Small things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother — even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tr… - Cheryl Strayed

My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger.

Hard as I fought for it to be otherwise, finally I had to admit it too: without my mother, we weren’t what we’d been; we were four people floating separately among the flotsam of our grief, connected by only the thinnest rope.

The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.

Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally I'd see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I'd realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I would be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now, that I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.