Grief Inspirational Quotes

Despite countless prayers for Joseph to be safe, God said no. His plan remains a mystery. I have had to accept that mystery and trust Him in the dark. ~ Shelley Ramsey

Never go for someone that represents something that is more of a fantasy than reality in this crazy world of lonely people, unless it is for the shortest time possible, and unless you have clearly figured out an exit strategy. ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

When someone is mourning, there is absolutely nothing you could say to alleviate their pain. Just sit with them, hold their hands, and be present and compassionate. ~ Anoir Ou-Chad

Remember that a fresh breath of life follows every sigh of exasperation. Breathe in, breathe out, and ENJOY every moment. It is how everything begins and ends. - Charmainism ~ Charmaine Smith Ladd

We remember the people who show up in our darkest hours. ~ Shauna L. Hoey

You have no idea how grief will take you. The same with severe illness, motherhood, any profound experience. You don't know yourself. Others don't know you. These events show who you are. And you'll be surprised, shocked even. You'll feel the way you feel when you've done a particularly offensive-smelling shit – That couldn't possibly have come out of me – and start to rationalize it – Must be that bag of pistachios I ate earlier, or perhaps I am unwell. You can't believe you could do something so foul and unrecognizable. Something so outside yourself. ~ Viv Albertine

Why do we complicate life, when it was meant to be very simple? ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Why not laugh again, and let your joy be my monument? ~ Stephanie Roberts

Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul. ~ Francis Weller

Before the crisis, my life moved along like a well-planned play. I showed up and acted my part while the script directed the flow. The devastation demanded I grieve while the play of my life continued around me. I wished I could stop the spinning stage long enough to catch my breath. ~ Shauna L. Hoey

It will get better but grief will always accompany us, in one way or another...but it is important that we embrace the grief as you would a close friend, because another aspect of our grief is love. ~ Louise Suzanne Boyd

I was scared of living a life not worth the living. Why did I deserve to live when my sister had died? I was responsible now for two lives, my sister's and my own, and, damn, I'd better live well. ~ Nina Sankovitch

Maybe there is no one way to deal with grief, but knowing that we're not totally alone is the best we can do. ~ Ann Benjamin

There came a moment in this journey when I freely realized that the lives most of lead are small. Important, but small. Our radius reaches family, clients, friends for whom we do selfless and amazing feats. But our sphere of influence is local ... So our illnesses/deaths are small, too. Not unimportant. Just local in nature ... - 209 ~ Robin Romm

On grief. We know where we've been. We know where we want to be. ~ Wylie R. Weeks

In a dark time, the eye begins to see. ~ Theodore Roethke

I've attempted to flood the path with light where I could, and where I could not I've wanted at least to hold up a candle so that others coming this way might not stumble too painfully. ~ Jim Beaver

The child's heart beat: but she was growing in the wrong place inside her extraordinary mother, south of safe...she and her mother were rushed to the hospital, where her mother was operated on by a brisk cheerful diminutive surgeon who told me after the surgery that my wife had been perhaps an hour from death from the pressure of the child growing outside the womb, the mother from the child growing, and the child from growing awry; and so my wife did not die, but our mysterious child did...Not uncommon, an ectopic pregnancy, said the surgeon...Sometimes, continued the surgeon, sometimes people who lose children before they are born continue to imagine the child who has died, and talk about her or him, it's such an utterly human thing to do, it helps deal with the pain, it's healthy within reason, and yes, people say to their other children that they actually do, in a sense, have a sister or brother, or did have a sister or brother, and she or he is elsewhere, has gone ahead, whatever the language of your belief or faith tradition. You could do that. People do that, yes. I have patients who do that, yes...

One summer morning, as I wandered by a river, I remembered an Irish word I learned long ago, and now whenever I think of the daughter I have to wait to meet, I find that word in my mouth: dunnog, little dark one, the shyest and quietest and tiniest of sparrows, the one you never see but sometimes you sense, a flash in the corner of your eye, a sweet sharp note alr ~ Brian Doyle

What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside. ~ Leo Tolstoy

You can't say you love man as an individual if you have not dealt with the person's complex personality, his or her unfamiliar habits, disturbing impulses and biological makeup. ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Heartache purged layers of baggage I didn't know I carried. Gifts hide under the layers of grief. ~ Shauna L. Hoey

Some part of me broke in prayer that morning, and some part of me was reborn as I gave myself fully and completely to prayer and to God in that moment. ~ Ariana Carruth

Many people tried comforting us with words. But there are no consoling words! I really just wanted people to be quiet. I appreciated those who cried with me, hugged me, and offered a brief prayer, but words were unnecessary. ~ Shelley Ramsey

