Grief Quotes

What we all share in common - the real reason for this book - is a desire to love better. To love ourselves in the midst of great pain, and to love another when the pain of this life grows too large for one person to hold. This book offers the skills needed to make that kind of love a reality.

~ Megan Devine

The reality of grief is far different from what others see from the outside. There is pain in this world that you can't be cheered out of. You don't need solutions. You don't need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it. You need someone to hold your hands while you stand there in blinking horror, staring at the hole that was your life. Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

~ Megan Devine

Every loss is valid. And every loss is not the same. You can't flatten the landscape of grief and say that everything is equal. It isn't.

~ Megan Devine

True comfort in grief is in acknowledging the pain, not in trying to make it go away. Companionship, not correction, is the way forward.

~ Megan Devine

Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

~ Megan Devine

When you try to take someone's pain away from them, you don't make it better. You just tell them it's not OK to talk about their pain.

~ Megan Devine

For this reason, it is well said that misfortune is sometimes good for something, for it teaches at the same time that it hurts.

~ Christine De Pizan

The name outlaw Christian describes the kind of Christian I am and the kind I’m setting myself free to become: namely, a follower of Jesus who no longer accepts cocky clichés, hackneyed hope, or snappy theodicies—defenses of God’s goodness and power—that explain away evil and suffering with a theo-magical sleight of hand. An outlaw Christian doesn’t condemn questions or discourage doubt. Instead, an outlaw Christian seeks to live an authentic life of faith and integrity, and chooses the defy the unwritten laws governing suffering, grief, and hope that our culture and religious traditions have asked us to ingest. The faith of an outlaw Christian is bold, outspoken, and active in a world of pain.

~ Jacqueline A. Bussie

Later, you told me what your mother had said. How your father, the farmer, rose up slowly. You told me how your mother wailed on the other end of the phone, grieving her loss and complaining about the basketball of a goitre perched on her shoulder. She told you, your father walked onto the veranda and saw a chook floating ten feet above the ground. The chook didn’t flap a feather and just sat there brooding, swaying in the breeze.

~ Jon Gresham

Trap. Horrible trap. At one’s birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby also must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget. Lord, what is this?

~ George Saunders

If you did not live lovingly and love deeply, you would not feel the pain of separation. But neither would you feel the joy, passion, and happiness that living fully and loving deeply bring.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

Love is a powerful force. There is nothing in this world, no other energy, as powerful as the force of genuine, unconditional love.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

May you know always that you are never alone, that life and love are eternal, and that you are extraordinary.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

I have been blessed by those I cannot see, but whose presence I feel. I know that I am not alone and hope that you, too, will find that, even in the most difficult situations, you are fully supported by the universe. All that is required is that you ask for help. It is there waiting for you.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

There is an old phrase, ‘hiding in plain sight.’ This is where we find the loved one we miss so much. All we need to do is open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

Hope comes in the form of synchronicities. When one even occurs and is followed by another, which is in complete alignment with the first, we sense we are not alone. We know, intuitively throughout our beings, that what we are experiencing is the universe lovingly embracing us.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

Give yourself permission to see and feel the extraordinary events in your own life. In internalizing them, you also will find your perspective about life and its meaning will change, resulting in growth and expansion of your soul.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

Loss pushes us to difficult places where we have not been before. We often question whether or not we have the courage and stamina to survive the pain. However, we often are given gifts that tell us that we are not alone and that we can withstand the journey.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

When we learn to attribute meaning to the events in our lives, we connect with our Higher Purpose, Higher Wisdom, or Source; we become Master of the Self. A gradual process, this is often tied to loss and to love.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

What is hope? Like love, it is hard to define, but easy to recognize, a state of being that compels us to go on. It is a feeling that we have what we need to continue our journey to the next moment.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

We all need hope. As souls, we journey in physical bodies, traversing a life that is dually lived. We experience safety through attachment to the physical world, but we also are comforted and cared for by a trust in the non-physical, spiritual part of our reality. Two different roads, available for us and from which we choose, moment by moment.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

When we understand the illusory nature of life and the profound power of eternal love, which enables us to create miracles and experience the presence of our deceased loved ones, we find ourselves living with joy, hope and peace.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

Filling ourselves and living with the energy of love feels wonderful. And because this energy resonates at a high vibrational level, it also attracts into our lives other high, vibrational experiences, many of which feel quite miraculous.

~ Susan Barbara Apollon

If that’s the case, I understand why emotions are hard for you. You’ve numbed yourself to make room for the grief you carry.

~ Brent Jones

I gave up drinking before my twentieth birthday. I haven’t touched the stuff since. And I’ve discovered that not everyone who does horrible things is a horrible person.

~ Brent Jones

See, you’ve got to understand, son. There’s two types of guys in this world. There’s guys . . . who think they’re in control, and guys like us who live in the moment. Who accept life as it is.

~ Brent Jones

It’s like you’re always living in your head. . . . Relax and appreciate your surroundings a little.

~ Brent Jones

I lost someone close to me once . . . Taught me to live in the moment. Life is short, you know?

~ Brent Jones

It feels like I’m stuck in one spot. It’s been this way for a long time. I know you understand, but now you’re moving on without me. And I—I’m not ready to be alone.

~ Brent Jones

And when hope returns to us, it will be with a passion and power to match every ounce of this crushing despair and pain, every fiery shred of determination that carried us when hope failed. It will claim us with a courage that will make the goddess herself quake and doubt herself.

~ Rachel L. Schade

There is never a guarantee of survival, no matter your strength or skill or wit. There is only the day you are conceived and the day you die, and all else is a series of moments you either embrace or endure.

~ Rachel L. Schade

It’s like everyone has their own little recipe for happiness, but no one really seems all that happy.

~ Brent Jones

Happiness isn’t something you work toward, the same way misery isn’t something you work toward.

~ Brent Jones

He pondered his turmoil, wondering which he feared most—losing his father or being alone in the world. Both were inevitable. Neither could be stopped or slowed down. All he could do now was brace for impact.

~ Brent Jones

I know it is difficult to believe in your own courage or fortitude when everything inside of you feels weak and shattered. But do not believe what you feel. You will not be easily broken.

~ Rachel L. Schade

What else has kept any of us going, but love of someone or the memory of that love?

~ Rachel L. Schade

We weren’t that different after all, our souls laden with the same ache of loss, our hearts bursting with the same longing to save what remained of all we loved.

~ Rachel L. Schade

Embrace the pain

~ Jude Gibbs

Sometimes, hope is even harder to bear than grief.

~ Claudia Gray

There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both - taken and taken and taken, until there's nothing left but hope, and you've given that up because it hurts too much. Until you would rather die, or kill, or avoid attachments altogether, than lose one more thing.

~ N.k. Jemisin