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Quote by Carmel Mc Mahon

“The industrial ghost towns, the late spring rain, the wide, low skies. The old sadness rising. An excess of black bile, they used to say, made the melancholic personality. Freud said that mourning and melancholia are akin in that they are both responses to loss. Mourning is a conscious and healthy response to the loss of a love object. Melancholia is more complicated. It operates on a subconscious level. All the feelings of loss are present, but for what? The melancholic cannot say. This, Freud says, is a pathology.”

Quote by Carmel Mc Mahon

Work

In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History

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Author

Carmel Mc Mahon

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“Anger is just sadness coming out sideways, Wren." His statement renders me speechless, and tears fill my eyes. It is the most profound and relatable explanation of grief that I have ever heard. Until now, I've mostly brushed grief under the rug in favor of my anger, because how could I be sad about losing something that wasn't real? But the grief didn't stay where I'd shoved it. It got tangled up with my anger and it's been oozing at the seams this whole time.”