Johnna G

“If you are able to extend grace to yourself to see yourself as the imperfect human that you are, full of the complicated feelings that accompany a loss, feelings that ebb and flow, you will be more able to extend it to others as well. When we refuse to offer ourselves grace and accept whatever we are experiencing, we make it harder to move through it, and we make it nearly impossible for others to effectively help us.
Grief is a tricky beast, and there is no such thing as grieving "perfectly." Be prepared to extend grace to those around you, but most importantly, you need to extend grace to yourself.”
― Marisa Renee Lee, Grief Is Love: Living with Loss

“Framing illness as even involving morality seems to me a mistake, because of course cancer does not give a shit whether you are a good person. Biology has no moral compass. It does not punish the evil and reward the good. It doesn’t even know about evil and good.

Stigma is a way of saying, “You deserved to have this happen,” but implied within the stigma is also, “And I don’t deserve it, so I don’t need to worry about it happening to me.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Perhaps that’s why she wanted so many children. A set of Russian nesting dolls, each one a slightly smaller version of the last, to absorb the tsunami of her raging emotions.”
― Shari Franke, The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

“Your grief is yours alone, but you don't have to manage every aspect of grief alone. You cannot do that. Give a voice to what you're feeling. Find the people who value you, and even if it makes you feel weird or uncomfortable, tell them some portion of your truth. Pinpoint the people who respect you and enable them to provide you with the support you need. Grief is nothing to be ashamed of. Grief is love.”
― Marisa Renee Lee, Grief Is Love: Living with Loss