experience of grief. By giving yourself permission to experience grief emotions and letting grief move through you, you are allowing grief (and by extension, yourself) to show up how it wants to, not how society wishes it would. There is immense self-love in that. In allowing yourself permission to feel, you are allowing your- self to show up as a whole human being, not just the parts of a human that you (or society) consider to be “appropriate,” “pretty,” or “worthy.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Grief is a normal, natural human experience.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Permission calls us home to ourselves. It brings us back to where we belong. And it reminds us that we are safe, sound, and secure—even when everything around us is falling apart.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Even in the midst of grief, there is growth, compassion, and love to be unearthed. Loss buries us underground, but our broken hearts hold the seeds for our inevitable regrowth. Your grief belongs to you. But so, too, does your coming back.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, our myths, stories, and expectations for what grief should feel like come from our minds. Where grief really lives—and where grief needs to be expressed from—is our hearts.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“We don’t grieve things that don’t matter to us. Grieving is just another way of saying, “I care a whole, whole lot about the person I’ve lost, and it’s hard not having them here.” The next time you start to beat yourself up for feeling grief, gently remind yourself that grief is not a sign that something is wrong with you; it’s evidence that you had a strong connection to the person you’ve lost.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“While some people are born with a greater propensity for resilience, resil- ience is not a static characteristic. Resilience can be practiced, nourished, and built across your lifetime. If you feel like you’re not bouncing back, well, you’re in good company. The death of a loved one often marks the first time that people are forced to come back from something hard, scary, and life- changing. Each day that you are living beyond the day of your loss is another day you’re building resilience. You’re teaching your heart, mind, and body what it means to continue to live after the very worst has happened.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“We’re taught that getting to a place of acceptance means having no more grief and holding no more negative feelings about the death of our loved one. In reality, acceptance is simply acknowledging that what happened did in fact happen and recognizing the bitter truth that death is permanent and irreversible. Acceptance isn’t relief; it is the wholehearted realization that your loss happened and that grief is sticking around for the long haul.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Insisting that life stay the same post-loss is essentially the same as saying, “Let’s just pretend this never happened.” That’s an incredible disservice to the person, place, or thing that you lost. Did you love what you lost? If you didn’t love it, was it important, significant, influential, or a large chunk of your life? Did you have hopes, dreams, or expectations attached to it? Then it’s worth grieving its loss. And that loss will change your identity on some level.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“With permission to grieve, we stop yelling at ourselves to be stronger or different or better in our pain and shift to witnessing ourselves instead.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Permission is the key that unlocks the door that’s been holding us trapped, muzzled, and stifled in our grief. Permission is the opposite of rejection. Permission is the opposite of abandonment. Permission lifts the weight, eases the pressure, and loosens the reins.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“When we refuse ourselves permission to grieve, we shut off a vital piece of our hearts that needs seeing, expressing, and loving: a wounded child, a raging wolf, an injured spirit.
When we give ourselves permission to grieve, we embrace the child. We release the wolf. We heal the spirit. We run towards what scares us most only to find that “it” is ourselves... and it’s not so much scary as is it is afraid. And we don’t want the fear to go away as much as we want the fear to be seen, heard, and wholeheartedly loved.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“In order to get “good” at grief, you have to practice grieving over and over again. This does not mean being constantly sad, but actively engaging with grief each time it appears, instead of avoiding it or pushing it away. It can be frustrating at first, because most of us are not explicitly taught how to grieve, but gradually, we can learn to remain upright in the face of our grief and become “good” at dealing with it.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Grief literally changes and rearranges the cells of our bodies. Our brains rewire, our nerves fire us up and settle us down, and our immune systems do everything they can to protect us from stress. When our loved one dies, our bodies feel it—from the immediate impact to the lasting effects. Grief leaves a visible and invisible impression on our lives, in our lungs, in our brains, and in our hearts. Everyone who has ever grieved is, at least partially, made up of grief.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Grief is less like a predictable sequence and more like an amorphous blob of uncertainty. You can’t forecast your way out of grief, because there’s no way to determine when the next wave is coming. This may seem disheartening at first, but when you recognize that there is no structure for grief, you can stop trying to pinpoint exactly where you are on your journey. If there’s no road map, it’s impossible to be lost.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“There is so much more to grief than just death. In losing someone, you lose their presence in every single moment and milestone that appears after their death. Every hope, dream, and expectation you had for the future must now be reworked, because the person you love can no longer be there. It’s normal to feel like you’re grieving multiple losses when someone dies.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Death is an ending, but it is not the end. The day your loved one died marks the beginning of a new life for you, a life where your loved one is no longer present in the physical world. It’s a horrendously painful ending, and simultaneously, it marks a new beginning for you. Their death is not the end of your story as a whole, but the end of a very beautiful and important chapter in your life. Your task in this new beginning is to grieve the painful ending— and to learn how to navigate life in the aftermath of loss.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“What if grief is not a consequence of love but another expression of it? What if our deep sorrow is a reflection of deep connection? There is no grief with- out attachment, investment, and some kind of emotional bond. The fact that we grieve is evidence of how completely we are able to love.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“We tell the story of our grief for two reasons: first, to solidify in our brains and hearts that life without our loved one is our new reality; and second, to realize that we are not alone. Just as grief is not a one-time event, telling the story of our loss is not a one-time event, either. We must share the story of what happened, to make sense of it for ourselves and to connect with others who are experiencing similar pain.