Saturday, January 06, 2007






For many years I fell for the great palace lie
that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately.

But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief;
the passage of time will lessen the acuteness,
but time alone,
without the direct experience of grief,
will not heal it.


We are a world in grief and it is at once intolerable and a great opportunity.

I’m pretty sure that
it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness
in a naked and immediate way
that we come to be healed –
which is to say that we come to experience life
with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.


A fixation can give you the illusion that your life has not fallen apart.
But since your life may indeed have fallen apart,
the illusion won’t hold up forever,
and if you are lucky and brave,
you will be willing to bear disillusion.
You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and then,
finally,
grief ends up giving you the two best things:
softness and illumination."


Anne Lamott