These are quotes that helped me the most, that brought me comfort as I read them.

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
~ Jamie Anderson

Quotes from Joanne Cacciatore’s book “Grieving is Loving”

Cacciatore wrote this amazing book which compiles quotes about grief. Just reading the quotes brought comfort - to know that people out there face similar things in their lives - that I'm not alone in my journey with grief. I picked out some of my favourite quotes from her book.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
~ James Baldwin

In Joanne Cacciatore’s book “Grieving is Loving”, she says that “when a person beloved by us dies, our lives can become unbearable. And yet we are asked - by life, by death - to bear it, to suffer the insufferable, to endure the unendurable.” This was especially relatable for me - it is unendurable to live life without the one who meant the most to you.

May there be such a oneness between us that when one weeps the other tastes salt.
~Kahlil Gibran

Every year I manage to live on this earth I collect more questions than answers.  
~ Fatimah Asgar

You may begin to have more questions about existence and the meaning of life, when your loved one dies. You may wonder what happened to them. I wrote more about these existential questions here.

“There are two kinds of suffering, the suffering we run from because we are unwilling to face the truth of life, and the suffering that comes when we’re willing to stop running from the sorrows and difficulties of the world. The second kind of suffering will lead you to freedom.”
~Ajahn Chah

The healing from the pain is in the pain
~ Rumi

Extracts from her book that I really loved

“I have a new normal now. Oh, perhaps as time passes, I will discover new meaning and insights about what her death means to me. Perhaps, one day, when i am very old, I will say that time has truly helped to heal my broken heart. But always remember that not a second of any minute of any hour of any day passes when I am not aware of the presence of her absence, no matter how many years lurk over my shoulder.”

“To bypass grief, we must also bypass love. We, as modern humans are experts in bypassing grief and trauma, cutting ourselves from pain. Fear drives bypass -curtailing authentic feelings - and bypass leaves us psychologically imprisoned by our own fear. Then we become too frightened to allow our love to flow out, and we build high walls around our hearts to self-protect. In so doing, though, we cut ourselves off from humanity - our own and everyone else’s."

It is very easy to feel like you never want to let anyone into your life again. That was me. I couldn’t afford to let anyone into my life again, because I knew how painful loss is. So I shut everyone out of my life - wanting to do everything myself, not wanting to rely on anyone ever again. But soon I realised, I was exhausted. I was exhausted of finding reasons why people will abandon me. Finding reasons why I should not and could not be loved. Deep down, I knew that I wanted to love and be loved. But I held myself back, because I did not ever want to lose anything I loved ever again.

I realised that the only way to really live - is to love with your whole heart. As Cacciatore says, its like “cutting ourselves off from humanity”. To be human is to love. I'm learning to not let my pain dictate my life anymore.

A heart that has been expanded by suffering has the capacity to hold even more love.