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• Grief: Intense sorrow, especially caused by someone’s death. Oxford Dictionary
• Grief: Very great sadness, especially at the death of someone.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Grief: Keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret. Dictionary.com
• Grief: Deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement.  Merriam Webster
• Heartbreak,  Sadness,  Loss,  Depression,  Letting go,  Healing,  Tears,  Death,  Regret,  Suffering

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The death of a loved one is always deeply painful

• I don’t know why they call it heartbreak. It feels like every other part of my body is broken too.  Missy Altijd
• As soon as forever is through, I’ll be over you. Toto
• Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back. Mitch Albom
• The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost. Arthur Schopenhauer
• Pain,  Death

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The world feels empty without them

• Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. Lamartine
• When one person is missing the whole world seems empty. Pat Schweibert
• Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. Edna St. Vincent Millay
• And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing, but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up! Charles Dickens

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Grief is a natural part of the process of letting go and healing

• Grieving is a necessary passage and a difficult transition to finally letting go of sorrow – it is not a permanent rest stop. Dodinsky
• Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. Keeping grief inside increases your pain. Ann Grant
• Grief is itself a medicine. William Cowper
• Remember that grief is a necessary pain. It’s your only way to heal. To starve it will destroy you. M. Boyce
• Mourning is one of the most profound human experiences that it is possible to have… The deep capacity to weep for the loss of a loved one and to continue to treasure the memory of that loss is one of our noblest human traits. Shneidman
• Grieving involves confronting the totality of our relationship with the person, along with all of our many and conflicting feelings; holding onto the good memories and joyful moments, grieving for what was and what wasn’t and what could never be. Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D.
• Grief is a process, not a state. Anne Grant
• Regression in grief must be seen and supported as a means toward adaptation and health. Lily Pincus
• Letting go,  Healing

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It is important to allow yourself to feel your grief

• We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.  Kenji Miyazawa
• The fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings. Gita Bellin
• That’s the thing about pain…it demands to be felt. John Green
• The cure for pain is in the pain. Rumi
• …you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help… And then finally, the way through grief is grieving. Jane Hamilton

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The worst thing you can do is deny or repress your pain

• Denying grief her power squelches your vitality. You can dream and laugh and march on, but until you swallow the bitter tea that Grief has brewed, things won’t be as vibrant or grounded as they could be. And that’s half dead. Danielle LaPorte
• If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble. Moliere
• The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep. Henry Maudsley
• I think you have to deal with grief in the sense that you have to recognize that you have it and say that it’s OK to have all the sadness. Ann Richards
• He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it. Turkish Proverb

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Let your tears fall freely for they are a great healing force

• To weep is to make less the depth of grief. William Shakespeare
• It is some relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears. Ovid
• Let your tears come. Let them water your soul.    Eileen Mayhew
• The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears. John Vance Cheney
• There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love. Washington Irving
• Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us. Brian Jacques
• Tears are words the mouth can’t say nor can the heart bare. Joshua Wisenbaker
• Tears

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Voice and express your grief

• Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break. William Shakespeare
• Grief needs to hear your story told. Speak it out to a sacred listener. Be witnessed. And then… tell a new story, one that includes the description of how you healed.  Danielle LaPorte
• There is no grief like the grief that does not speak. Henry Wordsworth

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An important part of grief is remembering

• All that is left to bring you pain, are the memories. If you face those, you’ll be free. You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding from yourself; always afraid that your memories will incapacitate you, and they will if you continue to bury them. J.D. Stroube
• When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Kahlil Gibran
• Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. Dr. Seuss
• When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn’t. Baba Ram Dass
• The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude. Thornton Wilder
• Though sorrow may impede my heart, it is of great love to have known you. Elizabeth
• The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal. S. Lewis
• Memory,  Nostalgia

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Share your memories and stories with your friends and family

• The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. Lois Lowry
• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou
• No one ever really dies as long as they took the time to leave us with fond memories. Chris Sorensen
• Do not protect yourself from grief by a fence, but rather by your friends. Czech Proverb

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Let your grief cleanse you and reveal your inner strength, beauty and depth

• Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, and then are taken off. That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath, is the sweetness that comes after grief. Rumi
• Grief thinks scars make for great tattoos. Accept that you’ll never be the same. Trauma marks you. Embrace how much more dimensional you’ve become.  Danielle LaPorte
• Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you. John Green
• Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. Marcel Proust
• Look well into thyself. There is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou will always look there. Marcus Aurelius
• Until you are broken, you don’t know what you’re made of.
• Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us. David Richo
• Strength,  Beauty

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Thoughts on sharing your grief with others

• Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. Alphonse de Lamartine
• Grief shared is grief diminished. Rabbi Grollman
• Grief can’t be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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The grief will return in ebbs and flows…

• It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses.  Colette
• Sorrow you can hold, however desolating, if nobody speaks to you. If they speak, you break down.  Bede Jarrett

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… but things will gradually become more bearable …

• She was no longer wrestling with the grief but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. George Eliot
• I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence. Alyson Noel
• It’s possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it’s not so overwhelming. Nicholas Sparks
• We find a place for what we lose. Although we know that after such a loss the acute stage of mourning will subside, we also know that we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else. Sigmund Freud

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… as time does its job of healing the pain

• Sadness flies away on the wings of time. Jean de La Fontaine
• While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.  Samuel Johnson
• No one can keep his griefs in their prime; they use themselves up. M. Cioran
• Time is a physician that heals every grief. Diphilus
• Wounds of the spirit… are most gently soothed and made whole by the passing years. Under the old scars flows again the calm, healthful tide of life…. Under a great loss the heart impetuously cries that it can never be happy again, and perhaps in its desperation says that it wishes never to be comforted. But though angels do not fly down to open the grave and restore the lost, the days and months come as angels with healing in their wings. Under their touch aching regret passes into tender memory; into hands that were empty new joys are softly pressed; and the heart that was like the trees stripped of its leaves and beaten by winter’s tempests is clothed again with the green of spring. George S. Merriam
• And so I wait. I wait for time to heal the pain and raise me to me feet once again – so that I can start a new path, my own path, the one that will make me whole again. Jack Canfield
• Time,  Healing

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Be assured that your loved one will continue to live on in your heart and memories

• To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. Thomas Campbell
• Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken? Terry Pratchett
• One lives in the hope of becoming a memory. Antonio Porchia
• Death ends a life, not a relationship. Mitch Albom
• Those whom we loved never really leave us. They live on forever in our hearts, and cast their radiant light onto our every shadow. Sylvana Rossetti
• What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. Pericles
• Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone. Mitch Albom
• What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. Helen Keller
• The pain passes, but the beauty remains. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart. Gandhi
• So long as we live they too shall live and love for they are a part of us, as we remember them. Gates of Prayer
• Every day my love for you grows higher, deeper, wider, stronger… It grows and grows until it touches the tip of where you are and comes back to me in the loving memory of you, and my heart melts with that love and grows even more.  Maureen Hunter
• A resolve to honor the memory of the person and bring aspects of their good character and qualities into one’s own life helps to heal the pain. Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D.
• Love is a fabric that never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the waters of adversity and grief.
• Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. From a headstone in Ireland

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As you let go of your grief, shift your attention back to the present and future

• You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. Jan Glidewell
• “Old times” never come back and I suppose it’s just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that’s better.    George E. Woodberry
• Live in the present,  The future

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As you do, start to embrace life again as your loved one would want you to

• As long as I can I will look at this world for both of us. As long as I can I will laugh with the birds, I will sing with the flowers, I will pray to the stars, for both of us. Sascha
• When I am gone, my love, do not look for me in the places we used to go to together. Look for me in the places we always planned to go to together. Robert Brault
• Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. Jacques Prévert

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Let the pain of grief be the willing price you pay for the joy of love

• Grief is the price we pay for love. Queen Elizabeth II
• So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love. A. Bucchianeri
• To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness. Erich Fromm
• The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.  Hilary Stanton Zunin
• Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. Leo Tolstoy
• Mourning is love with no place to go.
• Successfully protecting ourselves against hurt and pain means achieving excellence in becoming unemotional. Why sacrifice loving for that? LaTonya Tarell
• Love

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Thoughts on being with someone in their grief

• Never tell a person who’s experiencing deep sorrow, “I know how you feel.” You don’t. H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
• Let me come in where you are weeping, friend and let me take your hand. I who have known a sorrow such as yours, can understand. Grace Noll Crowell
• I need someone who believes that the sun will rise again but who does not fear my darkness. Someone who can point out the rocks in my way without making me a child by carrying me. Someone who can stand in thunder and watch the lightning and believe in a rainbow. Joe Mahoney
• Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief? William Blake
• Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, ‘I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction. Tyron Edwards

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God is closest to those who mourn

• God is closest to those with broken hearts. Jewish Saying
• Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Jesus Christ on the Mount, Matthew 5:4
• God

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The dead live on beyond the realms of the physical body

• You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind… Kahlil Gibran
• In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. Robert Ingersoll
• And if I go, whilst you’re still here…know that I live on, vibrating to a different measure behind a thin veil…. Colleen Corah Hitchcock
• Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there; I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rusho quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft star-shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die.

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• Funeral: A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.

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