Cruse

“Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me.”
― Judy Blume

“The end result of all this was that many of us, by middle age, arrived at the state we were trying most to avoid: we bored our husbands, who had done their fair share in helping reduce us to this condition, and they wandered off to younger, greener pastures.”
― Katharine Graham, Personal History (Pulitzer Prize Winner): A Memoir

“He was a quiet man who could command attention with a simple glance or nod, a man who possessed equal part strength and gentleness and wore them, not in layers, but blended like fine leather.”
― Allen Eskens, The Life We Bury

“Grief is a winding, nasty road that has no predictable course, and the best thing you can do as a friend is to show up for the ride. You cannot rush grief. Read that again, and let it soak in as you either walk through it or alongside someone who is in the midst of it. One of the best things you can do for friends who are suffering through loss is to remind them of this over and over. Don’t mention how other people have “coped so well” with their losses or how “it seems like so-and-so has come out of this better than you have.” I have heard from people who have heard these exact sentences, and while I have a feeling their friends wanted to encourage them into a place of recovery, they weren’t helped by such remarks. It stings to feel like your grief isn’t normal or that you aren’t recovering the way you should be. There is no normal. There is the loss, and there is the Lord. That balance dictates the season, not the changing leaves or the anniversaries of death. I love the way Gregory Floyd explains the delicate balance of hope and pain, “Our faith gives us the sure hope of seeing him again, but the hope does not take away the pain.”1”
― Angie Smith, I Will Carry You: The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy