Permission To Grieve Quotes

It is difficult to describe the peace that comes with giving yourself permission to know what you know. To have hard, complicated realities staring at you and be able to raise your head and look back at them with a steady gaze, scared maybe, grieved perhaps, but straight on and unwavering

Only the broken heart has the ghost of a chance to grieve, to forgive, to long, to transform." Christina Baldwin, author of Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, 1990. Used with author's permission

With permission to grieve, we stop yelling at ourselves to be stronger or different or better in our pain and shift to witnessing ourselves instead.

Society doesn’t give us permission to grieve, but we can.

For those struggling with grief, there’s no timetable. It can last months, years, or longer. There is no rush. Give yourself permission to take however long it may be to fully heal from your loss.

Insisting that life stay the same post-loss is essentially the same as saying, “Let’s just pretend this never happened.” That’s an incredible disservice to the person, place, or thing that you lost. Did you love what you lost? If you didn’t love it, was it important, significant, influential, or a large chunk of your life? Did you have hopes, dreams, or expectations attached to it? Then it’s worth grieving its loss. And that loss will change your identity on some level.

Sharing my full truth became an essential part of my healing process, and remains that way, but it's a continuous journey in giving myself permission to grieve publicly and unapologetically. It does, at times, leave me exposed to people who don't know how to handle it, folks who offer unhelpful comments, opinions, or criticisms.

Grief looks, feels, and shows up differently to each person. Just like no two losses are alike, no two griefs are alike, either. You cannot know the full depth of another person’s experience and they cannot know the full depth of yours.

I’m wondering how, for all these years, the church has gotten away with so many oppressive acts toward women, Indigenous peoples, Black people, other people of color, disabled people, immigrants, those who journey with depression or anxiety, those who grieve, and those who are gender nonbinary, transgender, or queer. Can we go to church and be angry? Can we go to church and be furious? Can we go to church and ask questions? Can we go to church and fight against what we believe is wrong within it? Absolutely. Those of us who are angry cannot wait for the church to give us permission, because white supremacy will never give the oppressed permission to be angry.

Once grief enters your life, it remains a part of your life whether you acknowledge it or not.

Grief is pervasive. It cannot be quarantined any more than love can be quarantined. Grief affects all areas of life.

If you’re grieving, you have become—at least partially—someone you don’t recognize.

You cannot fix, change, or remove another person’s grief. You cannot “spare” someone the pain of grieving a loss. Your grief belongs to you; their grief belongs to them.

As life continues, so will grief.

Despite my pride for my culture and heritage, it is not my home. It is a place I long for and grieve over in my heart, but it is not a home that knows me with intimacy... What has become apparent to me is that home is a space that we must cultivate ourselves, deliberately and intentionally. It is a space we must co-create with those we love and bring into existence wherever we are.

The solution to grief is not a pain-free existence. It is allowing ourselves to grieve and witnessing ourselves in that process. Permission and presence are the remedies for agony and isolation.

Grief is a heartbreaking, soul-crushing, brain-warping experience that not one of us would voluntarily choose to have. We would never sign up to experience the losses we’ve lived through or the pain that follows.

Grief does not exist within a vacuum, but it also does not exist within just one life. It spreads out and affects the people “above you” in your family tree and the people who will come after you or “below you.” Grief also impacts entire races, genders, generations, and communities, and those beliefs about grief and the stories we tell ourselves about whether or not grief is acceptable, what’s at the root cause of grief, and whether or not we can recover from that grief have an enormous impact on how we give ourselves permission to grieve, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.

In grief and loss, it becomes incredibly hard to recognize who we are. Grief makes us different people. Everything that we identify with—from our emotional states to our patterns to our dreams to our fears to our preferences to our core truths— everything fractures and shatters under the weight of loss.

Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty because you are still grieving. Grief is a slow process and often takes as long as two years to complete its healing work. That doesn’t mean that you will always hurt this badly, but it does mean that you should give yourself permission to take as much time as you need to work through your loss.

Grief ripples out and sends powerful tremors through our foundation, through our hobbies, through our loved ones, and through our minds. For the first time in our lives, we can- not compartmentalize the hard, the bad, or the sad. There’s nowhere to tuck it away because every single aspect of our lives is infected with and tainted by grief.

