Reese Witherspoon Quotes

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

Time heals all wounds, unless you pick at them.

I get why we don't want to be in pain, but there's something very essential about what happens when we're in pain and some of the growth that can come from it if we stare at it straight in the face.

Criticism only hurts when there's some truth in it.

Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

It's like my garden, love. Everything grows. Including love. And with that growing everyday how can you expect missing her to ever fade away? Everything builds, including our ability to cope with it. That's how we keep going.

The acknowledgement of having suffered evil is the greatest step forward in mental health.

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.

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.

I've come to a much more controlled idea about death and loss, but I don't think it's possible to come to that much more controlled idea until you've gone through the crazy part . . . I don't mean that I'm controlled. I mean that I gave up the idea that I had control. That's the new control.

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.

The pain is always bringing me a lesson. If I listen to the lesson when the pain is manageable, the pain won't get gargantuan and flatten me entirely, because I will have received the message at the center. I receive it as gently as I can, because the cruelest thing that I do to myself is try to push myself through an experience.

Pain is inevitable. It is actually a great opportunity for growth, but when we blame or fail to take responsibility for our suffering, the pain becomes stagnant, and stagnant pain can have a compounding effect if left unchecked.

Suffering brings your heart to bear. It gets you where you are!

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.

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

I would say my whole first record, 'Steady On,' had a lot to do with healing.

I feel lucky and blessed that I got away with the things that I did do. But there's got to be an easier way to do that. I guess people have to go through whatever their time requires them to go through and if they can see it as inspiration, you know, fine. But I'm not taking no blame for it.

No one ever tells you what the grieving process is going to be like. The process of losing a parent or ending a show or vocal injuries - they all bring on their own special breed of dismay... You just have to ride the wave. You don't have any other choice.

For better and for worse, I feel like sorrow and grief are really transformative personal experiences for me, and I question what I would be had I decided to take a different path and not embrace that kind of pain.

The important thing is I've always been a responsible person. As a woman, too, you have to be a lot stronger. Things are always happening that if you let it bother you, you'll be mad all the time.

I think life would be a lot easier if people were able to stand in their mistakes and not backtrack. If you did something wrong, own it. Like, hold your own.

When you've been touched by sadness and grief, it makes you vulnerable. And because I am vulnerable, I try to be positive. And when I say 'try,' I really do mean try, because it's an effort.

It makes you tougher. And when you lose a child, no one can say anything that is ever going to impact you.

They always say, 'Time heals.' But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before.