After This Quotes

“...the only thing really worth doing in this life is giving love to everyone around you.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“When I lost my mother, I also lost the reflection of myself that she showed me on a daily basis, a reflection of a young woman who was loved and cared about and wanted. Even the most important accomplishments of my lifetime have felt slightly hollow in her absence. Without the person who brought me into this world, I have struggled to feel like I am worthy of having a place in it.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“When we lose someone we love, suddenly nothing fits anymore. Who we thought we were is now a jumbled mess of memories and hopes we once had, for a future that now looks completely different. When we lose someone close to us we are forced to reevaluate our entire identities. We must figure out who we are now that this person is gone, and the experience can be overwhelming.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“We must learn to live in this world, because we have no other choice. What we do have a choice in is how we choose to live. We can remain gray and immobile in the wake of our losses or we can open ourselves up to the world, let the sunshine in, fill our surroundings with heaps of flowers, and know that we loved someone truly and deeply.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“I imagine how good it must feel to them to know how much they are still loved and missed in this realm, and for a moment I let myself feel them loving me back.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“When you've gone through something traumatic, when you've faced death and loss as much as we have, it's only natural that it changes your entire view of life.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“I realize in this moment that all my life I've felt that I deserve to be punished, for wanting so much, for taking so much from this world, from the people who love me.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“I am them. And they are me. All of us, we are each other. There is no such thing as good-bye.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“I’m telling you this story because if ever I die suddenly, I want you to know that there is nothing you could be left wanting to say to me that I wouldn’t already know.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“Even if we are not these bodies, we are these bodies right now. I let myself grow mindful of this very moment, the feeling of my own body, and of theirs, warm and flush against me. There is no past, no future. There is only this moment.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

“I am reminded that the answer to feeling more peaceful is to bring my awareness back to the present moment, to commit to taking actions that honor my intention to live a good life and to make the world a better place, and that by doing so I am honoring my parents and friends who have died, and that as a result, they are still with me.”
― Claire Bidwell Smith, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?