Here is Abraham Lincoln's touching condolence letter to 22-year-old Fanny McCullough, the daughter of a long-time friend:

"Dear Fanny

It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln ~ Abraham Lincoln

There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left. ~ Johnny Cash

Grief is a funny thing because you don't have to carry it with you for the rest of your life. After a bit you set it down by the roadside and walk on and leave it. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher

Just as it is impossible to explain childbirth to a woman who has never given birth, it is impossible to explain child loss to a person who has never lost a child. ~ Lynda Cheldelin Fell

I was walking along one day and smacked into this wall called hope deferred and depression and...grief.
And it wouldn't budge.
After some time, I realized this darkness I'd found myself in was called grief.
I'd been through so much trauma, everything about me- including my body, emotions and soul, was shutting down and going into preservation mode.
I entered a season where the battle caught up with me and I realized just how badly I'd been beaten and torn up, inside and out. ~ Ashley Nikole

People go through challenging moments of losing people and of having their life threatened from illness and real grief. But they get through it. And that's the testament to the human spirit and it's -we are fragile, but we also are divine. ~ Sheryl Crow

It is a divine gift to find the light inside while in the midst of despair. ~ Leta B.

Life is so sweet even though it is full of lies and half truths... ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief. ~ Rumi

It will be better to spent our energy on reality; the tangible facts, not thoughts of the past. ~ Durgesh Satpathy

The young, thought Sharma, have this ability to suffer much in the time of grief, unlike the old who have seen enough sorrow and know it shall not stay forever. The young hardly know grief is like a thunderstorm. It comes whispering softly at first, a distant hum, a halo of vehemence in the sky, and then there is a sudden, violent, and copious outpouring; that drenches everything that comes in its way. It darkens the sky and turns every inch of green terrain dusky grey. But they don't realize its ferocity will become less with the lapse of time, and the sun will shine bright and warm, and wash the land golden, and no one would be able to tell there had been a storm. They scarcely understand this essential unfolding of grief isn't meant to last forever, and eventually, it shall come to pass. ~ Neena H. Brar

There are degrees of obsession, of awareness, of grief, of insanity. ~ Nina LaCour

Stories aren't facts, Cait, they're not details. Stories are feelings. You've got your feelings, haven't you?"
"Too many," I said.
"Well, that's all you need." He put his hand on mine. "Cry yourself a story, love. It works. Believe me."
So that's what I did, I cried myself a story.
And this is it. ~ Kevin Brooks

I know you are afraid; you are afraid to get hurt again. But I also know that you are not meant to grieve forever. ~ Christina Rasmussen

When we share in each other's grief and pain, we lighten it. Or maybe we just give each other permission to feel it fully and, through that act of acceptance, the grief becomes more bearable. Because, like the rain, tears too have an end. And with deep emotions, we are open to each other in unexpected ways. ~ Karpov Kinrade

You know you are getting old when yesterday turns out to be a fading memory you have difficulties recollecting, when today becomes a challenge that is hard to grasp and when tomorrow promises an uncertainty that you dread encountering. ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy. ~ Orson Scott Card

I will always wear this scar. It's called love. ~ Wylie R. Weeks

Should I rejoice in the inferiority of my fate?" - John Lockwood ~ Noorilhuda

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

My experience is that God will meet us anywhere. Grieving badly and under the covers? He's there. Sitting at the cemetery, wishing it were you? You're not alone. Sitting on your child's bedroom floor still in your nightgown in the middle of the afternoon? He's holding you up. God will meet you anywhere ~ Shelley Ramsey

The circumstances of our lives are pieces of a larger scheme in the puzzle of life, and in His Perfect Wisdom, the pieces fit. ~ Renae Jones

You endure what is supposedly unbearable, and before you know it, you would have done the impossible by bearing the unbearable. ~ Donovan

April 11, 2004
Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the rules of thought, feeling, and behavior in these circumstances? It seems like there should be a rule book somewhere that lays out everything exactly the way one should respond to a loss like this. I'd surely like to know if I'm doing it right. Am I whining enough or too much? Am I unseemly in my occasional moments of lightheartedness? At what date and I supposed to turn off the emotion and jump back on the treadmill of normalcy? Is there a specific number of days or decades that must pass before I can do something I enjoy without feeling I've betrayed my dearest love? And when, oh when, am I ever really going to believe this has happened? Next time you're in a bookstore, as if there's a rule book.
11:54 p.m.
Jim ~ Jim Beaver

