Rose McIver Quotes

My assignment is to take my situation and to use it to help others who feel hopeless and/or helpless because of loss.

Cancer opens many doors. One of the most important is your heart.

Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us - in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.

My dad died of a heart attack when I was 15. I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. I went through a divorce - those not-so-great things are all a part of me, and they give me a place to go when I cover those stories on the news. I'm more empathetic, more relatable because of them.

I'm very very happy for my hardships and misfortunes: they build character and make you a better person. Even if I think it's something you have to carry with you, it's definitely something that makes you more empathic towards other people, makes you understand people and relationships so much better.

We all understand loss. It's about what you do with that.

My brother dying changed me. I didn't realize how strong I was until I lost my brother.

Tragedy brings change, and that's what I'm interested in most - how people plunge into change and try to fight, then eventually move with it with grace.

Cancer has given me a dose of humility. I'm much more empathetic. It's a club I would rather not have joined, but it is a club.

I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Lived it and I'm still here to talk about it and help someone else if I can.

I think loss can fuel how you lead your whole life.

I felt that the best I could do for my father, and the best I could do for myself, and my mother and my family was to stay open to the experience, and learn whatever I could at every step of the way as it was going on.

The weird thing about grief, for me at least, was when each of my parents died, for a year or two afterwards I was pretty wildly brave - just willing to take life on.

Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.

I'm a much nicer person since my wife died. I found out what pain is, so on that level I'm much nicer.

When everything in a person's life is gone, ripped-out gone, it's not that you stay empty for so long, so you replace it with something else very quickly.

I'm a person that carries everything that happened to me in my past, with me into the future. I refuse to let it make me bitter. I still completely believe in love and I remain open to anything that will happen to me.

Humor is imperative, more important than food. You have a choice when someone dies. You can lie down or get back into life. Do something for someone else.

Cancer is a very sad thing, but you can always take something from every experience.

I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.

Sometimes to realize you were well, someone must come along and hurt you.

And after my mother's death I became more open to and empathetic about other people's struggles and losses.

Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.

As a novelist, I have always been interested in how people come to terms with difficult, life-altering events.

Of course, losing my father was traumatic. I was an only child. But from the time my father died, my general theme in life has been to turn adversity into opportunity.