Cheryl Strayed Quotes

Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.

The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

The fact that I lost my son permeates my being.

I've lost lots of men in my life, besides my mother, which is a whole different loss.

There's nothing that symbolizes loss or grief more than a mother losing a child.

Love is the funeral of hearts.

Too many people I've loved dearly have left this earth. And some I've lost are still here breathing the same air. That grief can be comparable if not worse in its consumption.

I think loss of loved ones is the hardest blow in life.

I can't bear to think of life without Janice. I want to go first because I don't want to miss her, because that would be a pain far worse than any death.

I am devastated by the loss of my beautiful wife Jane. She was my best friend.

My mother's death was very painful as it occurred over a period of a week. Watching her die was the hardest thing my dad ever went through.

If you no longer live, if you my beloved, my love, if you have died, all the leaves will fall in my breast, it will rain in my soul night and day, the snow will burn my heart, I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow, my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but I shall live

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.

There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and woman to fill our day; But when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.

You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives.

She was such a good loving mother, my best friend. Oh, who was happier than I when I could still say the dear name "Mother," and it was heard, and whom can I say it to now?

Letting go of someone we love is the hardest thing we will ever do. Some people never surrender to love for the fear of being hurt. But to not have loved, to not have felt the immense joy it brings, would have been a far worse kind of death.

Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.

We each die countless little deaths on our way to the last. We die out of shame as humiliation. We perish from despair. And, of course, we die for love.

Grief is the price Love pays for being in the same world with Death.

Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love, especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on, we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them, held their hand, looked in their eyes, been there.