Finding Meaning Quotes

“Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn't mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“You don't have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“When someone dies, the relationship doesn't die with them.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Healing doesn’t mean the loss didn’t happen. It means that it no longer controls us.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“If I had my life to live over again, I would find you sooner so that I could love you longer.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift, or a blessing. Loss is simply what happens to you in life. Meaning is what you make happen.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“A loved one’s death is permanent, and that is so heartbreaking. But I believe your loss of hope can be temporary. Until you can find it, I’ll hold it for you. I have hope for you. I don’t want to invalidate your feelings as they are, but I also don’t want to give death any more power than it already has. Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. Lose your child and you’re… nothing. —Tennessee Williams”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Life gives us pain. Our job is to experience it when it gets handed to us. Avoidance of loss has a cost.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“People often say, “I don’t know how you’re doing it.” I tell them that I’m not. I’m not deciding to wake up in the morning. I just do. Then I put one foot in front of the other because there’s nothing else to do. Whether I like it or not, my life is continuing, and I have decided to be part of it.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have loved. Your loved one’s story is over. For unknown reasons, their time on earth has drawn to a close, but yours continues. I can only invite you to be curious about the rest of the story of your life.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Love and grief come as a package deal. If you love, you will one day know sorrow.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“One night I happened to come upon a documentary called Facing the Storm, about the buffalos in Montana. Robert Thomson of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks discussed how buffalo run into the storm, thus minimizing how long they will be in it. They don’t ignore it, run from it, or just hope it will go away, which is what we often do when we want to avoid our storms of emotion. We don’t realize that by doing this we’re maximizing our time in the pain. The avoidance of grief will only prolong the pain of grief. Better to turn toward it and allow it to run its natural course, knowing that the pain will eventually pass, that one of these days we will find the love on the other side of pain.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Your pain will not always be like this,” I told her. “It will change.” This is a message that the grieving need to hear, and in the moment of saying it, I often observe a shift. The person looks up at me and says, “It will?” And he or she suddenly becomes lighter.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“She realized that for the dying butterflies were a symbol of transformation, not of death, but of life continuing, no matter what. Although your relationship with your loved one will change after death, it will also continue, no matter what. The challenge will be to make it a meaningful one.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them? —Rose Kennedy”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“The time will come when memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“I guess the real question is, Why not me? Why did I think I was going to get through this life without sorrow, pain, or grief?”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“the reality is posttraumatic growth happens more than posttraumatic stress.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it’s true. You don’t have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined. As Erich Fromm says, “To spare oneself from grief at all costs can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“People often think there is no way to heal from severe loss. I believe that is not true. You heal when you can remember those who have died with more love than pain, when you find a way to create meaning in your own life in a way that will honor theirs. It requires a decision and a desire to do this, but finding meaning is not extraordinary, it’s ordinary. It happens all the time, all over the world.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“What would best honor the years they didn’t get?” That could be one way of bringing meaning to our lives without them.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“I don’t want to have to tell them that my life lost all its meaning when they died. They loved me, and they wouldn’t want that.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“I often wonder what kind of a man he would have become. But I think I got a glimpse of that.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift, or a blessing. Loss is simply what happens to you in life. Meaning is what you make happen Only you can find your own meaning Meaningful connections will heal painful memories”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Ultimately, meaning comes through finding a way to sustain your love for the person after their death while you’re moving forward with your life. That”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“Your life will never be the same, but happiness again is still possible. Never being happy again is a statement about the future. But no one can predict the future. All they can know for sure is that they are unhappy today. It helps to say, “I’m unhappy today,” and leave it at that.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

“grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it’s true. You don’t have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined.”
― David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief