You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
Anne Lamott
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face – I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.
Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope
Elizabeth Gilbert
Today I am sharing the first in a series of books about loss, death, grief, anxiety, mental health & living with all of those things together.
These books tell beautiful stories that shine light into darkness & bring hope where there is despair.
These books hurt my broken heart & heal it again.
They help me process my own grief and heartache and I am grateful for all of them for allowing me to escape and know I am not alone.
They are books I will treasure always & help me live when I most want to die.
Beautiful stories told by wonderful storytellers.