Six Phrases to Help You Reframe and Revisit Your Grief
At this time of year, grief is close by for many people. It’s close by our family as we celebrate our third Christmas without Vicky.
In this email, I want to share some ideas and quotes that I hope will encourage you as you grieve your losses or support those who are grieving. William Shakespeare reminds us how important it is to find words to express our sorrow and grief.
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. - Shakespeare
Six Phrases to Help You Reframe and Revisit Your Grief
1. Grief has a necessary place
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 itself a medicine. — William Cowper
2. Tears serve a key role in our healing journey
Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow. They are the natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison out of the system. Here lies the road to recovery. — F. Alexander Magoun
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 the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. — Washington Irving
Tears are the silent language of grief. — Voltaire
3. When unprocessed grief shows up — unpack a bit at a time
According to Emillio Parga, unresolved grief can result in depression, cardiovascular risk, complicated grief, substance abuse, recurring illness, long-term unemployment, marital strife, financial decline and an impact on caregivers.
If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it. — Emma Thompson
4. Grief and joy can and need to co-exist
The sooner you welcome joy alongside grief, the better.
If life doesn’t escort grief back to joy, then it takes us must longer to get there, if we ever do! – Christina Rasmussen in Second Firsts
There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. — Aeschylus
5. Grief is a necessity and the price you pay for love
Theoretically, you should be able to avoid grief by avoiding love. Practically, however, we are social beings who are created to be in relationship with others that require love to work.
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. — Earl Grollman
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. — Hillary Stanton Zunin
6. Hold onto memories because they provide a little bit of comfort in the midst of present grief
Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, may looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow. — Author unknown
Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. — from The Wonder Years
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. — Jan Gildwell
Reflect
Which quote resonated for you and why?
