Hope

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
― Jamie Anderson

“In humans as well, it is because your loved one existed that certain neurons fire together and certain proteins are folded in your brain in particular ways. It is because your loved one lived, and because you loved each other, that means when the person is no longer in the outer world, they still physically exist—in the wiring of the neurons of your brain.”
― Mary-Frances O'Connor, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss

“They say you can’t go home again, but of course you can. It’s just that when you get there, somebody may have repainted and changed the fixtures around.”
― T. Kingfisher, A House With Good Bones

“Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful problem for the brain to solve, and grieving necessitates learning to live in the world with the absence of someone you love deeply, who is ingrained in your understanding of the world. This means that for the brain, your loved one is simultaneously gone and also everlasting, and you are walking through two worlds at the same time. You are navigating your life despite the fact that they have been stolen from you, a premise that makes no sense, and that is both confusing and upsetting.”
― Mary-Frances O'Connor, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss