Loss and Grief

"The reality is that you will grieve forever.  You will not get over the loss of a loved one.  You will learn to live with it.  You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.  You will be whole again but you will never be the same.  Nor should you be the same.  Nor would you want to.  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
Here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
You would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

- Rumi

Loving What Is

"Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do."
— Byron Katie

Sorrow

"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight." -Kahlil Gibran

Your Pain

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.  Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that it's heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.  And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not be less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.  And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief."  Kahlil Gibran

Grief

"Grief brings us closest to life's great paradoxes; to live in order to be able to die; to be helpless and therefore be guided; to surrender to the unknown so as to know."  Inayat Khan

Grief

"Let your grief be as full of joy as it is of sorrow.  Let it be proof of how much you've loved, how deeply you've allowed life to live in you, how wide the river of your heart has become.  Instead of turning away from love so as not to invite loss, love fully, and learn to grieve."  Inayat Khan

Flowing

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
...stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

—Danna Faulds,
"Poems from the Heart of Yoga: Go In and In"

Change

‎"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another." Anatole France

Healing

"Healing does not mean wallowing in or identifying with injury.   Nor does it mean defensive inaction.   It means having the courage to see, acknowledge, grieve, and repair the holes ourselves (with, if we are fortunate, loving help from others).  It means moving on, patches and all."  Marion Woodman

Pain

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
and the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears."

Grief

"When we have freedom to grieve, loss often turns naturally into compassion."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Burn Out

"We burn out not because we don't care but because we don't grieve.   We burn out because we've allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Grief

"Grief is not the same as depression.   If we gloss over our grief, we might become depressed.  Unfelt feelings and unexpressed gief have a way of dulling life.    It is as if with every grief we do not feel, we stuff another handful of vitality underground, until we are numb or sick or embittered."  Elizabeth Lesser

Grief

"There is an art to grieving.   To grieve well the loss of anyone or anything is a creative act.   It takes attention and patience and courage.   Grief is messy and painful.  But grief is also a tonic.   It is a healing elixer., made of tears that lubricate the heart.   Grief is a proof of our love, a demonstration of how deeply we have allowed another to touch us."  Elizabeth Lesser

Acceptance

"Learn the Alchemy
true human beings know
The moment you accept
what troubles you've been given,
the door will open.

Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off. That undressing,
and the beautiful naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief."


Rumi