Patricia’s Reviews > Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief > Status Update

‘Far from being selfish, in a way self-care in acute grief is heroic’.

‘Grief occupies the space between people. It has its place in the family, at the dinner table, on vacations, in pews and on porch swings(…) it occupies time and space. Grief, like love, is open-ended. Yet in so many people, while love is welcomed and encouraged, grief is stifled and suppressed by fear’.

‘“This is called the unity of opposites, and it liberates us from a myopic, dualistic view of our emotions as either/or. We are not either happy or sad. We are not either grieving or grateful. We are not either content or despairing. We are both/and.’

‘Despite the fact that we will all experience the death of someone we love, something in the social system pushes back against that reality, creating a type of systemic avoidance that promotes hostility, intolerance, and segregation of those grieving. In a death and grief avoidant culture, a grieving person becomes the other whom social structures cannot and will not relate and that avoidance is truly tragic’.

‘Not a second of any minute of any hour of any day passes when I am not aware of the presence of her absence, no matter how many years lurk over my shoulder (…) others may tell us that “it’s time to move on” or that is “part of some bigger plan” - our shattering makes them feel uneasy, vulnerable, at risk. Some may avoid us, others pity us. But this grief is ours’.

‘Many grievers feel implicit or explicit social pressure to “feel better” or “move on,” and the incongruence between the messages of how they should feel and the inner wisdom of what they actually do feel causes many to doubt their own hearts’.