Grief Journey Quotes & Sayings

They each walked with a limp, because
the lifelong journey of grief was setting in. My mom looked at my dad and said, "Remind me what we believe. What do we believe?"
After a few moments, my dad responded with these words: "The tomb is empty. The tomb is empty. — Josh Ross

Meanwhile, the travellers pursued their journey; Emily making frequent efforts to appear cheerful, and too often relapsing into silence and dejection. Madame Cheron, attributing her melancholy solely to the circumstance of her being removed to a distance from her lover, and believing, that the sorrow, which her niece still expressed for the loss of St. Aubert, proceeded partly from an affectation of sensibility, endeavoured to make it appear ridiculous to her, that such deep regret should continue to be felt so long after the period usually allowed for grief. At — Eliza Parsons

I think everyone understands grief, the journey it takes us on, whether it's the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a disappointment. Some people don't deal with it, the power of it. Some do. Some feel the weight of it and it informs their choices. I've had to open up to grief in different contexts. — Tori Amos

To let something go is to participate in a much greater dance that we call life. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Loss pushes us to difficult places where we have not been before. We often question whether or not we have the courage and stamina to survive the pain. However, we often are given gifts that tell us that we are not alone and that we can withstand the journey. — Susan Barbara Apollon

Journey becomes difficult when we know the destination but not aware of the right path, may be the supreme power testing your moral and physical stamina. — Durgesh Satpathy

In the midst of the darkness of loss, I found light. Admittedly, in those first weeks, it might have been but a single small spark I sensed deep inside of me, but that spark guided me in the twisted, dark journey of grief. As I stumbled over the roots of hopelessness and despair, that light grew to illuminate my path, a path I sometimes felt very alone on. At some point in the journey I'd turned around, and there was God.
That is grace. — Mary Potter Kenyon

I had always turned to books, to knowledge, to help me get through everything in my life - and,
sometimes, to escape it. But grief was a journey through a forest of razor blades. I walked through every
painful inch of it - no shortcuts and no anesthesia. — Michele Bardsley

Grief is perhaps an unknown territory for you. You might feel both helpless and hopeless without a sense of a 'map' for the journey. Confusion is the hallmark of a transition. To rebuild both your inner and outer world is a major project. — Anne Grant

You go to bed different ... tossing and turning is the norm ... you wake to a sunny day but clouds follow you wherever you go. You wonder if you are strong enough to climb out of the depression you are living in and your prayers to God seem empty because you are sooo very tired of telling him the same thing over and over again ... if we are really being real ... there may even be moments after impact you forget how to pray ... maybe you don't even want to. — Erica Stone

Here's what I know: death abducts the dying, but grief steals from those left behind. — Katherine Owen

The sweetness and delights of the resting-place are in proportion to the pain endured on the Journey. Only when you suffer the pangs and tribulations of exile will you truly enjoy your homecoming. — Rumi

Each person's grief journey is unique as a fingerprint or a snowflake. — Earl A Grollman

We cannot escape most of the crises in our lives, nor should we. In fact, these events frequently provide the energy for movement on our spiritual journey, even when we are stuck along the way... we ask questions about our own life. We wonder about meaning. Our present view may become inadequate. We ask deeper questions. Even joyful experiences can propel us forward. — Janet O. Hagberg

At one stopover on the train journey home, Hans told his sister Inge later, he saw a young girl with the Star of David on her breast; she was repairing tracks on the line, along with other people with yellow badges on their clothes. Her face was pallid, sunken in; her eyes, beyond grief and terror. Impulsively, Hans thrust his rations in her hand. She looked up at him, then at his uniform. She threw the packet of food to the ground.
He scooped it up, wiped off the dust, and picked a daisy growing by the side of the tracks. He placed the package, with the daisy on top, at her feet. He said, "I would have liked to give you a little pleasure." He boarded the train.
When he looked back, the girl was standing there, watching the train disappear, the flower in her hair. — Jud Newborn

Grief is like a journey one must take on a winding mountainside, often seeing the same scenery many times, a road which eventually leads to somewhere we've never been before. — Gladys M. Hunt

