You can’t change the tale so that you turned left one day instead of right, or didn’t make the mistake that might have saved your life a day later. We don’t get those choices. The story is what got you here, and embracing its truth is what makes the outcome bearable.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.

Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

the territory of grief ... is both cruel and commonplace.