Best Bereavement Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“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.”

Inspirational Death Loss Grief Trust Judgment Bereavement

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

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.”

Inspirational Death Loss Grief Courage Resilience Recovery Bereavement Returning

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

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.”

Inspirational Death Loss Grief Courage Resilience Recovery Bereavement Comeback

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“The Sun shines on our sorrow and strength alike. Loss and bereavement are not the dead-ends of life. If anything, grief can and does spur growth. Unimaginably painful, indeed. Undoubtedly transformative, nonetheless." - “Grief … Growth … Grace – A Sacred Pilgrimage”, Page xv”

Growth Grief Strength Sorrow Bereavement Grief Quotes Strength Quotes Growth Quotes

Book:GRIEF GROWTH GRACE: A SACRED PILGRIMAGE

Source: GRIEF GROWTH GRACE: A SACRED PILGRIMAGE

“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.”

Friendship Loss Grief Teacher Friends Grief And Loss Friend Bereavement Student

Book:Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

Source: Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Friendship, resembling art and philosophy, is an aspects of life that adds meaning to existence, because you can share in some else’s life, their pains, and joys. The beauty of a friendship is the silences, where you do not need to ask or explain; a friend can just be there in our finest hours or in our times of grief and bereavement.”

Friendship Grief Silence Friends Friendship Quotes Friend Bereavement Friendships Friend Quotes

Book:Dead Toad Scrolls

Source: Dead Toad Scrolls

“All loss, from the untimely death of a loved one, through to the loss of innocence, all the way to having a bag stolen, feels as though it is specific to us, but is actually universal. I began to see that in sharing our suffering and acknowledging the pain of being human, we not only ease the burden on ourselves, but also help those around us to see themselves as part of the same whole.”

Pain Death Loss Grief Heartbreak Bereavement

Book:A Manual for Heartache

Source: A Manual for Heartache

“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.”

Inspirational Death Loss Grief Emotion Sadness Sad Normal Bereavement

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Grief is an emotional rollercoaster. You will have your ups and downs and moments of terror and brief moments of peace. You can only go as fast as the ride will take you. Just remember: It will end and you will be okay.”

Loss Grief Emotion Pet Reincarnation Bereavement Rollercoaster Rainbow Bridge

Book:Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge

Source: Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge

“I am not a whole, only disjointed pieces held together the way two ventricles taped to an aorta won’t beat.”

Heart Death Loss Grief Dying Depression Bereavement

Book:Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

Source: Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“Nobody ever goes before their time.”

Life Death Time Dying Sorrow Bible Life And Death Bereavement Passing Away Pass Away

Author:Joyce Rachelle

“I look. There it is. I feel it. The insistent pull to the heart that the hawk brings, that very old longing of mine to possess the hawk's eye. To live the safe and solitary life; to look down on the world from a height and keep it there. To be the watcher; invulnerable, detached, complete. My eyes fill with water. Here I am, I think. And I do not think I am safe.”

Death Loss Grief Dying Bereavement Hawks H Is For Hawk Falconery Helen Macdonald

Author:Helen Macdonald

“Do not go to my grave. Mary knows, I am not there. Look for me in between pages and on people’s lips. Do not go to my old school. Do not go to my old house — I am not in any of those places. Look for me in your hearts and greet me there.”

“He may take long walks in the raining dark almost aimlessly to a spot of soaked grass in a neighbor’s open field. He’s decided this is the place for you and him to meet again.”

Death Dark Loss Grief Sadness Dying Confusion Denial Bereavement Raining Disorientation Man Cries

Author:Kristen Henderson, Of My Maiden Smoking

“An upturned life is righted in the box.”

Death Dying Funeral Bereavement

Author:Nick John Whittle

“People ask me how I am, and I say "ok," meaning "as well as an be expected," but do they know about the bottomless pool of sorrow? The anchor that drags me downward?”

Loss Grief Sadness Sorrow Sad Despair Grieving Mourning Bereavement

Book:The Path of Grief: & the Imagined Future

Source: The Path of Grief: & the Imagined Future

“It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.”

Love Pain Joy Faith Beauty Grace Despair Personal Growth Memoir Ecstasy Bereavement Grieve Whole Hearted

Book:Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

Source: Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

“The light in that room was a glow; I seem to remember the color green, or perhaps flowers. A pale green sheet covered his inert body but not his head, which lay (eyes closed, mouth set in a tense and terrible grimace) unmoving. Gianluca. Barely able to see, barely able to stand - my knees kept buckling – and breathing so quietly I thought that I, too, might die; that out of shock, I would just drift away, the shell of my body cracking open. No longer anchored by my brother’s love, I would be reabsorbed by sky. Gianluca. If there was never another sound in the world, I would understand – yes, that would be appropriate, it would be fitting. This was the antithesis of music, the antithesis of noise. My brother’s death seemed to demand silence of all the world. Gianluca.”

Loss Grief Despair Depression Heartbreak Suicide Mourning Bereavement Identification Morgue Asphyxiation Sibling Loss Viewing Gassing Helium Suicide

Book:The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

Source: The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

“Perhaps there is no such thing as a bottomless pool of grief. Maybe grief is a desert.”

Grief Sadness Sorrow Grieving Mourning Bereavement

Book:The Path of Grief: & the Imagined Future

Source: The Path of Grief: & the Imagined Future

“I am a ghost town, my body still exists among the remnants and relics, but no one lives here anymore. The locals moved out with the post office. The shelves at the corner store stand as tombstones marking the prices of items that once waited for hands to toss them in their basket. Spiders and the remains of their kills fill the fluorescent lights. The crows don’t even stop on the wires when they fly over.”

Loss Grief Sadness Depression Ghosts Spiders Bereavement Crows Ghost Town

Book:Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

Source: Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“My sadness is a thousand-foot well; gratitude is a rope keeping me from drowning.”

Loss Grief Sadness Gratitude Depression Survival Bereavement Drowning Well Emotional Wellness

Book:Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

Source: Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I never thought I would feel lucky to have pain dripping from my pores, pain stuck to the pads of my fingers, to the bottoms of my feet, to have pain become the core of my identity in an instant, but here I am.”

Pain Suffering Loss Sadness Gratitude Depression Bereavement

Book:Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

Source: Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“i took into body my own self & thought i’d die from so much exposure to my own bereavement”

Death Poetry Loss Grief Sadness Poem Bereavement

Author:Yesenia Montilla

“Every pore mourns. Not the brain, nor the chest where bereavement nests, but the body, whole-- how it burns. The ache of new bone being grown.”

Death Poetry Loss Grief Sadness Poem Mourning Bereavement Aching

Book:Book of Hours: Poems

Source: Book of Hours: Poems

“Gone you are and before I, another star to beautify the sky. Take me with you for I thirst to die, you never did wish to see me cry”

Love Sadness Depression Grief And Loss Death Of A Loved One Bereavement Loss Of Family Crying Quotes

Book:Adrift in Acheron

Source: Adrift in Acheron

“When my grandfather died, we let the roof get a little grey and the two banyans in the backyard took each other in their arms and, weeping, filled with spider webs.”

Grief Sadness Grief And Loss Bereavement Sadness Quotes

Book:Speed & Kentucky Ham

Source: Speed & Kentucky Ham

“The death of Robert G. Ingersoll, on July 21, 1899, was one of the most widely -- noted events of that year in the civilized world. It was also one of the most widely and profoundly regretted, -- the most deeply deplored. Everywhere, the wisest knew (and the noblest felt) that the cause of humanity had met its greatest loss. To many thousands who realized the intellectual amplitude, the moral heroism and grandeur, the boundless generosity and sympathy, the tenderness and affection, of this incomparable man, his passing was as an intimate and bitter bereavement. Ingersoll was doubtless known, personally and otherwise, to more people than any other American who had not sat in the presidential chair; and, notwithstanding either the number or the wishes of his critics, his death probably brought genuine grief to more hearts than has that of any other individual in our history. Twice before, 'a Nation bowed and wept'; this time, a people.”

Source: Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation

“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.”

Inspirational Death Faith Hope Loss Grief Future Optimism Endurance Bereavement

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Loss is only temporary when you believe in God!”

“Grief brings many false dawns, but a solicitude of normality will undoubtedly return.”

Grief Heartache Grief And Loss Bereavement Grief Quotes

Author:Kevin Ansbro

“Time possesses emotional potency. For persons whom suffer from of bereavement, time possesses a healing capacity. Passage of time cures heartache by dimming the mind’s attunement to painful occurrences. For some people, the passage of time is akin to placing a welcomed physical boundary between themselves and past horrors. Passage of time allows us to forget and the ability to forget is medicinal. Time acts as a mental barrier between our present mental state and the pain that we once felt.”

Grief Healing Heartache Grief And Loss Bereavement Forgetting Emotional Pain Healing The Past Passage Of Time Grief And Healing Healing Insights Grief And Loss Quotes Passage Of Time Memories

Book:Dead Toad Scrolls

Source: Dead Toad Scrolls

“The joy of being observed ran so deep that Breuer believed the real pain of old age, bereavement, outliving one's friends, was the absence of scrutiny - the horror of living an unobserved life.”