Grief wants to be seen, heard, and listened to... just like we do.

Grief is not fixable, curable, or preventable. It is not a “condition” or pathology.

Grievers often bear the disproportionate burden of needing to “teach” others how to support them in grief... and not everybody is a willing or capable “student.

Permission calls us home to ourselves. It brings us back to where we belong. And it reminds us that we are safe, sound, and secure—even when everything around us is falling apart.

Don’t ask your losses to stay small so that you can feel safe.

To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. In myths, nothing good comes from gloating. You have to let the gods maintain the image of their singular power. I did not yet know that nightmares know no geography, that guilt and anxiety wander borderless. It is a reflex to expect the bad with the good. I don't know what fears kept hidden only grow more fierce. I don't know that my habits of pretending are only making us worse. Maybe moving forward also meant circling back. There are always two worlds. The one that I choose and the one that I deny, which inserts itself without my permission. To change our behavior, we must change our feelings and to change our feelings, we must change our thoughts. Freedom is bout choice - about choosing compassion, humor, optimism, intuition, curiosity and self-expression. To be free is to live in the present. When you have something to prove, you are not free. When we grieve, it's not just over what happened - we grieve for what didn't happen. You can't heal what you can't feel. It's easier to hold someone or something else responsible for your pain than to take responsibility for ending your own victimhood. Our painful experiences aren't a liability, they are a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength. One of the proving grounds for our freedom is in how we relate to our loved ones. There is no forgiveness without rage. But to ask "why" is to stay in the past, to keep company with our guilt and regret. We can't control other people and we can't control the past. You can't change what happened, you can't change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now.

Sitting next to grief and allowing it to root through your former life while slowly unfurling into your new life requires the kind of patience, gentleness, and self-love that many of us have never had to summon before. Remember that at its core, permission is about telling the truth about where you are right now. And sometimes that truth means saying, “I don’t know.

Relationships continue even when they are radically changed by death, divorce, diagnosis, or another loss. Grief continues, too. For as long as we continue to live, we continue to grieve.

Grief could take the form of violence too, could give a false sense of permission, erase the world around, and that was what frightened Clare most about violence, how transferable it was.

When we grant ourselves permission to grieve, we make the experience of grief something we recognize, something we welcome into our lives. We allow it to show up the way it wants to through feelings, identities, and actions. We write our own expectations and stories. Our grief becomes ours again and we become more ourselves again because we actively choose to experience grief.

From the time we’re children, we’re taught that the path is more important than the obstacles that appear on it. We’re told to focus on the destination rather than the journey. We repeatedly hear the story of the phoenix rising from the ashes, but we fail to remember (or conveniently forget to remember) that the ashes are made of the charred, scorched remains of the phoenix’s “life before.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, our myths, stories, and expectations for what grief should feel like come from our minds. Where grief really lives—and where grief needs to be expressed from—is our hearts.

Allowing grief to make its mark in your life—whether you’re altering habits and routines, making art, or attending a grief event—acknowledges and honors the fact that grief is a powerful, life-altering force.

If you are working with a therapist counselor social worker grief expert minister priest or anyone else who is trying to help you navigate the wilderness of grief and they start talking about the groundbreaking observations of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross suggesting there is an orderly predictable unfolding of grief please please please. Do yourself a favor. Leave. People who are dying often experience five stages of grief: denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance. They are grieving their impending death. This is what Elizabeth Kubler Ross observed. People who are learning to live with the death of a beloved have a different process. It isn’t the same. It isn’t orderly. It isn’t predictable. Grief is wild and messy and unpredictable

You are allowed to live and feel the experience of grief. By giving yourself permission to experience grief emotions and letting grief move through you, you are allowing grief (and by extension, yourself) to show up how it wants to, not how society wishes it would. There is immense self-love in that. In allowing yourself permission to feel, you are allowing your- self to show up as a whole human being, not just the parts of a human that you (or society) consider to be “appropriate,” “pretty,” or “worthy.

