I watched an old Oprah just now, as I forced myself to get dressed and take D13 for her haircut. Funny how things are placed before you when you need them. It was an episode about grief that resonated with me, since I seem to be stuck in it, and trying to carry on....
This quote from Elizabeth Glazer:
"If you don't take the time to grieve, and to let yourself really feel what happened, you just put a scar over it and it doesn't go away, in fact, it festers. And it becomes something else, perhaps it turns into bitterness, or anger, or blame. And you never get over it. So letting yourself descend into grief, and letting it do what it will with you for as long as it takes is a much more intelligent response to loss than 'cleaning up real fast, going back to work you get your 3 days bereavement then back to work'.... That is not a very wise way to handle it.
Grief is an expression of the fact that you loved well. "
And another quote from a man who lost his twin brother at the age of 20:
"You have this picture on the wall, of what you think your life is, and where you think your life is going. And you take that picture, and you pull it off the wall and you smash it into a thousand pieces all over the floor. For a while you just sit there and look at the pieces. And there is no way to put those pieces back together, and put that picture back up on the wall. And for a long time, we stay stuck, just looking at those pieces. We think we are going to feel this way forever. But we won't.
We can't put the same picture on the wall. We can make a new picture."
