Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it's not so overwhelming.

and now, all these years later, it seem to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended

There's a lot that I haven't put up there since my husband passed away because then it would be grief everyday. I have to fight within myself at times and ask, 'how do I go through the grief and find a light, even a glimmer of it?'

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss—you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "—three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "—four.

Grief dares us to love once more.

I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.

I've lost someone, too; someone I loved. I know how you feel." - Does it get easier? "Yes. But you'll never be the same again.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.

Bones heal, but the loss of my friend will never heal.

I think it [my first heartbreak] probably just taught me that you will always heal. That this too shall pass. The first time you feel that sort of pain, you think it's never going to go away. Once you do survive it, you realize you can survive anything.

I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.

Divorce was the darkest, saddest place I had ever been. It was a struggle - there were a good four or five months of not being able to get out of bed. It was the worst time in my life. You get through it. It's a process that's not easy, but I get less and less sad about it every day.

You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.

After my husband, Dave, died, I called my friend Adam, a psychologist who studies how people find meaning in our lives, and I asked him what, if anything, I could do to help myself and my kids get through this. We started talking about resilience, then reading about it, then talking to other people who had gotten through grief and other huge challenges. In time, those conversations and that research helped me heal.

Be patient with yourself. Don't make the loss harder by thinking you should be a certain way, or have bounced back, etc.

We cried and sobbed and wept and bled tears. But when we were finished, all we could do was continue living.

Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love.

There are some pains that run too deep for anything to absolve them. The best we can do is pick up the pieces and hope for the strength we need to keep going.

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

I never know what to tell them. I mean, there's nothing you can say to make a person stop hurting. Half the time, I just feel like telling them the truth. I'd say that for 3 months, you're going to feel worse than you've ever felt and you cope as best you can. And that after 6 months, the pain isn't so bad, but it still hurts more than you think it will. And even after years, you still find yourself thinking about the person you lost and get sad about it. And you still miss them all the time.

After desolation, grief brings back our humanity.

I have experienced loss in my life, but the thing that brings you back is your faith.

But grief still has to be worked through. It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down. Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.