We need rituals for all traumas and loss, whether it is betrayal or infidelity or violence or murder. Ritual helps us heal, and ritual helped me heal and become ready to consider the person who murdered Angela, his story, his pain.

Meet me here Speak my name I am not your enemy I am your teacher I may even be your friend Let us tell our truth together, you and I My name is anger: I say you have been wronged My name is shame: my story is your hidden pain My name is fear: my story is vulnerability My name is resentment: I say things should have been different My name is grief My name is depression My name is heartache My name is anxiety I have many names And many lessons I am not your enemy I am your teacher

God is coming to intersect us in our funeral processions

How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, 'I am at peace with God.' She smiled, but not at me. Poi si torno all' eterna fontana.

People do not die from suicide. They die from sadness.

It made me think about the hard lives so many people have had, the sacrifices they've endured, and how those people will see heaven differently from those of us who have had easier lives.

Feeling the pain is the first step toward healing the pain. The longer we avoid the feeling, the more we delay our healing. We can numb it, ignore it, or pretend it doesn't exist, but all those options lead to an eventual breakdown, not a breakthrough.

We must feel the pain to heal the pain. If we never allow ourselves to feel it, we won't acknowledge it's there.

And the gaping hole left behind is in some ways worse than death. If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle through the fact that they wanted this.

When a man is physically present but emotionally absent, a girl's heart can feel quite hollow and helpless.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3—4)

Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. It mattered. You mattered.