My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.

The truth is, I need to experience my mother's presence in the world around me and not just in my head.

Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles.

Be patient with yourself. Don't make the loss harder by thinking you should be a certain way, or have bounced back, etc.

One of the difficulties with grief research is that it risks making certain kinds of grief seem normal and others abnormal - and of course having a sense of the contours of grief is, I think, truly useful, one has to remember it's not a science, it's an individual reckoning, which science is just trying to help us describe.

I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.

I live to collect information, and I am also a perfectionist.