My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.

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

Grief is what tells you who you are alone.

I'd confused need with love and love with sacrifice.

memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain.

What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

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.