This is the tale of spontaneous Arabella Who ran off with an extrinsic fellow. It grieved her parents to see their first born Evanesce from her home to go to Eastbourne Without permission, to get ill and find indigence Until she was down to her last sixpence.

This is the tale of spontaneous Arabella Who ran off with an extrinsic fellow. It grieved her parents to see their first bourn Evanesce from her home to go to Eastbourne Without permission, to get ill and find indigence Until she was down to her last sixpence.

Grief does not want to be held, blocked, or braced against. Grief does not want to be quarantined, scrutinized, or shamed into disappearing. Just like every other emotion, grief wants to be able to move through you, free from judgment, criticism, or camouflage.

Permission is the key that unlocks the door that’s been holding us trapped, muzzled, and stifled in our grief. Permission is the opposite of rejection. Permission is the opposite of abandonment. Permission lifts the weight, eases the pressure, and loosens the reins.

I began realizing it was okay to just sit with Him instead of always reading and journaling prayers or hustling off to the next bible study. It was okay to just be still. It was possible to find Him in the immense stillness, the hidden parts of my heart. He was always there in my hiddenness.

Thus, grieving is especially profound when we can fluidly shift between feeling and emoting. Sometimes we will only need to fully feel and accept the sensations of our pain. Other times we will want to verbally ventilate about our pain with someone who gives us full permission to color our words with angering and tears.

Finding an explanation or a quick solution for grief, while an admirable goal, can circumvent the opportunity afforded in lament—to give a person permission to wrestle with sorrow instead of rushing to end it. Walking through sorrow without understanding and embracing the God-given song of lament can stunt the grieving process.

There must have been a problem, we offer. God must have something even better around the corner, we propose. Must He? Here, then is my Lenten plea for the day: let the mourning mourn. Grant those who grieve the dignity to ask questions. Bestow upon the bewildered permission to not edit their honesty. Crucifixion is, after all, serious work.

While grief invites us to feel the full spectrum of human emotions, it also invites us to deepen our love for ourselves. That means feeling exactly how we’re feeling in every moment. That means meeting and embracing the darkest, ugliest, most conventionally “unlovable” pieces of ourselves and acknowledging that yes, even grief belongs to us, too.

you can’t skip the uncertainty of not knowing who you are. You can’t skip the reality of having an uncertain identity. It’s often the hardest part of grief, because unlike shifting feelings that can resolve themselves in minutes or hours, shifting identities can take years to resolve. Sometimes who you are is “suspended” for a very long time before you feel like you’ve found solid footing again.

Letting grief become action is about the body. It’s literally about taking grief outside of yourself and letting grief’s emotions and identities be expressed in the physical world around you. Whether there are witnesses or not, it’s tangible evidence that grief has called you to make or do something. The act of doing something is a visible marker that grief has had and is continuing to have an impact on your life.

The most important thing you can do to have a great sex life is to welcome your sexuality as it is, right now—even if it’s not what you wanted or expected it to be. Letting go of old, bogus cultural standards requires a grieving process, going through the little monitor’s pit of despair. To facilitate that letting go, develop the skill of “nonjudging.” When you give yourself permission to be and feel whatever you are and feel, your body can complete the cycle, move through the tunnel, and come out to the light at the end.

PLACEMENT The Physical Transference of Care and Saying Good-bye "A toddler cannot participate in a discussion of the transition process or be expected o understand a verbal explanation. [They benefit] tremendously by experiencing the physical transference of care, and by witnessing the former caregiver's permission and support for [their new guardians] to assume their role. The toddler pays careful attention to the former caregiver's face and voice, listening and watching as [they talk] to [their new guardians] and invites the [guardians'] assumption of the caregiver's role. The attached toddler is very perceptive of [their] caregiver's emotions and will pick up on nonverbal cues from that person as to how [they] should respond to [their] new family. Children who do not have he chance to exchange good-byes or to receive permission to move on are more likely to have an extended period of grieving and to sustain additional damage to their basic sense of trust and security, to their self-esteem, and to their ability to initiate and sustain strong relationships as they grow up. The younger the child, the more important it is that there be direct contact between parents and past caregiveres. A toddler is going to feel conflicting loyalties if [they] are made to feel on some level that [they] must choose between [their] former caregiver and [their] new guardians ...

