One of the ideas I've clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work… — Meghan O'Rourke 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
Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
A mother is a story with no beginning. That is what defines her. — Meghan O'Rourke Birth 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 Copy Share Image
My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures. — Meghan O'Rourke Culture Copy Share Image
What's endlessly complicated in thinking about women's gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport. — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
One of the things about grief is that it can bring a deeper perspective into your life; in the end, it has,… — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss - the loss of the person, and the loss of the self… — Meghan O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life.… — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try… — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession - it's sad that… — Meghan O'Rourke Approach Copy Share Image
For sure, the funeral industry seems intensely cynical to me and I don't think it is HELPING people mourn. — Meghan O'Rourke Cynical Copy Share Image
One of the difficulties with grief research is that it risks making certain kinds of grief seem normal and others abnormal -… — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in… — Meghan O'Rourke Change Copy Share Image
“Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after… — Meghan O'Rourke Life Copy Share Image
While I did a lot of research, I ended up feeling that the best way to write about grief was to describe… — Meghan O'Rourke Best way Copy Share Image
Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you… — Meghan O'Rourke Death 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 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
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 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
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
Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world. — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Many Americans don't mourn in public anymore - we don't wear black, we don't beat our chests and wail. — Meghan O'Rourke Americans Copy Share Image
But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone. — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros. — Meghan O'Rourke Athleticism Copy Share Image
If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal. — Meghan O'Rourke Death 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
Suddenly it was fall, the season of death, the anniversary of things-going-to-hell. — Meghan O'Rourke Anniversary Copy Share Image
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
My mother never liked Mother's Day. She thought it was a fake holiday dreamed up by Hallmark to commodify deep sentiments that… — Meghan O'Rourke Copy Share Image
