Come As You Are Quotes

“Vipassanā isn’t about becoming perfectly calm.
It’s about becoming real — moment by moment.
Grief doesn’t ask you to get over it. Love doesn’t require you to be fearless. Vipassanā says: just notice what’s here… and stay.
That is more than enough.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Grief returning doesn’t mean you’re broken.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Healing is about becoming available.
To life.
To joy.
To fear.
To grief.
To love.
To uncertainty.
To beauty that has no guarantees.
Healing is the willingness to show up exactly as you are — not cleaned up, not perfected, not finished.
Just here.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Grief is not a problem. Grief is a reality.
It is a landscape you are required to walk through when someone you love dies.
And yathā bhūta is your flashlight. Your compass. Your only real defense against the erosion of your truth.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Yathā bhūta is unflinching. It is clear-eyed. And it is essential to surviving grief with integrity.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Yathā bhūta asks:
Can you witness your experience without flinching?
Can you see what’s actually here—not what you were taught to see?
This is not passive acceptance. This is radical clarity.
And with it comes freedom—not from grief, but from the tyranny of pretending it’s something else.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Mettā is like water softening dry ground. It takes time. What matters is your intention — the quiet willingness to offer care, even imperfectly.
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You don’t have to feel loving to practice loving-kindness.
You just have to show up.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Over time, Mettā builds a bridge between parts of yourself that grief scattered.
It says: You are not broken for still hurting.
You are not selfish for loving again.
You are not alone.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“You’re Still Here
You are not starting over.
You are continuing — with a heart that remembers, a body that knows how to stay, and a soul that has said yes to life again.
Grief didn’t end.
Love didn’t erase it.
But you remained open.
You allowed joy to return, even when it felt risky.
You dared to care again, even knowing what it might cost.
That is your strength.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“If there’s any offering in these pages, it’s this:
You don’t need to transcend your pain to be worthy of love.
You don’t need to have a clear path to keep walking.
You don’t need to have let go of the past to hold what’s here now.
You get to love again.
You get to grieve still.
You get to be afraid and hopeful and messy and grounded and undone and whole — all at once.
You get to come as you are.
Not once.
Not when you’re “better.”
Not after you’ve figured it all out.
Every day.
Over and over.
With whatever you’re holding.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“If there’s one thing I want to say to the person who finds this book in their own version of year one, or year three, or year twelve, it’s this:
You don’t have to be finished to be okay.
You don’t have to understand everything to keep going.
You don’t have to let go of the past to embrace what’s here.
You just have to keep coming as you are.
Again.
And again.
And again.
That’s the whole thing.
That’s the whole path.
And for today — just today — that’s enough.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later

“Grief doesn’t end.
That’s the myth I want to let go of once and for all.
It doesn’t finish.
It doesn’t fade neatly.
It doesn’t follow a linear arc with a clean moral at the end.
It changes shape.
It tucks itself into different corners of your life.
It surprises you.
It adapts.”
― G. Scott Graham, Come As You Are: Five Years Later