Mary

“Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“The tragedy of life is linked inescapably with its splendor; you could tear civilization down and rebuild it from scratch, and the same dualities would rise again. Yet to fully inhabit these dualities—the dark as well as the light—is, paradoxically, the only way to transcend them. And transcending them is the ultimate point. The bittersweet is about the desire for communion, the wish to go home.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“That’s really all they ask of us—our parents; our lovers, husbands, and wives; our children and dear friends. That we carry them gently in our lives as they carried us in theirs. Not with crushing sadness, for they do not wish such weight upon us. But with lightness and warmth. God bless them for the memories they left for us that make carrying them with joy possible. The wisdom and love they bequeathed us. The joy and comfort they brought to us as they carried us through life so that now we might carry them forever in our hearts—without bitterness, without crushing sadness. When someone has loved us well and long, we need not buckle beneath the weight of sorrow. Instead, we can carry them with us with gratitude, completeness, and joy.”
― Steve Leder, The Beauty of What Remains: How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift

“Whatever comes, we let it be as it is. When we do this, we come to see, in this moment or the next, our emotions always moving. The word emotion has its roots in the Latin movere and emovere meaning "to move through" and "to move out". Our emotions move in us, move through us and move between us.And when we allows them to move freely, they change, perhaps scarcely and perhaps gradually - but inevitably.
This is grief's most piercing message: there is no way arounf - the only way in through.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief