Cumulative Grief Quotes

The older you get, the harder it is to experience a singular grief. Instead, when loss comes again, it doesn't bring something solid all the way through or isolated, it brings you a Russian doll. Loss comes; a new layer of grief forms. And instead of staying still, it opens, and out all the others pour, popping into their composite forms until you are sitting surrounded by an eager, bleeding crowd of them. Grief is cumulative and to feel one kind is to feel at least a little of them all, renewed. When I wake from the shock, there it is, right here in my hands. All my past losses, nestled.

Grief, I believe, is cumulative-each experience of loss shaping the size and scope of the next, each loss holding reverberations of the losses a person has experienced over a lifetime. The pain of grief is real, but it's also an echo and an aftershock, the spirits of past emotions rising up to grip your hand again. Examine one loss and you're likely to find another inside of it, and then another inside of that one, all that grief repeating like a set of Russian nesting dolls.

cannot. They say, “I feel so alone. I am overwhelmed with sorrow. I am collapsing under the weight of the pain I am suffering from my loss. A part of me has died.” Tears are how our bodies respond to grief. Tears help us heal. In your grief, do what comes naturally: cry.

When Jesus heard His friend Lazarus died, John 11:35 tells us, “Jesus wept.” Being human obligates us to the grief journey in times of loss.

Grief, I believe, is cumulative—each experience of loss shaping the size and scope of the next, each loss holding reverberations of the losses a person has experienced over a lifetime. The pain of grief is real, but it’s also an echo and an aftershock, the spirits of past emotions

The third gate of grief is the sorrows of the world. This gate is more familiar. In the Cancer Help Program, we ask on our entry form to list major losses before a cancer diagnosis. A surprising number of people list grief at what is happening in the world as a grief they have long lived with. And, indeed, grief at the suffering of the world has long been known as a fundamental human dilemma. Suffering exists is the first noble truth of the Buddha. How to face suffering is at the heart of the great religious and philosophical traditions. “The cumulative grief of the world is overwhelming. . . . How can we possibly stay open to the endless assaults on the biosphere?” Weller asks. He then quotes Naomi Nye’s beautiful lines: Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

Unresolved grief consumes tremendous amounts of energy. Most commonly, the grief stays buried under the surface, and only the symptoms are treated. Many people, including mental health professionals, misunderstand the fact that unresolved loss is cumulative and cumulatively negative.