David Kessler Quotes

People often think there is no way to heal from severe loss. I believe that is not true. You heal when you can remember those who have died with more love than pain, when you find a way to create meaning in your own life in a way that will honor theirs. It requires a decision and a desire to do this, but finding meaning is not extraordinary, it's ordinary. It happens all the time, all over the world.

The will to save a life is not the power to stop a death.

One night I happened to come upon a documentary called Facing the Storm, about the buffalos in Montana. Robert Thomson of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks discussed how buffalo run into the storm, thus minimizing how long they will be in it. They don't ignore it, run from it, or just hope it will go away, which is what we often do when we want to avoid our storms of emotion. We don't realize that by doing this we're maximizing our time in the pain. The avoidance of grief will only prolong the pain of grief. Better to turn toward it and allow it to run its natural course, knowing that the pain will eventually pass, that one of these days we will find the love on the other side of pain.

After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have loved. Your loved one's story is over. For unknown reasons, their time on earth has drawn to a close, but yours continues. I can only invite you to be curious about the rest of the story of your life.

Your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift, or a blessing. Loss is simply what happens to you in life. Meaning is what you make happen.

the reality is posttraumatic growth happens more than posttraumatic stress.

We must move slowly into the unknown of life after death.

While death may look like a loss to the living, the last hours of a dying person may very well be filled with fullness rather than emptiness.

grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it's true. You don't have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined. As Erich Fromm says, "To spare oneself from grief at all costs can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability

Meaning doesn't require understanding. It is not necessary to understand why someone died in order to find meaning.

Dahulu, saya menggenggam erat kehidupan dalam kepalan tangan, tetapi sekarang saya sadar bahwa saya juga bisa memegangnya dengan tangan terbuka.

are attempts to regain some of the control I felt I lost when my mother died.

watch our loved ones go peacefully into the sunset. We need to ask ourselves what we can do to make the last chapter of life meaningful.

We are a grief-illiterate society.

I know you're drowning. You'll keep sinking for a while, but there will come a point when you'll hit bottom. Then you'll have a decision to make. Do you stay there or push off and start to rise again?