Loss is an invitation to a journey of unparalleled growth, yet we seldom RSVP the invitation. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In every childhood there is a door that closes. Only real love waits while we journey through our grief. That is the real trustworthiness between people. In all the epics, in all the stories that have lasted through many lifetimes, it is always the same truth: love must wait for wounds to heal. It is this waiting we must do for each other, not with a sense of mercy, or in judgment, but as if forgiveness were a rendezvous. How many are willing to wait for another in this way? — Anne Michaels

The last thing this world needs is another self-help or feel-good faith book, seven simple steps to whatever. Just the thought makes my stomach turn. The truth is that life is far too complex to be put in a box, labeled, and have the appropriate manual attached. I wonder, have these people who seem to have all the answers ever really experienced hardship or grief, true joy, or adventure? Have they ever really lived? For those of us who venture outside the cookie cutter lives that many settle for, a superficial, plastic faith with the corresponding instruction booklet will do nothing. When we take the brave step from the comfortable mainstream into the unknown, we quickly discover that we are all just travelers on a journey trying to find our way. — Erik Mirandette

For a long time I spent my weary days in a fog of what might be and what has been and I guess you could say im still learning how to accept what is. — Nikki Rowe

'Hard Hit,' a YA collection of poems, explores the country of grief and survival. Mark, a 16-year-old boy and skilled pitcher, must confront the coming death of his beloved father with the help of his friends, family, baseball, and an idiosyncratic belief in God. I used my own experience of my parents' deaths to inform this journey. — Ann Turner

Grieving is a journey that teaches us how to love in a new way now that our loved one is no longer with us. Consciously remembering those who have died is the key that opens the hearts, that allows us to love them in new ways. — Thomas Attig

As every blossom fades
and all youth sinks into old age,
so every life's design, each flower of wisdom,
attains its prime and cannot last forever.
The heart must submit itself courageously
to life's call without a hint of grief,
A magic dwells in each beginning,
protecting us, telling us how to live.

High purposed we shall traverse realm on realm,
cleaving to none as to a home,
the world of spirit wishes not to fetter us
but raise us higher, step by step.
Scarce in some safe accustomed sphere of life
have we establish a house, then we grow lax;
only he who is ready to journey forth
can throw old habits off.

Maybe death's hour too will send us out new-born
towards undreamed-lands,
maybe life's call to us will never find an end
Courage my heart, take leave and fare thee well. — Hermann Hesse

Bandaged. The wound is mortal and yet you do not die. That is its own impossible agony. But grief is not simple sadness. Sadness is a feeling that wants nothing more than to be sat with, held, and heard. Grief is a journey. It must be moved through. With a rucksack full of rocks, you hike through a black, pathless forest, brambles about your legs and wolf packs at your heels. The grief that never moves is called complicated grief. It doesn't subside, you do not accept it, and it never - it never - goes to sleep. This is possessive grief. This is delusional grief. This is hysterical grief. Run if you will, this grief is faster. This is the grief that will chase you and beat you. This is the grief that will eat you. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

...waking at very early dawn amid all that sweat and stink, he had found himself comparing this ghastly journey with his own life, which had first moved over smiling level ground, then clambered up rocky mountains, slid over threatening passes, to emerge eventually into a landscape of interminable undulations, all of the same color, all bare as despair. These early morning fantasies were the very worst that could happen to a man of middle age; and although the Prince knew that they would vanish with the day's activities, he suffered acutely all the same, as he was used enough to them by now to realize that deep inside him they left a sediment of grief which, accumulating day by day, would in the end be the real cause of his death. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Once you have walked down the grief path, what you have gained on your journey may turn into invaluable advice for someone else. — Elizabeth Berrien

There came a moment in this journey when I freely realized that the lives most of lead are small. Important, but small. Our radius reaches family, clients, friends for whom we do selfless and amazing feats. But our sphere of influence is local ... So our illnesses/deaths are small, too. Not unimportant. Just local in nature ... - 209 — Robin Romm

Your identity is altered, even though you don't want it to be. You are not the same person, and some of your friends will relate to you differently. Redefining ourselves, that is, building a new identity after the death of a loved one, is another significant task commonly forgotten in grief work. It's okay to be a different person than when you started your journey through loss. So ask yourself how much your great loss has affected your identity as a person and how you will rebuild it. — Louis E. LaGrand