Life Joy Old Age Bereavement Unobserved

Book:When Nietzsche Wept

Source: When Nietzsche Wept

“I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. Verse XXVII”

Love Poetry Loss Sorrow Consolation Bereavement

Book:In Memoriam

Source: In Memoriam

“Grief is a flower on the tree of love.”

Love Life Spirituality Grief Healing Life Philosophy Poetic Death Of A Loved One Bereavement Life After Loss

Book:Soul Comfort: Uplifting Insights Into the Nature of Grief, Death, Consciousness and Love for Transformation

Source: Soul Comfort: Uplifting Insights Into the Nature of Grief, Death, Consciousness and Love for Transformation

“Some people pass by, Some people pass through, and Some people pass on.”

Life Philosophy Tragedy Death And Dying Death Of A Loved One Bereavement Life After Death Special People

Author:Johnnie Dent Jr.

“The dead with the dead, the living with the living.”

Death Living Mourning Bereavement Life Goes On

Book:Perceval: The Story of the Grail, with the Continuations

Source: Perceval: The Story of the Grail, with the Continuations

“Thankfully, our disappointments matter to God, and He has a way of taking even some of the bitterest moments we go through and making them into something of great significance in our life. It’s hard to understand it at the time. Not one of us wants that thread when it is being woven in. Not one of us says, 'I can hardly wait to see where this is going to fit.' We all say at that moment, 'This is not the pattern I want.”

Grief Disappointment Bereavement

Author:Ravi Zacharias

“How quickly my life has become another life. How pitiless this becoming is, and yet how slow am I to adapt.”

Change Loss Grief Mourning Bereavement Loss Of A Loved One Bereft Death Of A Parent Emptiness In Heart

Book:Notes on Grief

Source: Notes on Grief

“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.”

Inspirational Death Growth Loss Grief Compassion Resilience Recovery Bereavement

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering.”

Suffering Loss Grief Bereavement

Book:We Bereaved

Source: We Bereaved

“It's okay to not be okay, it means your mind is trying to heal itself. Persevering pain for those who live, the sun will rise once again.”

Death Suffering Grief Grieving Grief And Loss Death Of A Loved One Bereavement Mental Health Awareness Bereaved

Book:Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

Source: Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“The suffering at such times [of bereavement] can be great, I know. But it is somehow comforting to learn, even through suffering, how large and powerful love is.”

Love Suffering Bereavement

Book:The Analog Sea Review: Number Two

Source: The Analog Sea Review: Number Two

“From now on Anne saw herself as someone indelibly marked by suffering. Her letters to Sarah often ended with an allusion to her tragic history of bereavement, for she took to signing them "your poor unfortunate faithful Morley.”

Suffering Tragic Bereavement Queen Anne Anne Somerset

Book:Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

Source: Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Looking at death can be life-affirming. It doesn’t need to mire us in thoughts of uselessness, nihilism, self-recrimination, and indifference to the future. Just a reminder that our days are numbered invites us to consider our blessings, strengthen our resolve to carry on, and escalate our compassion for all creatures, great and small.”

Death Suffering Loss Future Aging Bereavement

Book:Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss

Source: Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss

“I felt great empathy for my friend, as one form of cancer after another emerged to challenge him. I felt sympathy for his suffering that surely clawed at his daily routines, always active and busy, but he rarely verbalized complaints while courageously challenging his archenemy. He met pain and physical decline with 600-calorie workouts; he discarded anxieties somewhere along innumerable running trails; he faced death by running through life at full stride.”

Suffering Loss Grief Aging Cancer Bereavement Hospice

Book:Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss

Source: Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time 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.”

Love Inspirational Care Death Loss Grief Bereavement

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Miss was a word that couldn’t quite express the hollow pit of my stomach filled with nothing but cold gusts of air where the intestines should have been, walking around with a gaping hole in my chest where my heart had been pulled out from, feeling hollow within and without. It was a missing that filled me up, an absence that was a presence, a bereavement that wasn’t a release.”

Heart Grief Missing Mourning Bereavement

Book:More Things in Heaven and Earth

Source: More Things in Heaven and Earth

“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.”

Inspirational Heart Death Loss Grief Resilience Bereavement

Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Source: Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“I feel disconnected from the people who I know have not experienced the exposed nerves of a close loved one yanked by pliers from one's jaws. I am different from them now. They can’t know the festering wound staining my teeth red, can't know the taste of salt and iron in everything I eat.”

Pain Death Loss Grief Cancer Trauma Bereavement

Book:Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

Source: Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“Two great pains mark my grief trail like cairns: knowing that it was going to happen, and it happening. But unlike cairns, I can never navigate back the way I came.”

Pain Loss Grief Depression Cancer Bereavement Diagnosis Cairns

Book:Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

Source: Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

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Bereavement Quotes