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Quote by Suleika Jaouad

“Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn't there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers. It is learning to embrace the people I love now instead of protecting against a future in which I am gutted by their loss.”

Quote by Suleika Jaouad

Book:Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
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Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

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Suleika Jaouad

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“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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“Bilba opened her eyes, and Fili was standing directly in front of her. The last thread broke. She'd spent years building walls around the hollow left by Ravenhill. There had always been cracks, even breaches over the years, but she'd endured, fortified them again and continued on. It wasn't until she'd opened her eyes again in Bag End that the walls had turned brittle, and it wasn't until she'd laid eyes on him once more that they'd started to fall. And it wasn't until that very moment, when his eyes sliced into her soul, that the final wall fell completely. And, just like that, the wound was open and the truth she'd tried so hard to ignore was pouring. It had always been there, seeping out through cracks, bleeding into her veins, poisoning her sleep and freezing her days. The truth, that the hollow inside her wasn't so hollow after all. It was full, always had been full, always would be full, and with one thing and one thing only. The knowledge of how deeply and irrevocably in love she was with this son of Durin. As much as that first day. As much as the last. Every breath, every beat of her heart cried out with the depth of her love for someone lost to her forever. All that love falling forever into emptiness, a void deeper than the one opened in her soul the moment she'd watched him die.”

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“That was it. Just…fate. No grand scheme, no conscious decision one way or the other, her father wasn't a coward or apathetic, he hadn't chosen to leave them to die in Moria…nothing. It simply was. Her father should have come. Her father would have come. Her father could have come. Would have, should have, could have….. Didn't. The end. Done.”

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“Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove, That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the Rocks, Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow Rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing Madrigals. And I will make thee beds of Roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle; A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty Lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold; A belt of straw and Ivy buds, With Coral clasps and Amber studs: And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my love. The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May-morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me, and be my love.”

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Book:The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
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