Coping With Grief Quotes

We should be sure that in our pursuit of happiness and positivity, we do not lose our ability to experience the other side of life, as well. Feelings of grief and respect for the departed, are honourable thoughts to have and honourable feelings to feel. In seeking happiness, we must not be so afraid of sorrow, that we lose the ability to cope with it properly. There is a healthy way to cope with both sorrow and joy; both need to be looked straight in the face, in the eyes. ~ C. JoyBell C.

For those struggling with grief, there's no timetable. It can last months, years, or longer. There is no rush. Give yourself permission to take however long it may be to fully heal from your loss. ~ Dana Arcuri

But there is no such man; for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words. ~ William Shakespeare

His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which moved him to pity, and its own particular movements which he tried hard to follow. He had learned from it how to keep his eyes down on the road, so that he could see no one, and how important it was never to look back - although there were times when memories of an earlier life filled him with grief and he lay face down upon the grass until the sweet rank odour of the earth brought him to his senses. But slowly he forgot where it was he had come from, and what it was he was escaping. ~ Peter Ackroyd

Aisling tumbled out, his gold eyes going wild about the room to take in all of them. His beak clicked as he worked it in silence. Then, as the breaking of ice may bring a cascade of water from winter's falls, the griffin's voice - no longer that small shrill copy of Taryn's, but his own true voice - poured plaintively from him. "Mom!"
Taryn jerked around, her mouth dropping open.
Aisling bounded toward her and she swept him up into a tight embrace. He clutched at her shoulders with his talons, burying his head under her chin, and cried, "Mom! Yoo…rrrrr…oh…kay!"
"Great gods," Antilles heard himself say and he shot Tonka a startled glance. "He cannot be speaking?!"
The horseman merely smiled. "And why not?" he murmured, resettling himself on his padded bolster. "For has he not been a miracle from the very first?"
"You're talking," Taryn cried, true delight painting itself over the grief that had seemed to mask her since the dawning of this terrible day. She was radiant once more, burning with a joy and a healing light all its own as she hugged her griffin close. "Oh, my fierce prince! My big boy!"
"Yoo…rrrr…Ai-sing," whispered the griffin. His raptor's eyes flicked to Antilles and his naked wings fluttered. "Tilly. Yoo…rrrr…sun-shy?"
Taryn giggled, her face pressed to fur.
"Aye, lad," Antilles said, tossing his broken horn. "My sun and my moon and all my starry skies. ~ R. Lee Smith

I think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Living in this city, you developed a certain relationship with violence and news of violence: you expected it, dreaded it, and then when it happened, you worked hard to look away from it, because there was nothing you could do about it - not even grieve, because you knew that it would happen again and maybe in a way that was worse than before. Grieving is possible only when you know you have come to an end, when there is nothing more to follow. This city was full of bottled-up grief. ~ Bilal Tanweer

You'd think I'd be used to this agony by now , but it always catches me off guard. Anyone who says grief fades over time is a fucking liar. It never goes away. It just gets better at hiding. You never know when it's going to spring out of the shadows and sucker punch you in the gut.
Grief is a real asshole. ~ Chelsea Sedoti

Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women, kitchen of love, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes, the men, they come with keys, and sometimes the men, they come with hammers. ~ Warsan Shire

In other words each of those calm and melancholy days on which I did not see her, coming one after the other without interruption, continuing too without prescription (unless some busy-body were to meddle in my affairs), was a day not lost but gained. Gained to no purpose, it might be, for presently they would be able to pronounce that I was healed. Resignation, modulating our habits, allows certain elements of our strength to be indefinitely increased. Those - so wretchedly inadequate - that I had had to support my grief, on the first evening of my rupture with Gilberte, had since multiplied to an incalculable power. ~ Marcel Proust

If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. ~ C.S. Lewis

In the immediate aftermath of Chris's death, Bubba dealt with his grief by playing. He played all the time, with anyone and everyone who came to the house. It was his way of staying busy and not focusing on sadness.
Angel, younger, was a little more direct, though quieter. She often looked toward her brother as her spokesman and maybe test case: his emotions guided hers. She expressed her connection with her dad directly, mentioning that she often felt him still close to her. I came to take that as a comfort and reassurance: Chris walked with us still. ~ Taya Kyle

With preference came point of view; with point of view, personality; with personality, uniqueness; with uniqueness, grief. ~ Jane Smiley

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,
call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again? ~ A.E. Housman