From a spiritual perspective, what is it that we must learn from loss? When we think deeply we realize that loss is an opening through which we can question our superficial existence and move towards something better. ~ Pulkit Sharma

Your lingering presence erodes me. Heartbeat by heartbeat. Cell by aging cell. Washing away any sense of self I ever had. Intruding into a nothingness I've struggled to find the pieces to fill. A jar filled with stones, piled with pebbles, topped with sand, only to be left with the knowledge that water, with enough time and persistence, has the power to wash it all away.
Your name is on my lips. Frozen. A familiar cadence of syllables that once soothed me.
A name I can't speak. Can't think of.
Not on this shore, at our lake. Not on this day. When only a year ago, with a foreshadowing that is now ice in my veins, you stood next to me, in this jacket, your hand in mine, so warm, and stared out at this expanse and whispered in awe, This is what a cold lake looks like. ~ S.A. McAuley

I pulled a dirty black sweatshirt from the laundry basket on my son's floor and tried to drink in his scent, to savor the essence of my sweet boy. I inhaled it long and hard, wanting to permanently implant all of him in my brain, to make him last forever. ~ Shelley Ramsey

If he didn't love so deeply, he couldn't grieve so deeply. But he's drowning in it. ~ Dee Henderson

Unsettling emotions are capable of messing up the most beautiful minds in this world. ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

He was footprints in the snow.

Not all loves are meant to last.
Some are meant to grace you briefly,
before fading,
somehow leaving the impression
that the world is just a little bit better
because you had been touched by
something so beautiful it was impossible
to grasp. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

There was no need to analyze the feelings that the people caught in the commission of the amorous act, held for each other, for it was literally written in their hands. ~ Noorilhuda

Empty Spaces

I wanted to feel less.
To not be burdened by emotion,
To not feel sadness,
To not know loss.
I envied the inanimate,
The trees that stand proudly in winter,
Not missing their leaves.
I wanted to be weightless,
To not experience limitation.
I didn't want time to pass,
The blur of days, months, years.
It moved too quickly,
I wanted to grasp on,
Hold it.
It eluded me,
Intangible,
Like light.
I wanted to preserve life before you were gone.
I didn't want to know grief.

But the pain kept me connected.
It meant that I loved you,
It meant that I would always be a little broken,
It meant that our love filled all of the empty spaces.
It meant that you would be with me... forever. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The deeper the grief, the more radiant the love. ~ Rumi

Remember to add the most important ingredient to every recipe you make - your love! ~ Diana Silva

A day will come when God will set everything right and wipe the tears from our eyes, and in that day death will be no more. But in the meantime, we can take comfort in the fact that God understands our pain. In our moments of immense grief and heartache, God is weeping with us. Scripture says that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). He has a special place in His heart for hurting people. Therefore, far from being pointless, suffering is an opportunity to worship God and experience His loving presence in a deep and profound way. ~ David Wilber

When my muffin top makes an appearance after a dedicated weekend of pizza indulging, when I feel too tired to write and all my words sound boring, when my students aren't laughing at my jokes, I am still enough. ~ Michelle Elaine Kennedy

She wasn't broken.
She was made up of a thousand tiny little cracks.
She was always trying to keep herself glued together.
But it was hard, she felt too much.
No matter what she did, her emotions seeped through,
sometimes in drips, other times in floods,
She felt everything,
the heaviness of the clouds right before rain,
the rush of the subway cars as they left the station,
the feeling of goodbye as she watched someone walk away,
wondering if it was the last time she would see them,
the feeling of a kiss lingering on her cheek for hours.
She felt the loneliness of the sun as it hung in the sky,
shedding light on the day,
without companion.

And she longed to give as much as the sun.
If she could brighten someone's day,
bestow warmth were there was cold,
make someone smile, give someone hope,
then for a minute, an hour, maybe even a day,
the cracks would fill with love
and the pain would become only a voice,
reminding her that her pain was important.
She knew how fragile life was, how hard,
and how precious.

