A Quote by Brenda Shaughnessy

What if all possible pain was only the grief of truth?

Brenda Shaughnessy

Quote Topics

Grief Only Pain Possible Truth

Quote Author

Brenda Shaughnessy
American - Poet
Born: March 21, 1970

Grief is real because loss is real. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and as unique as the person we lost. The pain of loss is so intense, so heartbreaking, because in loving we deeply connect with another human being, and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for. I honor my grief.

Marianne Williamson

All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But, what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief. The passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.

Anne Lamott

I surrender it to God, knowing that the pain itself is a product or a reflection of how I am interpreting whatever it is that is causing me pain. Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for. I honor my grief. I try to be kinder to myself. I give myself time to move through and to process whatever is making me sad.

Marianne Williamson

Finally we are being told the truth: life isn’t always easy and pleasant. We already know this to be true, but somehow we tend to go through life thinking that there is something wrong with us when we experience sadness, grief, and physical and emotional pain. The first truth points out that this is just the way it is. There is nothing wrong with you: you have just been born into a realm where pain is a given.

Noah Levine

The only way past the pain is through it. Pain, grief, anger, misery...they don't go away-they just increase and compound and get worse. You have to live through them, acknowledge them. You have to give your pain its due.

Jasinda Wilder

There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh that it were possible, After long grief and pain, To find the arms of my true love, Around me once again

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Grief does not end and love does not die and nothing fills its graven place. With grace, pain is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and compassion and the lesser coin of muted sadness and resignation; but something leaden of it remains, to become the kernel arond which more pain accretes (a black pearl): one pain becomes every other pain ... unless one strips away, one by one, the layers of pain to get to the heart of the pain - and this causes more pain, pain so intense as to feel like evisceration.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

People talk about the pain of grief, but I don't know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled.

Veronica Roth

The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left. The knowledge that this question was possible: pain that turns finally into emptiness. The knowledge that the same equation applied to everything, more or less.

Roberto Bolano

Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. Keeping grief inside increases your pain.

Anne Grant

... a warrior could not avoid pain and grief but only the indulging in them

Carlos Castaneda

The statement "I am in pain" may be one piece of evidence for the conclusion that the speaker is in pain, but it is not the only possible evidence, and since people sometimes tell lies, not even the best possible evidence. Even if there were stronger grounds for refusing to attribute pain to those who do not have language, the consequences of this refusal might lead us to reject the conclusion. Human infants and young children are unable to use language. Are we to deny that a year-old child can suffer?

Peter Singer

We can laugh from either joy or happiness, but we weep only from grief or joy...Without the pain of farewell, there is no joy in reunion...without the pain of captivity, we don't experience the joy of freedom.