At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob's silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of the table, as if playing a piano. A delighted Jacob mimicked the actor's actions. My throat filled with tears. I met Ben's eyes across the table, where he sat straight with pride next to his son. He was enjoying the show just as much as I was. Jacob was in his element, interacting with an actor from his favorite movie. The other men at the table were part of the set: Mike, the owner of the comic book store, who had made the entire thing possible, and the Mandalorin Mercs, new friends of the little boy who had
become one of their own, a comrade in distress. ~ Mary Potter Kenyon

You see the suffering of children all the time nowadays. Wars and famines are played out before us in our living rooms, and almost every week there are pictures of children who have been through unimaginable loss and horror. Mostly they look very calm. You see them looking into the camera, directly at the lens, and knowing what they have been through you expect to see terror or grief in their eyes, yet so often there's no visible emotion at all. They look so blank it would be easy to imagine that they weren't feeling much.
And though I do not for a moment equate what I went through with the suffering of those children, I do remember feeling as they look. I remember Matt talking to me
others as well, but mostly Matt
and I remember the enormous effort required even to hear what he said. I was so swamped by unmanageable emotions that I couldn't feel a thing. It was like being at the bottom of the sea. ~ Mary Lawson

I'm glad you're here, Lila," he said. "I hope you feel that way, too."
Devon stared at me, a mix of emotions swirling through his eyes. I saw everything I had that first day at the Razzle Dazzle - the guilt, grief, sorrow, and all the other burdens he carried in his heart.
And then there was that hot spark, a little darker and dimmer than before, but still burning all the same.
"Me too," I said.
Devon smiled, and that spark brightened just for a moment, and I felt an answering bit of warmth stir in my own heart. I nodded at him, and we both went back to our food, things a little less tense between us. A few seconds later, we were laughing, along with Oscar, as Mo and Felix talked over each other nonstop.
Somewhere between those laughs and all the others that morning, I realized something.
My home. My friends. My Family.
Sometimes, good things come in threes. ~ Jennifer Estep

If I could find one word
that would shudder the air
like that frightened sob,
that wordless prayer
of my newly-born,
who drew one breath,
and with unopened eyes
sank back into death;
If I could break the world's cold heart
with that cry,
then this grief would lift
and I could die. ~ Kenneth L. Patton

While I pressed the tissue to my face, Beck said, "Can I tell you something? There are a lot of empty boxes in your head, Sam."
I looked at him, quizzical. Again, it was a strange enough concept to hold my attention.
"There are a lot of empty boxes in there, and you can put things in them." Beck handed me another tissue for the other side of my face.
My trust of Beck at that point was not yet complete; I remember thinking that he was making a very bad joke that I wasn't getting. My voice sounded wary, even to me. "What kinds of things?"
"Sad things," Beck said. "Do you have a lot of sad things in your head?"
"No," I said.
Beck sucked in his lower lip and released it slowly. "Well, I do."
This was shocking. I didn't ask a question, but I tilted toward him.
"And these things would make me cry," Beck continued. "They used to make me cry all day long."
I remembered thinking this was probably a lie. I could not imagine Beck crying. He was a rock. Even then, his fingers braced against the floor, he looked poised, sure, immutable.
"You don't believe me? Ask Ulrik. He had to deal with it," Beck said. "And so you know what I did with those sad things? I put them in boxes. I put the sad things in the boxes in my head, and I closed them up and I put tape on them and I stacked them up in the corner and threw a blanket over them."
"Brain tape?" I suggested, with a little smirk. I was eight, after all.
Beck smiled, a weird private ~ Maggie Stiefvater

It is only when I am in communion with sorrow that I understand it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away. ~ Helen Keller

May I be an enemy to no one and the friend of what abides eternally.
May I never quarrel with those nearest me, and be reconciled quickly if I should.
May I never plot evil against others, and if anyone plot evil against me,
may I escape unharmed and without the need to hurt anyone else.
May I love, seek and attain only what is good.
May I desire happiness for all and harbor envy for none.
May I never find joy in the misfortune of one who has wronged me.
May I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself until I make reparation.
May I gain no victory that harms me or my opponent.
May I reconcile friends who are mad at each other.
May I, insofar as I can, give all necessary help to my friends and to all who are in need.
May I never fail a friend in trouble.
May I be able to soften the pain of the
grief stricken and give them comforting words.
May I respect myself.
May I always maintain control of my emotions.
May I habituate myself to be gentle, and never angry with others because of circumstances.
May I never discuss the wicked or what they have done, but know good people and follow in their footsteps.
[Prayer to practice the Golden Rule] ~ Eusebius