She wanted to feel it all. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Grief was an ocean. We were sitting in the middle of it on makeshift life rafts, never knowing if we'd make it to shore. ~ Lilliana Anderson

was it scripted by God or I am playing with my life. ~ Durgesh Satpathy

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

Beyond aspects of pain that are physical, thought Oppenheimer, sickness or injury or privation, beyond the so-called obvious, suffering can be a work of art. It can be made of buried and rising things, helpless and undiscovered, song of frustrated want, silence after desire. It can be the test of the self falling short, constrained, distorted, disturbed or rebuffed, the vacuum left by longing, call without an answer. ~ Lydia Millet

When everything looks the same on the outside, yet everything has changed on the inside, we break. We break in half.
This is the duality of loss. ~ Christina Rasmussen

It's okay to cry. Giving in to the tears is terrifying,
like freefalling to earth without a parachute. But it's vital to our wellbeing as we process the deep anguish. ~ Lynda Cheldelin Fell

We all just want a life that matters!! ~ Dianna Donnely

Frances was not only grieving her sister's loss, but also striving to reconcile in her mind the tragedy with the idea of a loving God. Restless and aching, Frances climbed mountains in the Swiss Alps, where their hotel had a view of beautiful Mount Rigi. ~ Nancy Carpentier Brown

I didn't say a word. He wouldn't be using oxygen. K2 is more dangerous than Everest. ~ Susan Oakey-Baker

We all must part sometime, be it in death or with time, but no matter what our time together continues as long as one or the other is alive to remember. ~ E.Z. Michaels

Everyone who lives long enough to love deeply will experience great losses. Don't let fear of loss, or the losses themselves, take away your ability to enjoy the wonderful life that is yours. ~ Barbara "Cutie" Cooper

I realized, it is not the time that heals, but what we do within that time that creates positive change. ~ Diane Dettmann

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

Grieving is an expression of gratitude, and that expression doesn't have to be rushed. ~ Carolyn Wells

Books allowed my imagination to take flight and it hasn't landed yet ~ Lynn Payne

The effect of sailing is produced by a judicious arrangement of the sails to the direction of the wind. ~ William Falconer

When two or more hearts unite, anything is possible. ~ Molly Friedenfeld

If you ask the wrong question, of course, you get the wrong answer.
We find in design it's much more important and difficult to ask the right question.
Once you do that, the right answer becomes obvious. ~ Amory Lovins

Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go. ~ James Baldwin

Blaming others for your mistakes you powerless to change your life. Taking responsibility for your mistakes gives you power to change your life. ~ Karon Waddell

Before and after the funeral I never ceased to cry and be miserable, but it makes me ashamed when I think back on that sadness of mine, seeing that always in it was an element of self-love - now a desire to show that I prayed more than any one else, now concern about the impression I was producing on others, now an aimless curiosity which caused me to observe Mimi's cap or the faces of those around me. I despised myself for not experiencing sorrow to the exclusion of everything else, and I tried to conceal all other feelings: this made my grief insincere and unnatural. Moreover, I felt a kind of enjoyment in knowing that I was unhappy and I tried to stimulate my sense of unhappiness, and this interest in myself did more than anything else to stifle real sorrow in me. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Every second a seeker can start over,
For his life's mistakes
Are initial drafts
And not the final version. ~ Sri Chinmoy

My imagination is my temple where I meditate and pray to change human consciousness and awareness so that I may find peace. ~ Debasish Mridha

The more time you spend thinking, the less time you spend doing. The less time you spend doing, the more you watch others do. This formula never equals success. ~ Beatrice McClearn

When we treat man as he is we make him worse than he is.
When we treat him as if he already was what he potentially could be
We make him what he should be. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Love is a drug for me and I am addicted to it. ~ Debasish Mridha

She said America was a spoiled child ignorant of grief. ~ George Saunders

Its not about what we take with us when we die,
Its about what we leave behind. ~ Sandesh Hukpachongbang

find out yourself on purpose... or you will get nothing at last. ~ Toge Aprilianto

Perhaps people who don't value other people's time are actually reflecting a misunderstanding they have themselves; that of not giving appropriate value to their own time. ~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Sometimes the elements of our life present us with a challenge that is an initiation in disguise, a fire walk that burns your lower nature right out of you so that you are able to adapt to a higher level of consciousness. ~ Caroline Myss

I stressed out trying to figure out what I could say. I ate licorice. I stressed some more. I ate Dots. I stressed out even more-and wiped out a bag of Swedish Fish. And then I wrote. ~ Maria Shriver

Sometimes it's our darkest moments that make us shine. ~ Z.R. Southcombe

Whatever comes what may ... take comfort in knowing that we were all born with the ability to rise above it all. ~ Timothy Pina

The Path of Purpose is paved with healing. That healing goes as deep as the wound or only as deep as you let it. ~ Linda F. Williams

They invent a howling theatrical language through which it becomes possible to express the grief of the whole world, a language understood by no one but the two of them. ~ Unica Zurn

Be conscious of your pleasantness. ~ Debasish Mridha

Death finds you in such strange poses. How long can you cry, until the rivers gone and dry. ~ Daniel Bashford

A day in which you learn something isn't a complete loss. ~ David Eddings

Only you can stop you. ~ Kal S. Davian