It is frightening to step off onto the treacherous footbridge leading to the second half of life. We can’t take everything with us on this journey through uncertainty. Along the way, we discover that we are alone. We no longer have to ask permission because we are the providers of our own safety. We must learn to give ourselves permission. We stumble upon feminine or masculine aspects of our natures that up to this time have usually been masked. There is grieving to be done because an old self is dying. By taking in our suppressed and even our unwanted parts, we prepare at the gut level for the reintegration of an identity that is ours and ours alone—not some artificial form put together to please the culture or our mates. It is a dark passage at the beginning. But by disassembling ourselves, we can glimpse the light and gather our parts into a renewal.

Speeding through grief always has a cost. To bury somebody's supposed-to-be is also to bury a story that's untold. When you bury someone's story like that, it gets lodged in the ribcage, it gets radioactive, it festers, it shouts to be heard. Grief is always a voice that needs to speak. If you suppress it, it still speaks— but not always in ways that are healthy. Not in the ways you need. It pushes through your skin like rogue splinters. Burying a future loss without telling its story can make you sick. Timesick. You get split between timelines. The further along you go, the further away you get from that dream, and you look around and wonder how people can keep going while you want the world to stop, time to freeze, to get back to your real universe. And you get well-meaning people around you, always the ones who mean well, who are nudging you forward, shoving you, really, and you clutch two timelines until you're ripped in half. Part of my role as a chaplain, I've learned, is to make room for these original timelines. That they may be spoken, shared. The story told. "There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you, Zora Neale Hurston said. It must be conversely true that there is no greater peace than to tell that story.

Grieving the loss of a loved one—whether human or animal—is not only permissible, it is essential.

The best approach is often passivity-a gentle, passive being-there that gives survivors permission to grieve, heal, and recover in their own unique way and at their own pace.

We need to dwell on the facts of our faith rather than our wobbly feelings. We hold on to the facts of our faith by keeping honest communication both vertically with God and horizontally with safe people in our lives. Throughout the process [of difficult change] and afterwards, we give ourselves permission to grieve those losses and let the balm of Christ's love fill in the tender places. We remember we are 'hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; struck down but not destroyed' (2 Cor. 4:8-9).

We have permission to grieve. We have permission to wail, to doubt, and to question. God can handle all of our questions and our hurts. We can bring all of that to Him, knowing “he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help” (Psalm 22:24).

they frequently missed or ignored the concept of lament. Finding an explanation or a quick solution for grief, while an admirable goal, can circumvent the opportunity afforded in lament—to give a person permission to wrestle with sorrow instead of rushing to end it. Walking through sorrow without understanding and embracing the God-given song of lament can stunt the grieving process.

It is hard to get over a cheater because it means accepting the bizarre notion that life can be unfair in the harshest sense of the word. It is hard to get over a cheater because betrayal of trust turns your world upside down. And the only way to flip it right-side up again is to give ourselves permission to work through it. To accept what happened. To mourn someone we hate. To grieve a relationship we walked away from. To work through every paradoxical situation we encounter, until we come through on the other side. The side with a clean slate. The side where we don't just suspect that we deserve better- we know. And the side where we are proud of ourselves for never accepting any less.

It is important for the former caregiver to display honest emotions about the pending separation. If an attachment has formed, it is natural for both the child and caregiver to grieve their separation. This is no time for adults to try to be strong for the child's sake. A child's self-esteem is enhanced by tangible evidence that [they] were cared for and that [their] former caregiver will miss [them] but wishes [them] well. When adults express their feelings appropriately, it gives children permission to do so as well. Carefully planned and executed pre-placement transition strategies should assist former caregivers in adjusting their role and placing their confidence in the ability of the new [guardians] to provide a safe, secure, and nuturing environment for the toddler they have loved and cared for.

Society needs heroes, but most policemen, firemen, and soldiers don’t want to become heroes; they want to be men and women doing their jobs. They want to be supported and understood. Unfortunately, they find the most support and under-standing when death comes in the line of duty. With death comes the onset of the hero label. With the hero title bestowed, everyone seems to know Jason. They won’t ask for permission to speak at his funeral. They will simply do it because they know the person in the coffin would not be there if it weren’t for a position that required them to give their lives for others. People who didn’t know him spoke as if they did, and, while society was claiming its newest hero, Stephanie wanted to grieve alone. More than that, though, she wanted Jason back.

Thus he was old enough to remember the freedom that had prevailed in the canyon country before the hordes of tourists had started pouring in, back when a man could launch a boat and disappear downriver without having to ask for permission or wait in line, devoid of any constraints other than those imposed by the water and the rocks, an adventure in the best sense of the word. And as those days receded ever further into the rearview mirror, there were moments—right now being one of them—when Thomas was forced to wonder about it all. In truth, no one who had tasted those liberties could look back on that time with anything other than a deep sense of longing. Like everyone else who had known the river during that era of innocence, Thomas mourned its passing and privately grieved that it would never return. Which is why part of him sometimes rebelled at the very restrictions he sought to enforce, if only because rules—even rules that were universally accepted as necessary and good—seemed to cut so directly against the spirit that the river had once embodied. This sense of loss now prompted Thomas to ponder a notion that was not merely unorthodox but, when viewed from a certain angle, downright subversive. Was it possible, he wondered, that a measure of what had been lost—the thing that had once defined the essence of this place, the thing that was now in the process of disappearing forever—was that very thing perhaps being offered a chance to express itself one more time, fleetingly, irresponsibly, nobly, right here before him?

It wasn't until I sat with patient after patient, from emergency room to deathbed, that I saw what they saw: In their illness or injury, I saw a memory loss of the future. This is called intrapsychic grief, the pain of losing what will never be, the reaching for something that was supposed to happen. This intrapsychic grief is a specific but universal ache.

She asks me, "How do you grieve someone you never met?" With each patient, I hear similar questions. It keeps emerging, this pulse. It presses in every room, leans on every shoulder, demands an answer: How do you grieve future loss? Underneath that, more questions: How do you deal with the viciousness of a broken dream? How do you move on from the picture of life in your head? How do you keep moving through a parallel-universe life? My patients suffer from good dreams. What I mean is, it's not the nightmares that keep them up. It's the hope. Daydreams of another life. Instead of homesick, they're timesick. Before becoming a chaplain, I thought grief was about missing the past. About reflecting on all the things before, the stuff we had until mortality crawled through the window. It's true. We grieve the past. But mostly no one gets a chance to grieve the future. It doesn't seem to read as a real loss. I need to tell you about this because nobody told me: The dream that didn't happen is as much of a loss as losing the one that did.

Web? Did Swift come aboard with you? The boy we spoke of before?” He halted and turned to my question. “Yes. Why do you ask?” “You recall that he is the boy that I asked you to talk with, the one who is Witted?” “Of course. That was why I was so pleased when he came to me and offered to be my ‘page’ if I would take him on and teach him. As if I knew what a page is supposed to do!” He laughed at such nonsense, and then sobered at my serious face. “What is it?” “I had sent him home. I discovered that he did not have his parents’ permission to be at Buckkeep at all. They think that he has run away, and are greatly grieved by his disappearance.” Web stood still and silent, digesting this news, his face showing no expression. Then he shook his head regretfully. “It must be a terrible thing for someone you love to vanish, and leave you always wondering what became of him.” An image of Patience sprang into my mind; I wondered if he had intended that his words prick me. Perhaps not, but the possible criticism made me irritable all the same. “I told Swift to go home. He owes his parents his labor until he either reaches his majority or is released by them.” “So some say,” Web said, in a tone that indicated he might disagree. “But there are ways parents can betray a child, and then I think the youngster owes them nothing. I think that children who are mistreated are wise to leave as swiftly as they can.” “Mistreated? I knew Swift’s father for many years. Yes, he will give a lad a cuff or a sharp word, if the boy has earned it. But if Swift claims he was beaten or neglected at home, then I fear that he lies. That is not Burrich’s way.” My heart sank that the boy could have spoken so of his father. Web shook his head slowly. He glanced at Thick to assure himself that the man was still sleeping and spoke softly. “There are other types of neglect and deprivation. To deny what unfolds inside someone, to forbid the magic that comes unbidden, to impose ignorance in a way that invites danger, to say to a child, ‘You must not be what you are.’ That is wrong.” His voice was gentle but the condemnation was without compassion. “He raises his son as he was raised,” I replied stiffly. It felt odd to defend him, for I had so often railed against Burrich for what he had done to me. “And he learned nothing. Not from having to deal with his own ignorance, not from what it did to the first lad he treated so. I try to pity him, but when I consider all that could have been, had you been properly educated from the time you were small—” “He did well by me!” I snapped. “He took me to his side when no one else would have me, and I’ll not hear ill spoken of him.

