A Quote by Emily Saliers

I had a sister who died and my mother passed away. I know that grief comes in waves. When deep grief hits, I know that it hurts like hell, and then you get a little bit of a respite, and then it comes back, and it hurts like hell. I know it can be survived.
Grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief.
If you're trying to drop ten pages from a screenplay, it hurts like hell, but if you just put it away for a month and then take it out, you can do it just like that!
I saw this huge billboard that said: 'Abortion Hurts' and then it had a drawing of a butterfly. Who is that for? Is there a lady who's going to see that and be like, 'Oh, I was going to get an abortion but now that I realize it hurts I guess I'll just give birth to a child! 'Cause I know that's painless and raising it should be a snap!'
It hurts that, you know, the media's made me into sort of this like punching bag or cartoon character-they think that I don't have any feelings, and, you know, it hurts like anyone else.
Basically when it comes to autistic kids and animals there's kind of three ways that they work, some of them are instant best buddies, they understand a cat, they understand a dog - they're best studies with it, they just know how to communicate with it. Then there's other kids that begin with a little bit of fear of the cat or the dog, but then they begin to like it and then there are other kids where you have a sensory problem - the cat meows and it hurts their ears, so they want to stay away from the cat because you never know when he might meow.
I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ...and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I've been holding myself...Mostly I've been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it's coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely...It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there's a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon.
If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.
Life hurts at times. It hurts to have a body at times, hurts to be born, hurts to live, hurts to die, but it can be ecstasy beyond comprehension. You can know that ecstasy. It is inside of you.
Until you have a child, you won't really understand that you would actually throw yourself in front of a bus for your child. Like, you don't really get it. Like, it's like, 'Hell no.' You know, 'She's only two. I can make another one.' You know? But, you know, you have a baby, and then you actually care about this person.
I began to know my story then. Like everybody's, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.
Don LaFontaine passed away. He passed away from a blood clot in the lung. It was unexpected. It just happened. I was just blown away by it. He was like, "Pablo, I've got something in my lungs, I don't know what it is." And I said, "What is it?" And he says, "I don't know, it just keeps hurting." And then he left me a message saying, "I'll come see you when I get out of here." And it never happened.
The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase “He was visited by grief,” because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.
There's a lot that I haven't put up there since my husband passed away because then it would be grief everyday. I have to fight within myself at times and ask, 'how do I go through the grief and find a light, even a glimmer of it?'
Why am I in Hell? It hurts. It hurts all the time. Why am I in Hell? I just want to go home and lie on the bed the way I used to. Please take me home.
From the time of Dante [Alighieri], when you have the Ptolemaic universe, you had God on the outside like a hypersphere, and then in the center you have the Earth, all the seven heavens and layers, and then you have the Mount of Purgatory and Hell right in the center, and here's Satan flapping his wings and he keeps making the lake of Cocytus ice so you can't get out. So, again, where Heaven and Hell are, who the hell knows that now?
Believe in dreams. Never believe in hurts... You can't let the grief and the hurts and the breaking experiences of life control your future decisions.
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