Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

When grief asks to be seen, she meets it and embraces it as she would a visit from an old friend.

Scientists have found that emotional tears contain 24 percent higher protein concentrations, including adrenocorticotropic hormone. This is a protein produced and then released in high doses during distress that signals the adrenal glands to release hormones that assist in the regulation of stress. Perhaps this is why young children, quite naturall

We come to appreciate that this immense present grief is here because of another period in time when we were together with them.

assert that being happy does not mean we do not feel pain or grief or sadness — successively or, often, simultaneously. Sorrow and contentment, grief and beauty, longing and surrender coexist in the realm of sameness.

We can simply — or complicatedly — let it be.

Biochemically, crying may actually act as a stress-relief valve.

He said that we cannot chase happiness and expect that we will attain it. Happiness can only arise as a byproduct of a life devoted to the service of others — a view that undermines the very foundation upon which the happiness-peddlers have built their platform.

Grief calls for us to give ourselves back to it. To remember. To reclaim. To re-grieve. And for all those things, even when they sting, I am thankful.

It’s a feedback loop that perpetuates self-regard, self-trust, self-compassion, and acceptance of our genuine feelings.

An emotion-focused journal