But here is the thing about anger: People hold onto it because letting go means dealing with pain. It is a coping strategy that seems to show strength and confidence, but in reality it shows how much you care about someone's actions, which leads to this question: Why is this person's respect so important to you? ~ Shannon L. Alder

The curious advantage of being able to survey the span of someone else's life, from start to finish, can seem peremptory, high-handed, forward. Grief doesn't seem entitlement enough for the arrogation of the divine powers of beginning and ending. We are uneasy with such omniscience. We do not possess it with regard to our own lives. But if this ability to see the whole of a life is God-like it also augurs a revolt against God: once a life is contained, made final, as if flattened within the pages of a diary, it becomes a smaller, contracted thing. It is just a life, one of millions, as arbitrary as everyone else's, a named tenancy that will soon become a nameless one; a life that we know, with horror, will be thoroughly forgotten within a few generations. At the very moment we play at being God, we also work against God, hurl down the script, refuse the terms of the drama, appalled by the meaninglessness and ephemerality of existence. Death gives birth to the first question - Why? - and seems to kill all the answers. ~ James Wood

She screamed, long and feral, that savage beast rising up in her chest like it would break her in half -tear her meat apart and emerge, blood-soaked and grief-starved, ready to die, ready to burn, ready to do whatever it took as long as she died with her enemies howling beneath her claws. ~ Hope Cook

Like Berlin, I was layered with guilt and destruction. I had caused grief as well as suffering it. I could never honestly point a finger without it turning around in mid-accusation. Olivia ~ Janet Fitch

There is an advantage, the research shows us, in being op­timistic. People who cope well tend to have an indelible belief that things will somehow turn out OK. They also tend to be confident.
They believe that they will be able to exert at least some control over
the outcome of even the most difficult life events. This is not to say that
optimistic people believe they can undo the past or stop certain things
from happening. Sometimes, even the hardiest of individuals are initially stunned after a tragedy. Nonetheless, fueled by their deep-rooted sense that they can and should be able to move on, they manage to gather their strength, regroup, and work toward restoring the balance in their lives.
Along with these optimistic, self-confident beliefs, people who cope
well also have a broader repertoire of behaviors. Simply put, they seem
to have more tools in their toolboxes. One example is how resilient
people express emotion. We think that, as a general rule, the more we
show what we are feeling, the better off we will be. This is especially
true when bad things happen to us, and it is actually a cornerstone of
the traditional grief work idea. ~ George A. Bonanno

Genius feels like an over extended Helium balloon about to burst, and everyone criticizes you for not having a conventional way of coping with it. ~ Solange Nicole

Twas a still, calm night and the moon's pale light
Shone over hill and dale
When friends mute with grief stood around the deathbed
Of their loved, lost Lily Lyle.
Heart as pure as forest lily
Never knowing guile,
Had its home within the bosom
Of sweet Lily Lyle. ~ Flora Thompson

when it is but it ain't

Some of us love badly.
Sometimes the love is the type of love that implodes.
Folds in on itself. Eats its insides.
Turns wine to poison.
Behaves poorly in restaurants.
Drinks. Kisses other people.
Comes back to your bed at 4am smelling like everything outside.
Asks about your ex. Is jealous of your ex.
Thinks everyone a rival.

Some of us love others badly, love ourselves worse.
Some of us love horrid, love beastly.
Love sick love anti light.
Sometimes the love can't go home at night,
can't sleep with itself, cannot contain itself,
catches fire, destroys the stomach,
strips buildings, goes missing.
Punches. Smashes heirlooms.
Tells lies. The best lies. F*s around.
Writes poems, impresses people.
Chases lovers into corners.
Leaves them longing. Sea sick.
Says yes. Means anything but.
Tricks the body.
Kills the body.
Dances wild
and walks away, smiling. ~ Yrsa Daley-Ward

I gave myself up to fruitless speculation, and was always looking for secluded places. I became particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I used to climb, I remember, on to the high wall, settle myself on it and sit there, a youth afflicted by such misery, solitude and grief that I would be overcome with self-pity. How I reveled in these melancholy feelings - how I adored them. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Hershey Pennsylvania was self-proclaimed as the "Sweetest Place On Earth," but less advertised than chocolate, it was also home to one of the state's largest Children's Hospitals. The streets lined with Hershey Kiss–shaped streetlamps that led excited children and families on vacation to chocolate tour rides and rollercoasters were the same exact streets that led anxious children and families to x-rays and MRIs on the worsts days of their lives.
Chocolate was being created on the same street that childhood diseases were being diagnosed. And that was life. The sweetest of sensations and the deepest of devastations live next door to each other. ~ Tessa Shaffer

Tonight I attend my thirty-fifth high school reunion with some trepidation.
I have not seen most of these former classmates for thirty-some years. I am not the same young girl they knew in high school. What they cannot know, what I am just realizing myself, is that I am not even the same person I was two years ago. ~ Mary Potter Kenyon

It was a sort of peace I have rarely enjoyed since. As if we were the only two souls on earth - all of nature ours to enjoy. I wondered why a creator who had dreamt such beauty would have slandered it with such evil. Such grief. Why He had not been content to leave it unspoilt. I still wonder. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

Creation is filled with soul-sick folks, colored and white, never knowing where they belong. They tangle everybody else up in their grief. ~ Jonathan Odell

As a child I had dealt with a lot of loss and grief. I was constantly losing my parents, losing my home, constantly moving around, living with this stranger, that stepfather, or whatever. ~ Erin Gray

We got dressed, and walked downstairs and into the parlor. Everyone was clean in the clean parlor, and waiting for supper, sitting patiently but unrelaxed; with labor past, with hands unbusied, with mind unmolested, they sat very tired waiting for their food and for their few hours of quiet and for their few hours of sleep; and for the next morning, and for the next evening, and for a Sunday, and for another week and Sunday; for autumn and for winter, for spring and for summer; for another year, for another ten; for the slow chemistry of change and age; for the loss of pigments and tissues, of senses and wits, of faculties and perceptions; for the silencing of all clamor and the sealing of all sight; for the final levelling of all desire, of all despair, of all joy, of all tribulations; for the final quelling of all fear and pride and love and disaffection; for the final dissolution of the flesh and of all that flesh must suffer, sickness of soul and body, fast-withering delight and clouded love, unkindness and grief and wrong beyond reckoning; for the final resolution of all the good they had wrought, and all the ill; they sat resting after battle, with quiet hands and unperceiving eyes, without emotion to receive once more the deliberate edge of evening. ~ James Agee

Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward. ~ Wendy Webb

There is never a reason good enough to be out of alignment with peace. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
--i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
--i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) ~ E.E. Cummings

It's not good to be alone when you feel bereft. It's better to be with people and share your grief, and not keep it locked up inside.
She said this dry-eyed, with not a tear, but somewhere deep inside her she was crying, screaming. ~ V.C. Andrews

I called a cab, still in my towel. I jumped in the cab before it had even stopped at the gate. I actually said, The nearest library with a cutting-edge professional grief- and trauma-therapy section, and step on it. ~ David Foster Wallace

The hoarder usually has been avoiding emotions for so long that getting back in touch with them is scary and painful. We want hoarders to reconnect with their emotions, and expressing anger is often the first step toward that goal. Anger is a powerful emotion, but it is often better to vent it than to succumb to a more debilitating and paralyzing emotion like grief or fear. ~ Matt Paxton

We are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering. ~ George Eliot

Of all my children, you were always the hardest on yourself. You were always looking for the right way to behave, so concerned you might make a mistake. But, darling, there are no mistakes. There are only our wishes, our actions, and the consequences that follow both. There are only events, how we cope with them, and what we learn from the coping."
"That's too easy," he said.
"On the contrary. It's monumentally difficult. ~ Elizabeth George

He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn't try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders.
...
The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted ~ Richard Yates

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss: Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. ~ Cassandra Clare

Over the years of seeing people suffer some terrible life events and situations, I am struck by those who chose to make the best of it and come back smiling and positive. Cruel as it may seem, you are still left with a choice to accept and move on into happiness or remain where you are and live with bitterness or anger. Anger is usually easier to hold on to than going through grief but anger doesn't help anyone ~ Steve Peters

Zhuangzi's wife died. When Huizu went to convey his condolences, he found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old," said Huizu. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing - this is going too far, isn't it?"

Zhuangzi said, "You're wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn't grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.

"Now she's going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't understand anything about fate. So I stopped. ~ Zhuangzi

A relationship is like a holiday from loneliness, beginning and ending in the same airport. The most awful thing about the end is that it reminds you so clearly of the beginning with the joy with which you set off. Everything is the same, yet everything has been inverted by grief. ~ Louis Buss