Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Moving forward helps to manage grief, while stopping allows it to overwhelm you.
In this quote, the author conveys that keeping oneself in motion—be it physically or emotionally—serves as a way to cope with grief. When one is actively engaged in life, the burdens of sorrow can seem distant; only in moments of stillness does the true weight of grief reveal itself and threaten to engulf a person. Therefore, the act of not stopping becomes a metaphor for resilience and perseverance in the face of suffering.
Themes
GriefMovementResiliencePerseverancePain
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about overcoming losses, I would share this quote to inspire others to keep moving forward.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
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I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
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Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
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