No mother should lose her child.

love is reliable. infatuation is temporary.

No one can write like Cheryl Strayed.

Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.

My daughter, Grace, was not killed by a gun. She died suddenly at age 5 from a virulent form of strep. As I stood stunned in a church at her memorial, one of the hardest things I heard someone say was, 'I'm going to go home and hug my child a little tighter.' 'Well, good for you,' I thought. 'I'm going to go home and scream.'

I learned to knit in 2002, six months after my 5-year-old daughter, Grace, died suddenly from a virulent form of strep. I was unable to read or write, and friends suggested I take up knitting; almost immediately I fell under its spell.

Time doesn't heal, I had learned, it just keeps moving. And it takes us with it.