Secondary Grief Quotes

Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important - it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not - but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone.

After the advent of laser surgery but before puberty, before self-consciousness, before secondary school, before money, time or gender got their teeth in. Before language was a trap, when it was a maze. Before

Many survivors of relational and other forms of early life trauma are deeply troubled and often struggle with feelings of anger, grief, alienation, distrust, confusion, low self-esteem, loneliness, shame, and self-loathing. They seem to be prisoners of their emotions, alternating between being flooded by intense emotional and physiological distress related to the trauma or its consequences and being detached and unable to express or feel any emotion at all - alternations that are the signature posttraumatic pattern. These occur alongside or in conjunction with other common reactions and symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem) and their secondary manifestations. Those with complex trauma histories often have diffuse identity issues and feel like outsiders, different from other people, whom they somehow can't seem to get along with, fit in with, or get close to, even when they try. Moreover, they often feel a sense of personal contamination and that no one understands or can help them. Quite frequently and unfortunately, both they and other people (including the professionals they turn to for help) do misunderstand them, devalue their strengths, or view their survival adaptations through a lens of pathology (e.g., seeing them as "demanding", "overdependent and needy", "aggressive", or as having borderline personality). Yet, despite all, many individuals with these histories display a remarkable capacity for resilience, a sense of morality and empathy for others, spirituality, and perseverance that are highly admirable under the circumstances and that create a strong capacity for survival. Three broad categories of survivorship, with much overlap between them, can be discerned: 1. Those who have successfully overcome their past and whose lives are healthy and satisfying. Often, individuals in this group have had reparative experiences within relationships that helped them to cope successfully. 2. Those whose lives are interrupted by recurring posttraumatic reactions (often in response to life events and experiences) that periodically hijack them and their functioning for various periods of time. 3. Those whose lives are impaired on an ongoing basis and who live in a condition of posttraumatic decline, even to the point of death, due to compromised medical and mental health status or as victims of suicide of community violence, including homicide.

Anger is a secondary emotion, a defense, armor we put up around the primary feeling underneath. We burn through anger so we can get to what’s underneath: fear or grief. Only then can we begin the hardest work of all. Forgiving ourselves.

they may pontificate that the suicide attempt was merely a ploy to gain attention or to manipulate others. No matter what may have motivated a suicide attempt, the family has just experienced the terrifying possibility that their loved one might have died. Trivializing a suicide attempt invalidates a family’s grief and despair. They may bury their feelings of grief and loss inside themselves or may convert their feelings into secondary emotions such as anger or fear.

Anger had always been a secondary emotion anyway. That’s what her mother had once told her, that fury rode on a fast horse charging through a relationship, trampling right over loss, disappointment, and grief. And if one wasn’t careful, wrath crushed love too. “Pay attention to those forgotten feelings when you lose your temper, Jenny. Those are the trio of emotions that if not recognized and dealt with, will surely bring a soul down and make ire the driving force in your days. Wounds must grow new flesh.

months, a lifetime with only marginal encounters with beauty and the wild, only rarely sharing an intimate moment with a friend. We collude in the numbing as well, slipping into the void through alcohol, drugs, shopping, television, and work, anything to help us ward off the feelings of emptiness that come crashing at our door. We were not meant to live shallow lives, pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and the night sky. We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. This is at

We held a grief ritual shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Many stories of violence and violation were being evoked by the tragedy. As we listened to the intensity of the stories, we realized we needed to offer a secondary shrine for this event. The normal shrine at these rituals is a water shrine. Water is the element of healing and renewal in many traditions. On this occasion, however, the element of fire was also being called in. Fire is the energy of passion and ignition, and it is often associated with the ancestors. People needed an energy field large enough to fully receive their protests. The site where we were holding this ritual had an immense old fireplace in it. At one end of the room, we created our water shrine, and at the other, surrounding the fireplace, we built the second shrine. Once the ritual began, people spent time weeping at the water shrine and shouting their outrage to the fire. Many of them migrated back and forth, from shrine to shrine. At times, rage would trigger tears, and at others, tears would evoke rage.

At this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a seeker after knowledge; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. For the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers. And the difference between him and me at the present moment is only this—that while he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true, I am seeking to convince myself; to convince my hearers is a secondary matter with me. And do but see how much I have to gain by this. For if what I say is true, then I do well to believe it; and if there be nothing after death, still, I shall save my friends from grief during the short time that is left me, and my ignorance will do me no harm. This is the state of mind in which I approach the argument. And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates. Agree with me if I seem to you to speak the truth; or, if not, withstand me might and main that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my desire, and like the bee leave my sting in you before I die. And now let us proceed.