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“There’s a misconception that grief is about “looking backward,” mourning someone whose life has been reduced to memories. But grief is also about “looking forward,” realizing and grieving all the future events that your loved one will never get to participate in. Grief is half about mourning the past that was and half about mourning the future that never will be. You’re not weird or crazy for jumping months, years, or decades ahead to envision a life without your loved one present. In fact, when loss happens, we often feel like we’re losing everything all at once—past, present, and future. Sometimes in these moments, it’s comforting to know that while your loved one can no longer follow you into the future, your memories and love for them can.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Recovery from the death of a loved one rarely looks like grand gestures and soaring moments of triumph. In fact, living well after loss more often looks like gradually giving ourselves and the people around us just a little more compassion, just a little more permission, and just a little more love every single day. Healing doesn’t need to be grand to be worthwhile; it’s the littlest moments that make the biggest difference.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“There’s a groundlessness in life after loss, as if somebody is pulling the rug out from under you again and again. It’s hard to find anything stable and secure to stand on, and when you do, there’s always the fear that it’s going to be taken away. Know that this sense of not having legs to stand on is completely normal and is a very real sensation brought on by loss. It’s not pleasant by any means—in fact, it can be downright terrifying—but it is an expected part of grief.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Contrary to many societal teachings, there is no conquering grief. It’s impossible to “win” at an emotional experience like loss, because grief is not that kind of game. The object of grief is not to make the grief go away, but to expand your heart to make room for it. When you live with an expanded heart, there is room for you and your grief to exist side by side.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Grief is unpredictable, and that’s exactly how it should be. If you feel like you’re stuck on a roller coaster or caught up in an unnavigable storm, you are not alone. I often think of grief like a slot machine. Each day I wake up, the dials turn, the combinations of emotions and experiences go round and round, and the wheels stop at whatever strange combination I’m about to experience that day. No two grief days are alike . . . and that’s normal.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“No one can tell you what your grief means. You are the only person who decides what meaning, if any, should be assigned to the death of your loved one. While well-meaning friends and family will have their own interpretations of the role of loss in your life, it is up to you and only you to decide what it all means.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“Continuing to live does not mean consenting to forget. You are not a bucket with a limited capacity. No, you are an ever-changing container with the amazing ability to accommodate not only your life and your love, but the life and love of the person who died. It is possible to hold many, many lost loved ones in one body and still keep trudging forward. Progress does not mean leaving your loved ones behind. It means taking them with you and keeping them alongside you for the remainder of your ride.”
Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
“You cannot fix, change, or remove another person’s grief. You cannot “spare” someone the pain of grieving a loss. Your grief belongs to you; their grief belongs to them.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Grief is pervasive. It cannot be quarantined any more than love can be quarantined. Grief affects all areas of life.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“The solution to grief is not a pain-free existence. It is allowing ourselves to grieve and witnessing ourselves in that process. Permission and presence are the remedies for agony and isolation.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“From the time we’re children, we’re taught that the path is more important than the obstacles that appear on it. We’re told to focus on the destination rather than the journey. We repeatedly hear the story of the phoenix rising from the ashes, but we fail to remember (or conveniently forget to remember) that the ashes are made of the charred, scorched remains of the phoenix’s “life before.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Grief ripples out and sends powerful tremors through our foundation, through our hobbies, through our loved ones, and through our minds. For the first time in our lives, we can- not compartmentalize the hard, the bad, or the sad. There’s nowhere to tuck it away because every single aspect of our lives is infected with and tainted by grief.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“In grief and loss, it becomes incredibly hard to recognize who we are. Grief makes us different people. Everything that we identify with—from our emotional states to our patterns to our dreams to our fears to our preferences to our core truths— everything fractures and shatters under the weight of loss.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“If you’re grieving, you have become—at least partially—someone you don’t recognize.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Sitting next to grief and allowing it to root through your former life while slowly unfurling into your new life requires the kind of patience, gentleness, and self-love that many of us have never had to summon before. Remember that at its core, permission is about telling the truth about where you are right now. And sometimes that truth means saying, “I don’t know.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“As life continues, so will grief.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Grief does not exist within a vacuum, but it also does not exist within just one life. It spreads out and affects the people “above you” in your family tree and the people who will come after you or “below you.” Grief also impacts entire races, genders, generations, and communities, and those beliefs about grief and the stories we tell ourselves about whether or not grief is acceptable, what’s at the root cause of grief, and whether or not we can recover from that grief have an enormous impact on how we give ourselves permission to grieve, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“When we grant ourselves permission to grieve, we make the experience of grief something we recognize, something we welcome into our lives. We allow it to show up the way it wants to through feelings, identities, and actions. We write our own expectations and stories. Our grief becomes ours again and we become more ourselves again because we actively choose to experience grief.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Grief wants to be seen, heard, and listened to... just like we do.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“While grief invites us to feel the full spectrum of human emotions, it also invites us to deepen our love for ourselves. That means feeling exactly how we’re feeling in every moment. That means meeting and embracing the darkest, ugliest, most conventionally “unlovable” pieces of ourselves and acknowledging that yes, even grief belongs to us, too.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“you can’t skip the uncertainty of not knowing who you are. You can’t skip the reality of having an uncertain identity. It’s often the hardest part of grief, because unlike shifting feelings that can resolve themselves in minutes or hours, shifting identities can take years to resolve. Sometimes who you are is “suspended” for a very long time before you feel like you’ve found solid footing again.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss