Our minds are mysterious; our conscious brain is like a ship on a sea that is obscure to us. — Meghan O'Rourke Brain Copy Share Image
The truth is, I need to experience my mother's presence in the world around me and not just in my head. — Meghan O'Rourke Mother Copy Share Image
If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal. — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
I live to collect information, and I am also a perfectionist. — Meghan O'Rourke Collect Copy Share Image
A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That's what makes her a mother. — Meghan O'Rourke Beginning Copy Share Image
'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly. — Meghan O'Rourke Grief Copy Share Image
But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone. — Meghan O'Rourke Believe Copy Share Image
There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros. — Meghan O'Rourke Athleticism Copy Share Image
It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain. — Meghan O'Rourke Blessing Copy Share Image
'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it. — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death - more than they experience, say, denial. — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal… — Meghan O'Rourke Cardinals Copy Share Image
My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on… — Meghan O'Rourke Conscious Copy Share Image
I'm not much like my mother; that role falls to my brothers, who have more of her blithe and freewheeling spirit. — Meghan O'Rourke Blithe Copy Share Image
“One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you… — Meghan O'Rourke Alive Copy Share Image
It's all too easy when talking about female gymnasts to fall into the trap of infantilizing them, spending more time worrying more… — Meghan O'Rourke Celebrate Copy Share Image
I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well.… — Meghan O'Rourke Absence Copy Share Image
My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time… — Meghan O'Rourke Breathing Copy Share Image
Much of Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming, the uncertainty about… — Meghan O'Rourke Differences Copy Share Image
I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought… — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
To mourn is to wonder at the strangeness that grief is not written all over your face in bruised hieroglyphics. And it's… — Meghan O'Rourke Bruised Copy Share Image
Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead… — Meghan O'Rourke Descending Copy Share Image
Television has never known what to do with grief, which resists narrative: the dramas of grief are largely internal - for the… — Meghan O'Rourke Chaos Copy Share Image
I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group… — Meghan O'Rourke Devoted Copy Share Image
With ferocity and extraordinary craft, Lizzie Harris has made a book of poems that resonates far beyond the personal stories it tells.… — Meghan O'Rourke Awareness Copy Share Image
Time doesn’t obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing. — Meghan O'Rourke Clock Copy Share Image
Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it. — Meghan O'Rourke Know Copy Share Image
I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious. — Meghan O'Rourke Catholic Copy Share Image
After all dying is one of the most profound and difficult experiences we have. — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
A mother is a story with no beginning. That is what defines her. — Meghan O'Rourke Birth Copy Share Image
Like my mother before me, I have always been a good speller. — Meghan O'Rourke Mother Copy Share Image
Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. — Meghan O'Rourke Knowing Copy Share Image
Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles. — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
Many researchers say the dominant emotion experienced after loss is yearning or searching. And while you might feel more anger early on,… — Meghan O'Rourke Dominant Copy Share Image
Be patient with yourself. Don't make the loss harder by thinking you should be a certain way, or have bounced back, etc. — Meghan O'Rourke Be patient Copy Share Image
Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona. — Meghan O'Rourke Disruption Copy Share Image
Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is… — Meghan O'Rourke Aspect Copy Share Image
The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are… — Meghan O'Rourke Love Copy Share Image
I believe in the importance of individuality, but in the midst of grief I also find myself wanting connection - wanting to… — Meghan O'Rourke Believe Copy Share Image
