“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
“This was where wanting to touch his forehead, wantin to see if it felt as smooth as it looked like, had gotten me; this was where it all came out. My eyes were all the way open, and I saw I was livin with a loveless, pitiless man who believed anything he could reach with his arms and grasp with his hands was his to take, even his own daughter.”
Source: Dolores Claiborne
“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