I don’t know if there is a right and wrong way to grieve. I just know that losing you has gutted me in a way I honestly didn’t think was possible. I’ve felt pain I didn’t think was human. At times, it has made me lose my mind. (Let’s just say that I went a little crazy up on our roof.) At times, it has nearly broken me. And I’m happy to say that now is a time when your memory brings me so much joy that just thinking of you brings a smile to my face. I’m also happy to say that I’m stronger than I ever knew. I have found meaning in life that I never would have guessed. And now I’m surprising myself once again by realizing that I am ready to move forward. I once thought grief was chronic, that all you could do was appreciate the good days and take them along with the bad. And then I started to think that maybe the good days aren’t just days; maybe the good days can be good weeks, good months, good years. Now I wonder if grief isn’t something like a shell. You wear it for a long time and then one day you realize you’ve outgrown it. So you put it down. It doesn’t mean that I want to let go of the memories of you or the love I have for you. But it does mean that I want to let go of the sadness. I won’t ever forget you, Jesse. I don’t want to and I don’t think I’m capable of it. But I do think I can put the pain down. I think I can leave it on the ground and walk away, only coming back to visit every once in a while, no longer carrying it with me. Not only do I think I can do that, but I think I need to. I will carry you in my heart always, but I cannot carry your loss on my back anymore. If I do, I’ll never find any new joy for myself. I will crumble under the weight of your memory. I have to look forward, into a future where you cannot be. Instead of back, to a past filled with what we had. I have to let you go and I have to ask you to let me go. I truly believe that if I work hard, I can have the sort of life for myself that you always wanted for me. A happy life. A satisfied life. Where I am loved and I love in return. I need your permission to find room to love someone else. I’m so sorry that we never got the future we talked about. Our life together would have been grand. But I’m going out into the world with an open heart now. And I’m going to go wherever life takes me. I hope you know how beautiful and freeing it was to love you when you were here.

Sometimes memories of earlier losses emerge because you were not able to grieve them fully when they occurred. Perhaps you were too busy coping with life. Or maybe you didn't give yourself permission to grieve, or you experienced multiple losses in a short period of time, and you weren't able to grieve them all. Whatever the reasons, losses that we have not processed do return and ask for our attention. A major event such as a pandemic may certainly create an opening for old griefs, as well as new losses, to come roaring in.

Clarity>Intensity Grieve what was lost or stolen. Do you feel like you’ve reached the bottom or end of your motivation? Discover what is embarrassing or what you are covering up. Realize our trials and failures don’t define us. Stop doing what we’ve done out of habit or fear. Remove distractions during this season. Look for a rebirth. Study yourself. Train for the success. Train for failure.  Grant yourself permission to stop. Recognize patterns. Lean in, explore, and study the situation. Learn to be present and pay attention. Give compassion and acceptance to ourselves in the midst of our struggle. Accept the gift of winter. Remind ourselves of the difficult times we’ve made it through. Remind ourselves that if one or more area of our lives is in winter we don’t have to despair. Compartmentalize in a healthy way.

Along the way, we discover that we are alone. We no longer have to ask permission because we are the providers of our own safety….There is grieving to be done because an old self is dying. By taking in our suppressed and even our unwanted parts, we prepare at the gut level for the reintegration of an identity that is ours and ours alone – not some artificial form put together to please the culture or our mates.

Missing is different to bring dead. In a way, it's worse. Death offers finality. Death gives you permission to grieve. To hold memorials, to light candles, to lay flowers. To let go. Missing is limbo. You're stranded; in a strange, bleak place where hope glimmers faintly at the horizon and misery and despair circle like vultures.

