In her TEDx talk, The Art of Saying Goodbye, Isabel Stenzel Byrnes jokes that if we're not planning on losing someone we don't need to worry that "Losing someone we love is the hardest experience any of us will have to deal with. It goes against our basic instinct, that we're wired for attachment in a world where everyone is temporary. . . . Saying goodbye often evokes an emotional reaction that has the potential to paralyze. Many people, maybe even some of you, react by saying, 'Nothing's going to happen,' or 'I don't want to think about it,' because the death of a loved one is way too hard to fathom. For me, I've had years of experience to practice and I finally realized that my emotional reaction is manageable. Emotions are like waves in the ocean, they simply come and go and I am their observer. I just go with the flow, neither resisting nor holding onto them. Now the good news is that we can become mindful of our feelings and trust that we can be stronger than our sorrows."
Through her many trials in life Isa learned to trust that we are more than our sorrows and other emotions. We get this trust by experiencing it. We become mindful by practicing mindfulness. We becoming trusting by trusting in ourselves, others, and life itself and finding that we're alright. When we experience it we know it's true--"we can be stronger than our sorrows."
Quoted from The Art of Saying Goodbye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkffpibi-Dc