Quotes

More Quotes

• "The two great graces essential to a saint in this life, are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven."

  — Thomas Watson

  The Doctrine of Repentance

• "The good news is that pain, whether physical or emotional, can function as a powerful catalyst for healing, change, and growth."

  — Friedemann Schaub

  The Self-Acceptance Project

• "Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!"

  — Robert Burns

  Man Was Made To Mourn

• "Honest plain words best pierce the ears of grief."

  — William Shakespeare

  Love's Labour's Lost

• "Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer."

  — C. S. Lewis

  A Grief Observed

• "Unfinished business encompasses all those things we haven’t said or done. The feelings we wish we allowed ourselves to feel. Those feelings that we have ignored and not attended to."

  — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

  On Grief & Grieving

• "Why grieve? For two reasons. First, those who grieve well, live well. Second, and most important, grief is the healing process of the heart, soul, and mind; it is the path that returns us to wholeness."

  — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

  On Grief & Grieving

• "Grief is the intense emotional response to the pain of a loss. It is the reflection of a connection that has been broken. Most important, grief is an emotional, spiritual, and psychological journey to healing."

  — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

  On Grief & Grieving

• "There is no correct way or time to grieve."

  — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

  On Death & Dying

• "Since in our unconscious mind we are all immortal, it is almost inconceivable for us to acknowledge that we too have to face death."

  — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

  On Death & Dying

• "Mystics in many spiritual traditions see suffering as necessary, essential, the only means toward closeness to God or to existential transcendence. Yet in our medicalized world, normal bereavement and trauma are turned into mental disorders with diagnostic codes, which then become treatable with medications. But if grief is a disease, so too must be love."

  — Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "Beauty and pain coexist. But when we are in the early phases of grieving, in order to eventually see beauty in the world again, we must first feel and inhabit our pain."

  — Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "Establishing boundaries helps us raise children who know how to handle disappointment and who are therefore strong, adaptable, and self-reliant."

  — Susan Stiffelman

  Parenting with Presence

• "Sorrow and contentment, grief and beauty, longing and surrender coexist in the realm of sameness… We are not either happy or sad. We are not either grieving or grateful. We are not either content or despairing. We are both/and."

  — Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "For all who love, suffering is inevitable. To love deeply is one of life’s most profound gifts, and the loss of a loved one is one of life’s most profound tragedies."

  — Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "Grief education is quintessential to shifting our culture’s antagonistic relationship to grief, and expressive, creative arts are an important part of this."

  — Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "It almost seems that the only way to eradicate our grief would be to relinquish the love we feel — to disassemble our loved one’s place in our lives. But checking in with the wisdom of our heart, we see that is impossible. Grief and love occur in tandem."

  — Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "The psychologist Rollo May wrote, “One does not become fully human painlessly.” It is through inhabiting, often painfully, our emotions that we are able to become fully human. Through grief, we can experience an alchemical transformation that cannot be contrived, hastened, or imparted by others."

  — Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "Grief comes to one and all; no one is exempt. We must remember our dead. We must do better for the bereaved. We must embody compassion. To be redeemed we must remember. Remembering is our duty — and the only thing that will save us."

  — Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "True healing is not a destination, not about ridding yourself of pain, fear, sorrow, and all that, not about becoming perfect, or immune, or untouchable, but has something to do with saying YES to the present moment (the only moment we are ever truly in connection with), and affirming it, even if it is uncomfortable right now."

  — Jeff Foster

  The Self-Acceptance Project

• "An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world."

  — Lisa Feldman Barrett

  How Emotions Are Made

• "Emotion skills are the key to unlocking the potential inside each one of us."

  — Marc Brackett

  Permission to Feel