Open up to your own sadness. It’s only in allowing yourself to really acknowledge and feel emotions that you’re able to let them go. This might sound simple, and it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Giving yourself permission to really grieve is difficult in our fast-paced world, where you’re supposed to “move on” as quickly as possible. But our inner worlds don’t operate according to the clock.

grieving is a process, and this process is lightened within the context of community.

Just as he heralded the importance of expressing other kinds of emotions, Fred felt it essential to give others permission to grieve over the losses in their lives. He learned that lesson himself when he was six years old.

At first, you have these overwhelming feelings of loss and grief. The sadness is heavy and unbearable. You are riding on a debilitating roller coaster of despair, rage, disbelief, and sleepless nights. You wonder if your pain will ever end. You question why no one understands and what to do next. Focusing on anything—anything at all, let alone meaningful—seems impossible. This is normal. You’re grieving and you’re allowed to…no, encouraged to grieve. Give yourself permission to mourn in your own way.

Life is linear until it isn’t.

When we’re grieving, we’re consciously or unconsciously walling ourselves into expectations, false stories, and myths.

Asking our emotions to stay predictable, easy, and flat in grief is like asking the ocean to be a smooth, glassy, back- yard pool. It’s just not possible. Can you imagine an ocean that didn’t roar and crash into the shore? It wouldn’t be an ocean, would it? We allow our humanness in grief by giving ourselves permission to experience our feelings in their fullness as they surface.

Grief is a normal, natural human experience.

Permission is the way back to ourselves after we’ve rejected our lives and abandoned ourselves.

I stood laughing in the kitchen because for the first time since my mom had died, I saw my whole self in my grief. I embraced her and let her be what she was. I didn’t reject her life, and I didn’t reject her in mine. I allowed her to show up as the messy, heartbroken, rage-filled nut that she was...and I loved her. I was delighted by her and humored by her and honored to be in her powerful, awesome presence.

Grief does not want to force itself into a life, a body, or an identity it has outgrown. Grief does not want to take shelter in a new life, a new body, or a new identity it is not ready to call home. Grief wants to be given time, space, and support in the in-between. It wants to be given room to help you decide who you are in the aftermath of loss without the pressure to decide RIGHT NOW.

No matter what society, movies, or the nightly news would like you to believe, there is no finite ending to grief.

When we refuse ourselves permission to grieve, we shut off a vital piece of our hearts that needs seeing, expressing, and loving: a wounded child, a raging wolf, an injured spirit. When we give ourselves permission to grieve, we embrace the child. We release the wolf. We heal the spirit. We run towards what scares us most only to find that “it” is ourselves... and it’s not so much scary as is it is afraid. And we don’t want the fear to go away as much as we want the fear to be seen, heard, and wholeheartedly loved.

It’s one thing to give yourself permission to grieve. It’s another to let loss define your life. If you let the loss become more important than everything that went before, you make everything that went before meaningless.

They not only give us permission to grieve but also encourage us to express our grief fully before God. As we do this, we can begin to appropriate the compassion of the God who is no stranger to suffering. In this way, the psalms show us how to suffer. They call us to cry on God’s shoulder and exhaust our grief in the presence of the most empathetic listener in the universe.

I had come to the place where I now live. It is a place of freedom, the freedom to accept the evidence of my senses and my mind. It is difficult to describe the peace that comes with giving yourself permission to know what you know: to have hard, complicated realities staring at you and to be able to raise your head and look back at them with a steady gaze, scared maybe, grieved perhaps, but straight on and unwavering.

Give yourself permission to grieve as you delve into your feelings of sadness.

What I feared was not that God wasn’t real, but that suffering had no meaning, no significance, no witness. I could live in a godless world. I was unsure I could live in a meaningless one. A world without a god still made sense. Faith would be one less thing for me to hold. But a world without sense was unbearable. It meant nothing was holding me.

There is no such thing as closure. There is no final stitch, no last loop. We do not move on. We move with.1

Grief is the debt we pay to live and to love and to chase the stuff that gives us meaning. Every breath is a debt collection on a collapsing hallway of deficit. You are a life on loan.