Grief and Loss Support

Thoughts on Grief

Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.

Rabbi Earl Grollman

Essentially, grief is what we think and feel inside after a loss. Grief isn’t just sadness, of course. Often, it is also feelings of shock, denial, disorganization, confusion anger, fear, and panic. It can include regret and sometimes relief. It may be physical pain and social discomfort.  It can be disjointed thinking and spiritual despair. It is physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual.  Grief is all that and more. Mourning, on the other hand, is the expression of those thoughts and feelings outside of ourselves. Mourning is how we heal our grief.

Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D

Grief isn’t something to manage efficiently. It’s not an illness. There’s nothing pathological about mourning. Furthermore, anyone who has been torn asunder by loss knows that prior normalcy is never regained. Our very bones and sinews are transformed. We are irrevocably changed after the passing of those we love.  How could we not be? Yet our transformation need not be one of devastation.  While loss is searing in its pain, it can also lead to a deeper appreciation for life’s fragility and wonder. It can lead to growth. We can grow, not in spite of, but because of grief.

Amy Wright Glenn

Grief is visceral, not reasonable: the howling at the center of grief is raw and real. It is love in its most wild form.

Megan Divine 

Don’t turn away. Keep your eye on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.

Rumi