56 Quotes by Shelby Forsythia

What if grief is not a consequence of love but another expression of it? What if our deep sorrow is a reflection of deep connection? There is no grief with- out attachment, investment, and some kind of emotional bond. The fact that we grieve is evidence of how completely we are able to love.

Allowing grief to make its mark in your life—whether you’re altering habits and routines, making art, or attending a grief event—acknowledges and honors the fact that grief is a powerful, life-altering force.

Hope is often framed as optimism, but I like to think of it more as endurance. To hope is to believe that the future might look different from how things look right now. Sometimes that hope looks a lot like a mix of faith and waiting. Each day you live life after loss is another opportunity to exercise your muscle of hope.

Grievers often bear the disproportionate burden of needing to “teach” others how to support them in grief... and not everybody is a willing or capable “student.

Sitting next to grief and allowing it to root through your former life while slowly unfurling into your new life requires the kind of patience, gentleness, and self-love that many of us have never had to summon before. Remember that at its core, permission is about telling the truth about where you are right now. And sometimes that truth means saying, “I don’t know.

you can’t skip the uncertainty of not knowing who you are. You can’t skip the reality of having an uncertain identity. It’s often the hardest part of grief, because unlike shifting feelings that can resolve themselves in minutes or hours, shifting identities can take years to resolve. Sometimes who you are is “suspended” for a very long time before you feel like you’ve found solid footing again.

Grief is a normal, natural human experience.

We tell the story of our grief for two reasons: first, to solidify in our brains and hearts that life without our loved one is our new reality; and second, to realize that we are not alone. Just as grief is not a one-time event, telling the story of our loss is not a one-time event, either. We must share the story of what happened, to make sense of it for ourselves and to connect with others who are experiencing similar pain.

Letting grief become action is about the body. It’s literally about taking grief outside of yourself and letting grief’s emotions and identities be expressed in the physical world around you... The act of doing something is a visible marker that grief has had and is continuing to have an impact on your life.