Bearing the Unbearable Quotes

“When we love deeply, we mourn deeply; extraordinary grief is an expression of extraordinary love. Grief and love mirror each other; one is not possible without the other.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Whatever comes, we let it be as it is. When we do this, we come to see, in this moment or the next, our emotions always moving. The word emotion has its roots in the Latin movere and emovere meaning "to move through" and "to move out". Our emotions move in us, move through us and move between us.And when we allows them to move freely, they change, perhaps scarcely and perhaps gradually - but inevitably.
This is grief's most piercing message: there is no way arounf - the only way in through.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Grief is not a medical disorder to be cured. Grief is not spiritual crisis to be resolved. Grief is not a social woe to be addressed. Grief is, simply, a matter of the heart — to be felt.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“To fully inhabit grief is to hold the contradictions of the great mystery that loss shatters us and we become whole. Grief empties us and we are filled with emotion. Fear paralyzes us and we lend courage to another. We mourn our beloved's absence and we invoke their presence. We cease to exist as we once were and we become more fully human. We know the darkest of all nights and in so doing can bring the light of our loved ones into the world. We are the paradox. We are the bearers of the unbearable.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. . . . The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. — C.S. LEWIS”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love, and it would be wrong to try and find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation. It remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. — DIETRICH BONHOEFFER”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Others may tell us that it’s time to “move on” or that this is “part of some bigger plan” — because our shattering makes them feel uneasy, vulnerable, at risk. Some may avoid us, others pity us. But this grief is ours. We have earned this grief, paying for it with love and steadfast devotion. We own this pain, even on days when we wish it weren’t so. We needn’t give it away or allow anything, or anyone, to pilfer it.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Only there, only when ready, will we be able to blossom (albeit painfully) into a joy that cohabitates with grief — rather than displacing or replacing it.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“When others call into question our grief, defy our perennial relationship with those we love who have died, treat us as anathema and avoid us, and push us toward healing before we are ready, they simply redouble our burden.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“The invitation to surrender to grief is about the middle path, straddling both worlds — life and death.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“In a sense, the process of mourning is an outward expression of that love that now has no physical or interpersonal place to be enacted. It’s”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“The world breaks us all, and afterward some are stronger in those broken places.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“STAY MINDFULLY CLOSE to the sensations of early grief because it is a memorial to the raw pain so ubiquitous in the newly bereaved; I find that my attention to it directs and intensifies my sense of what I think of as fierce compassion. Fierce compassion is another artifact of fully inhabited grief.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Suffering endured becomes compassion expressed. Grieving becomes giving.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. — VIKTOR FRANKL”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Is it painful? Oh, yes — beyond all words. Yet we slowly learn to stay with our own pain. We learn we don’t have to check out to endure.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“To love means to open ourselves to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and thus an intensity of consciousness that before we did not know was possible. — ROLLO MAY”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“It almost seems that the only way to eradicate our grief would be to relinquish the love we feel — to disassemble our loved one’s place in our lives. But checking in with the wisdom of our heart, we see that is impossible. Grief and love occur in tandem.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret to redemption lies in remembrance. — RICHARD VON WEIZSÄCKER”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“I remember asking how the world could continue spinning after such a tragedy. I wanted to scream at the cars driving past the cemetery. I wanted to yell at the birds in the trees casting shadows on her headstone. I wanted the grass to stop growing and the clouds to stop floating”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“REPRESSED GRIEF ravages individuals and dismantles families; its tragic effects seep like groundwater into communities and societies. And the emotional economics of grief denied its rightful place are grim.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Being the mother of a child who has died is a tragic privilege — one for which I never asked and certainly never wanted. Yet here I am — and here you are — unbearably wounded. It is the bereaved who are awakened from the slumber of self-satisfaction. It is the bereaved who can heal our world.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“The road of sorrow is not easy. It is ominous, jarring, and narrow.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Our loss, our wound, is precious to us because it can wake us up to love, and to loving action. — NORMAN FISCHER”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“There are two kinds of suffering,” Ajahn Chah told him, “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.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“And I surrender because long past the early days, grief’s shadow still remains. It lurks and lingers. It is both feared enemy and beloved companion who never leaves. Grief calls for us to give ourselves back to it. To remember. To reclaim. To re-grieve. And for all those things, even when they sting, I am thankful.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. — HARUKI MURAKAMI”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“Find those who are willing to join you and walk with you nonjudgmentally. Steer clear of those who claim to have a cure for your grief.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night,” the late Elie Wiesel recognized.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“May there be such a oneness between us that when one weeps the other tastes salt. — KAHLIL GIBRAN”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief