“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.”
Quote by Shelby Forsythia
“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
“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
“Don’t ask your losses to stay small so that you can feel safe.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Relationships continue even when they are radically changed by death, divorce, diagnosis, or another loss. Grief continues, too. For as long as we continue to live, we continue to grieve.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss
“Allowing grief to make its mark in your life—whether you’re altering habits and routines, making art, or attending a grief event—acknowledges and honors the fact that grief is a powerful, life-altering force.”
Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss