I was a pebble. I was a leaf. I was the jagged branch of a tree. I was nothing to them and they were everything to me. - Cheryl Strayed

It turned out I wasn’t able to keep my family together. I wasn’t my mom. It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who’d kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her.

God is not a granter of wishes. God is a ruthless bitch.

Grief is tremendous, but love is bigger. You are grieving because you loved truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of death. Allowing this into your consciousness will not keep you from suffering, but it will help you survive the next day.