115 Quotes by Meghan O'Rourke

Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One’s inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one’s public persona.

To mourn is to wonder at the strangeness that grief is not written all over your face in bruised hieroglyphics. And it’s also to feel, quite powerfully, that you’re not allowed to descend into the deepest fathom of your grief – that to do so would be taboo somehow.

There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss – the loss of the person, and the loss of the self you got to be with that person. And the seeming loss of the past, which now feels forever out of reach.

What’s endlessly complicated in thinking about women’s gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport.

Many researchers say the dominant emotion experienced after loss is yearning or searching. And while you might feel more anger early on, it’s accompanied by a whole host of other feelings.

Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death – more than they experience, say, denial.

One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don’t just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.

And after my mother’s death I became more open to and empathetic about other people’s struggles and losses.

Loss doesn’t feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death.