Being in the audience of the State of the Union is not a passive experience. Every few minutes when the president completed a thought, everyone stood up to clap. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. The sound of the springs in the aged chairs of the House Chamber became a secondary soundtrack. I was distracted by my discomfort and began to dread the end of his sentences. But then I noticed that not every person stood up every single time. I realized they only stood up when he said something their side agreed with. I decided that no matter what he said next, I was going to stay seated. I was really hurting. I was going to sit one round out. Well, as soon as I’d made my mind up that I was staying put, President Obama made a statement and everyone stood up. Everyone. Not half of the room. Every person in the room except me. It happened far too fast for me to correct my mistake. What did he say? “We need equal pay for women.” And I just sat there like a jerk. If the president himself had looked up and to the left, he’d have seen me just sitting there, seemingly opposed to equal pay for women! Good grief! I was not seated next to the first lady, thankfully. I made sure to stand up the rest of the time.

~Not only do we have to endure our initial loss but then there are the secondary losses. The ones we don't really talk about, because we're still trying to deal with our grief. This is the loss of our " friends". The ones we thought would stand by us, understand us, love & support us, until we're able to manage life again. This secondary losses hurt too.

Being with so many people felt right, and afterward at the wake thrown by Nathan's company at a huge bar in Paddington overlooking the canal, with seats outside and bottomless champagne and a playlist put together by Nathan's best friends and the children dashing about in summer clothes, and lively urgent chatter and laughter and people looking their high summer best, it felt almost as if Nathan would appear at any moment, in his element, loving every second, and when he didn't appear it felt as though maybe he was at home waiting for her, and when he as not at home waiting for her it felt as though maybe he was away on a boys' trip and when, ten days after the funeral, he is still not home, it is then and only then that Alix collapses. She lies on her bed, the day before Eliza's first day at secondary school, wearing her artichoke dress and clutching a pillow, arching and un-arching her back as spasms and agonized crying rack her body at the realization of what she has lost.

I was also really fortunate at Eton to have had a fantastic housemaster, and so much of people’s experience of Eton rests on whether they had a housemaster who rocked or bombed. I got lucky. The relationship with your housemaster is the equivalent to that with a headmasterat a smaller school. He is the one who supervises all you do, from games to your choice of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), and without doubt he is the teacher who gets to know you the best--the good and the bad. In short, they are the person who runs the show. Mr. Quibell was old-school and a real character--but two traits made him great: he was fair and he cared. And as a teenager those two qualities really matter to one’s self-esteem. But, boy, did he also get grief from us. Mr. Quibell disliked two things: pizzas and the town of Slough. Often, as a practical joke, we would order a load of Slough’s finest pizzas to be delivered to his private door; but never just one or two pizzas--I am talking thirty of them. As the delivery guy turned up we would all be hidden, peeping out of the windows, watching the look of both horror, then anger, as Mr. Quibell would send the poor delivery man packing, with firm instructions never to return. The joke worked twice, but soon the pizza company got savvy.

Then there are the secondary, mostly “social” emotions, such as anxiety, grief, guilt, pride, vengeance, and love. These may be unique to humans—hence, at the lower level in our evolutionary mountain landscape—and somewhat more liable to cultural manipulation and variation than the primary, “Darwinian” emotions. Thus, only humans seek revenge or redemption across lifetimes and generations, whatever the cost, although the nature of the deeds that trigger insult or remorse may vary considerably across societies, and the means to counter them may range even wider. Another

The Time Line is great for getting things into perspective when you feel a bit lost and lacking direction or if you have a big change coming up such as moving to secondary school, your parents splitting up or having a new family arrangement. When you experience grief or loss, whether that is for a person or a part of your life such as leaving your Primary School, you can travel back along the time line, identify which skills you need from your old life, anchor them and bring them into the present as you move forward to Secondary School. Once you’ve done the Time Line a few times it will be in your head and you can conjure up the image and the steps without moving. This can be useful in situations when you can’t actually move physically, in class for instance.

Primary feelings - love, surrender, grief, harmony, gratitude, primal anger, courage - are qualities of our connection to others. Secondary feelings - resistance, denial, anxiety, nervousness, depression, titillation, addictive craving - mark our vain attempts to keep primary feelings at bay.

After all, the only kind of relationship with God that will save us is one where he is loved for who he is, for his own sake, irrespective of what secondary, earthly blessings we gain or lose because of our relationship with him. Unless Christians can, perhaps imperfectly but sincerely, affirm the all-surpassing worth of knowing God (Phil. 3:8)—surpassing even the worth of knowing one’s children—then we will be bored in the new creation, where God is “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). Our relationship with God must be greater than the secondary blessings he gives us, because it is a matter of time until we lose every secondary blessing when we die.