“If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease.
We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.”
“It was hard to let go of that; to let go of the life I had before, but the truth was, it was harder for me to stay there inside the pain. I wasn’t strong enough to live there no matter how much I wanted to.”
″‘Let me go,’ I demanded, though it lacked punch. Being this close to Trace was no good for me, and I knew that, but the room was definitely spinning now and I wasn’t even sure I could stand upright anymore.
Camerlengo: So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show you love by letting him learn his own lessons?
Chatrand: Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn.
Camerlengo: Exactly.”
″...Ronia had seen little more than this during her short life. She knew nothing of what lay outside Matt’s Fort. And one fine day Matt realized- however little he liked it- that the time had come.
‘Lovis,’ he said to his wife, ‘our child must learn what it’s like living in Matt’s Forest. Let her go!‘”
“You have to let go. You have to let go because when you hold on, when you keep something alive inside of you, you are allowing for your past to take up the space in your heart and in your mind that is meant for your future.”