What goes together hand in hand.
Yet the fundamental loss remains—it doesn’t just dissipate—and, in a strange way, I think it can become a magnet for other losses. We come to see we are all simply creatures carrying around our ever-deepening loss. Small griefs seem to collect around the bigger primary grief. I think this realization allows us to become a true human being.
Amanda Petrusich • Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life
We want grief to be a task we can complete; the oven timer of our soul dings and we’re on to something else. But that isn’t how grief works.
Tish Harrison Warren • Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
Grief, as I understood it—grief and I were acquainted—is the kind of loss that sets you on fire as you struggle to put it out.
Elizabeth McCracken • The Hero of This Book
Grief is part of life, throughout life. Though we may be afraid of it, it isn’t bad; it simply exists, a shared human experience. Over
Beth Pickens • Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles
In the aftermath of the tragic, when silence or “being with” or an embrace may be the only appropriate responses, then only embodied presence will do. Its consolations are irreplaceable.