Jessica Zucker

“The weight of our losses might feel heavy one day and markedly lighter the next, but the memory remains. If it does, it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Neither is indicative of being more or less "healed" or "healthy". Neither is right or wrong. There's not necessarily a linear path that leads us out of our discomfort and into an unaffected state.
We might also compassionately absolve ourselves of the inclination to search for a silver lining. There might not actually be one, and that's okay. We need not feel pressured into finding bright spots when we just landed in the dark ones, and we mustn't succumb to this binary vision of adversity. Sometimes things don't "happen for a reason" and sometimes there isn't a cheerful way to look at a horrific or heartbreaking situation. Sometimes when we try to make sense of why bad things happen to good people, we find ourselves searching for meaning where there is none, getting caught in a manufactured duality. We can hold both. There is room and necessity for nuance, complexity, and gradation. We can be hurt and healing simultaneously. We can be grateful for what we have and angry about what we don't at the exact same time. We can dive deep into the pit of our pain and not forget the beauty our life maintains. We can hold both. We can grieve and laugh at precisely the same moment. We can make love and mourn in the same week. Be crestfallen and hopeful. We can hold both. And so it goes. We grievers might stumble upon these notions the hard way (I'm not so sure there's any other way to come face-to-face with them), but nevertheless, we work to integrate them and, in time, deftly tuck them in to our pockets as hard-won wisdom we might just get the chance to impart someday.”
― Jessica Zucker, I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement

“Anxiety has the capacity to temporarily steal joy. It can wrangle the mind—baiting it to singularly focus on negative possibilities, whether true or false. In so doing, anxiety surreptitiously stomps out a spectrum of other feelings that actually exist simultaneously.”
― Jessica Zucker, I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement