learning to lose
and getting to grips with grief — in any and every way, shape and size it shows up in life.
learning to lose
Last week I planted an acer in the furthest bed from the house, in honour of our new baby. The sapling is as tall as me and, by all accounts, it can grow forty feet tall. So, in thirty years’ time, if we’re still here I can come back and see this tree in its maturity. But the thought depresses me: in thirty years’ time I’ll be in my mid sixties and
... See moreWilliam Boyd • Any Human Heart
It’s hard to be soft when you’re panicked about how much you’ve lost. Mourning huge losses will warp your understanding of everything around you. Sometimes trauma makes a big thinker like you raise their expectations beyond what is reasonable or rational. You’re grappling with so much buried pain that you believe that you need perfection, you requi
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To let go, when you know you have to is like choosing both grief and hope. Hope that you have control over your life, hope that there is something that is more in alignment for you out there. But you are giving up the possibility of the known joy. There must have been something you are letting go of that is meaningful and beautiful. Letting go, for
... See moresource People I’ve Loved
When you lose someone, in whatever capacity, you lose a universe of tiny things that existed between you. And perhaps what is worse, you also lose the potential that universe has to expand.
a house where you have cried over multiple heartbreaks is infinitely better than a house where you’ve only cried over one, defining, bad thing.
Christina Joyce Hauser • The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays
In my thirties, I learned that there is a type of pain in life that I want to feel. It’s the inevitable, excruciating, necessary pain of losing beautiful things: trust, dreams, health, animals, relationships, people. This kind of pain is the price of love, the cost of living a brave, openhearted life—and I’ll pay it.
Glennon Doyle • Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living: THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
As long as there is love, there will be grief. The grief of time passing, of life moving on half-finished, of empty spaces that were once bursting with the laughter and energy of people we loved.
As long as there is love there will be grief because grief is love's natural continuation. It shows up in the aisles of stores we once frequented, in the h
... See moreThe thing I’ve learned over time is that friendships are not fungible—no two people are the same, obviously, but also you can’t replicate the experience of someone knowing you through a particular era of your life. You can never go back to that period of your life; you can never replace the people who witnessed you and supported you. To me, relinqu
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