Grief,
bereavement,
letting go
✺
He was my North, my South
My East and West
My working week
and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight
My talk, my song
I thought that love
would last forever
I was wrong
—W.H. Auden
~
Hold on,
hold on to yourself
for this is gonna hurt like hell.
—Sarah McLachlan
~
This is the Hour of Lead—
—Emily Dickinson
~
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break.
—William Shakespeare
~
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes
to let it go.
—Mary Oliver,
In Blackwater Woods
~
Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.
—David Foster Wallace
~
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
—Winnie-the-Pooh
~
My joy is like spring,
so warm it makes flowers bloom
all over the earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
~
Because the sky is blue,
it makes me cry.
—Beatles
~
Water is my eye
Most faithful mirror
Fearless on my breath
—Massive Attack
~
To learn how to feel sad
without actually being sad.
—Laurie Anderson
~
It's alright to cry.
Crying gets the sad out of you.
—Rosey Grier
~
She once was a true love of mine.
—Simon & Garfunkel
~
First, we grieve.
—Anonymous
✺
Just noticing, just feeling grief practice
Anchoring in a positive memory of a lost one
Poem: After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
Poem: In the Museum of Your Last Day
Poem: All the Dead Boys Look Like Me
Poem: Please Call Me By My True Names; listen
It’s OK to never ‘get over’ your grief
In grief, try personal rituals
Have you considered the benefits of crying?
On the trail of birth and death
Grief support: Hospice East Bay
Childhood grief: guidelines for caregivers
There are no ‘five stages’ of grief
In grief, try personal rituals
Five things to know about processing loss
What losing my two children taught me about grief
The power of grief-fueled activism
A world where death isn’t the end
To fall in love with the world