But time soon passes. Even the deepest pain eventually loses its edge in the more vivid reality of the present; then, what once was unbearable becomes strangely familiar. And after much familiarity, it assumes the insignificance of just another milestone, ever marking the journey to higher ground. — N. Maria Kwami

Virtually all women will always carry the scars and a deep sense of loss and grief from the betrayal. Whether a woman has stayed, left, or been left, it must be remembered that time is the salve on this journey towards forgiveness and healing, because it is also a process of grieving. — Meryn G. Callander

I now know pain
is part of any journey-
that this is the opposite
of grief, but grief
the only way I know
to describe waiting
and waiting without
knowing, hoping one day
joy will arrive. — Kevin Young

When her pain is fresh and new, let her have it. Don't try to take it away. Forgive yourself for not having that power. Grief and pain are like joy and peace; they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. They're sacred. they are part of each person's journey. All we can do is offer relief from this fear: I am all alone. That's the one fear you can alleviate. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I hear music that comes out of need, out of grief, sorrow, suffering and out of overcoming these things, as well. That journey to freedom still goes on today. It's an incremental change, the culmination of many events in your own life and the lives of your children and grandchildren. — Kathleen Battle

Emily Kendal Frey's The Grief Performance is a book that condenses a journey of finding and re-finding loss into beautiful packages. The packages are the poems and they sit shiny and new on every page of this fabulous and generous book. I want to go into the world that these poems create, just so that I can be given these terrifying presents again and again. I know you will, too. See you there. — Dorothea Lasky

Then the door is before him. There is darkness all around him, there is silence in him. Then the door opens and he stands alone, the whole world falling away from him. And the brief corner of the sky seems to be shrieking, though he does not hear a sound. Then the earth tilts, he is thrown forward on his face in darkness, and his journey begins. — James Baldwin

On Love and Happiness:When someone embarks on his research, if he ever makes it, (there is, in addition, a contingency that he/she will never embark on it), then he sails on a journey, a course that incubates various events.
It's like opening a precious gift that hides myriads of secrets.
Nobody acknowledges its content unless he attempts to inspect it.
Happiness is not always dominated by heavenly chances, blue and green seashores of euphoria and pink clouds of serenity.
Happiness does not dwell in luxurious mansions and expensive cars neither in glamorous appearances.
Many times Unhappiness and loneliness lurk behind the ledges of luxury and surface brightness.
There are so many examples around us, in newspapers, magazines, television and radio of people who are plunged in uncertainty, grief and insecurity.
I wonder why this is. — Katerina Kostaki

I know I could have saved your ashes to put into the ocean, but I wanted you to have the journey, all the way with the currents, to the open sea. And I know that when I finally get to see the waves washing on the shore, to hear them, I will feel you there. — Ava Dellaira

My grief journey is my own. Others may walk it with me, but no one can walk it for me. — Danny L. Deaube

Grief is a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died. And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way. Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey. And solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again. — Helen Steiner Rice

Like all human beings, Bob [Crane] had feelings and emotions. He danced on the moon, jumped for joy, laughed in ecstasy, and leapt in triumph. He also cried in grief, mourned losses, threw his hands up to the sky in frustration, and felt desperate, scared, sad, and alone. Bob's flaws - the mistakes and bad choices he made, the most difficult moments he faced, and his descent into the jaws of a powerful addiction - were all but a part of his whole life journey. His flaws were merely the specks, like the specks on the Parthenon that comprise any person's entire time on earth... In spite of his flaws, he was a kind person, a joyful person, a talented person, a courageous person - a whole person. — Carol M. Ford

What is hope? Like love, it is hard to define, but easy to recognize, a state of being that compels us to go on. It is a feeling that we have what we need to continue our journey to the next moment. — Susan Barbara Apollon

Courage is being afraid and going on the journey anyhow. — John Wayne

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
"Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend."
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods [dully] on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
For that same groan doth put this in my mind:
My grief lies onward and my joy behind. — William Shakespeare

That no journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days. Today was just a bad day, a kink in the road, to be traversed and survived. — Jojo Moyes

