“Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away.”
The Book of Job, 1611 · Job 1:21, King James Version, spoken after losing everything
Chapter 4
On Grief
“I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me.”
Sojourner Truth, 1851 · born enslaved in New York, abolitionist, speaking in Akron, Ohio
“I can wade grief, whole pools of it, I'm used to that. But the least push of joy breaks up my feet, and I tip, drunken.”
Emily Dickinson, 1890 · American poet, who published almost nothing in her lifetime
“Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land; when you can no more hold me by the hand.”
Christina Rossetti, 1862 · English poet, writing at nineteen
“Never say of anything, I have lost it, but, I have restored it.”
Epictetus, c. 125 AD · Stoic teacher, born enslaved in Phrygia
“As when one layeth his worn-out robes away, and taking new ones, sayeth, These will I wear to-day, so putteth by the spirit lightly its garb of flesh.”
The Bhagavad Gita, c. 200 BC · chapter 2, verse 22, spoken by Krishna to Arjuna
“Since we find that grief is removed by length of time, we have the greatest proof that the strength of it depends not merely on time, but on the daily consideration of it.”
Cicero, c. 45 BC · Roman statesman, writing the year after his daughter Tullia died
Grief does not move through tidy stages. In a study of bereaved people, acceptance was the commonest response from the first month, and yearning, not anger, was the hardest feeling.
Paul Maciejewski and colleagues, 2007 · Yale study of 233 bereaved people, published in JAMA
Bereaved people do best when they move back and forth: some days facing the loss, other days attending to ordinary living. Neither drowning in it nor fleeing it.
Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, 1999 · Utrecht researchers, authors of the dual process model of grieving
Roughly one bereaved person in ten develops grief that does not loosen its grip with time. It is a distinct condition, not a character flaw, and it responds to treatment.
Holly Prigerson and colleagues, 2009 · clinical researchers who defined prolonged grief disorder
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