Great Light, Mover of all that is moving and at rest, be my Journey and my far Destination, be my Want and my Fulfilling, be my Sowing and my Reaping, be my glad Song and my stark Silence. Be my Sword and my strong Shield, be my Lantern and my dark Night, be my everlasting Strength and my piteous Weakness. Be my Greeting and my parting Prayer, be my bright Vision and my Blindness, be my Joy and my sharp Grief, be my sad Death and my sure Resurrection! — Stephen R. Lawhead

Gently - so have good men taught -
Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide
Into the new; the eternal flow of things,
Like a bright river of the fields of heaven,
Shall journey onward in perpetual peace. — William C. Bryant

As you release, align and commit to your life's purpose, you begin to access more of your lightbody. And as we birth this new world together, you may go through preparation stages, as your physical body restructures and reassembles into its new form. As you embark on this journey, you may go through periods of feeling loss, sadness and grief as you may be faced with the reality that you will never return back to this old world that held you safe for so many lifetimes. We are moving into a new energy, and a new world, and in this new world will be different ways to live, create and be. Nothing will ever be the same again. We are changing from the inside out and sometimes from the outside in! — Lee-Anne Peters

Most of us go through this journey of grief at different speeds — Louise Suzanne Boyd

Why is this painful journey so indispensable to the acquisition of true wisdom? ... It is as if the mind were a squeamish organ that refused to entertain difficult truths unless encouraged to do so by difficult events. "Happiness is good for the body," Proust tells us, "but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind." These griefs put us through a form of mental gymnastics which we would have avoided in happier times. Indeed, if a genuine priority is the development of our mental capacities, the implication is that we would be better off being unhappy than content, better off pursuing tormented love affairs than reading Plato or Spinoza. (Proust writes) A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and more vital than does a man of genius who interests us. — Alain De Botton

I'm not tormenting myself. I learned long ago that in order to heal my wounds, I must have the courage to face up to them. I also learned to forgive myself and correct my mistakes. However, ever since I started out on this journey, I've had a sense of being confronted by a vast jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of which are only just beginning to revealed, pieces of love, hate, sacrifice, forgiveness, joy, and grief. — Paulo Coelho

Now, what's stirring in this murky sea of complexity and foolishness is an almost suffocating need to breathe fresh history. — Laurie Perez

Time passes, day by day. The greatness of this country lies in the inexorable journey it has taken through time.
Time is like an enormous pot, into which all ugliness and beauty are thrown, all happiness and grief, all life and all death.
Cycle follows cycle, living life and dying death. Only the great River rolls on, unending. — Yo Yo

We all handle loss in our individual ways, grieve in all kinds of ways. We all go through feeling okay sometimes, but other times, we feel so bad we hurt ourselves or those around us. — E. Journey

No journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days. — Jojo Moyes

We all need hope. As souls, we journey in physical bodies, traversing a life that is dually lived. We experience safety through attachment to the physical world, but we also are comforted and cared for by a trust in the non-physical, spiritual part of our reality. Two different roads, available for us and from which we choose, moment by moment. — Susan Barbara Apollon

It is true that the grief journey is very lonely, but it is also up to you to decide just how lonely you will make it. — Elizabeth Berrien

Because of sorrow, my awareness of life's pulse is strongly detectable. It is syncopation while I journey, a lap of ocean in the eyes of every person I meet. This awareness informs the flesh of my stories. Grief has been an odd companion, at first a terror, but now I am all the better having accepted it for its intrinsic worth. — Patricia Hickman

Parental care, satisfaction, friendship, compassion, and grief didn't just suddenly appear with the emergence of modern humans. All began their journey in pre-human beings. Our brain's provenance is inseparable from other species' brains in the long cauldron of living time. And thus, so is our mind. — Carl Safina

Journey through the Power of the Rainbow represents a condensed compendium of literary efforts from a life dedicated to transforming the themes of injustice, grief, and despair that we all encounter during some unavoidable point of our existence into a sustainable life-affirming poetics of passionate creativity, empowered spiritual vision, and inspired commitment. — Aberjhani

Grief is like a long journey
You wake each morning in a different place — David J. Delaney