Top 40 Sharon E. Rainey Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is messy. Grit and grace come at us fast, side by side. Sometimes the grit becomes overwhelming and diminishes our spirit. What’s good seems lost and gone forever. This is a story about the pathway back to what’s beautiful, when the way back seems impossible.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

2. “Acceptance doesn’t mean that life gets better; it just means that my way of living life on life’s terms improves.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

3. “I call it an Aha! moment. It is the moment when I can hear, when I know, that an answer is being offered to me. All other sounds measurably fade, including the banter in my brain. It is when the answer travels from my heart to my head and says, “This is so.” No questions follow, no objections interrupt; just the recognition that I must listen and follow.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

4. “NO” is a complete sentence. It does not require an explanation to follow. You can truly answer someone’s request with a simple No.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

5. “Most of all, I remember her laughing. It filled my ears. Her smile, her sparkling eyes, and her infectious laughter, along with the vistas, were limitless and unending and powerful.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

6. “As a sufferer of depression for many years, I know the importance of trying to find positive experiences in each day, no matter how small.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

7. “Why did I want to die? Because living was just so damn hard, even at age 10. When all I had to do was get up in the morning and go to school, it was more than drudgery; it was excruciating.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

8. “I thought by masking the depression with silence, the feelings might disappear.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

9. “Most teenage suicide attempts are cries for help; the teens survive, succeeding in bringing them the wanted attention. Mine was not a cry for help. I wanted to end my life and my misery.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

10. “The Aramaic word for “forgive” means literally to “untie.” Hatred and anger had bound me to my pain. The fastest way to free the self from an enemy and all associated negativity is to forgive. Untie those bindings; free yourself from that person’s ugliness.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

11. “Through each crisis in my life, with acceptance and hope, in a single defining moment, I finally gained the courage to do things differently.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

12. “Time heals even the deepest wounds.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

13. “In that instant, I realized that if I focused on the pain and misery, it would take me longer to heal. When chronic pain is my most often companion, it can be challenging to keep looking for the good. I needed to figure out a way to focus on the positive moments of each day. I needed to see where I was improving and healing.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

14. “Deep down inside of me, way down deep, in a place previously unknown; I heard it: a solid, honest, compassionate whisper. It was quiet, very quiet. But it was clear. And it was true. “If you go back into that house, you will never come back out.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

15. “When I could find something to laugh about for 30 minutes, my grief lightened just enough to make the day bearable.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

16. “I had to clear up my messy life. By letting go of the debris and filth, I have come to a deeper, more soulful beauty and clarity like an oasis in the desert. From that place of clarity, a vision of what I could have, what I could do, who I could be has emerged if I allow my heart to become a place of compassion, acceptance and forgiveness.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

17. “It is important for me to focus on positive actions taken to heal instead of beating myself up over what I did wrong each day. It shifts my perspective, thus making my body and mind more hospitable places for healing and positive energy.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

18. “I could accept my circumstances, my life, people, and even events around me, without giving my approval or releasing my control over such. I don’t have to like what happened; I just need to accept that it indeed occurred.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

19. “With each opportunity before me, God presented me with a choice. I could accept His offerings, His wisdom, His grace. Or I could choose to hold onto the pain, the anger and the resentment a little longer.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

20. “Forgiveness enables me to walk away from that pain, the loneliness and suffering.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

21. “I have learned through repeated experiences that in order to heal, I MUST forgive. The forgiveness is not for the transgressor. The forgiveness is for ME.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

22. “No more martyring myself.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

23. “The pain had to be great enough for me to accept my reality, to hope that something different, and hopefully better, was out there and to do whatever came next to reach that point. It seems clear and simple when I write it down on paper. But I also know just because something is simple, it does not mean it is easy.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

24. “We cannot fully heal if we cannot experience gratitude on a daily basis.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

25. “The routine helped the healing process. It gave me structure. It eliminated any sense of surprise, which at that point, I really didn’t want anymore surprises in my life. Routine gave me the foundation for creat- ing a healthier life.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

26. “With each challenging situation, each nightmare – each new piece of grit embraced and transformed – I came through with a more loving family, deeper friendships, and an even more profound relationship with God.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

27. “I believe that time period was a gift of God’s grace. I have no other way to explain why I did not die or suffer permanently disabling seizures.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

28. “I was desperately searching for something to make sense; for the world to connect back with me.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

29. “I am, by God’s design, a “feeler.” Everything in the world I interpret with my feelings. I am hyper-sensitive to others’ hurtful words. I find it almost impossible to let what others say “just roll off my back.” I personalize too much of what anyone says to me. This is definitely not a good characteristic, but it is how God created me. I have worked very hard through the years to change this, with very little success.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

30. “If you stop drinking, I’ll stop taking Valium, and then we’ll see who’s who and who’s what.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

31. “This is where life as I knew it changed. This is where a new feeling slowly, eventually, permeated every cell of my body, changing the way I took in the world. My perceptions, opinions, everything changed the year I moved from Texas to Virginia.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

32. “I did the only thing I knew how to do: I built my own walls of silence to disguise my desperation and what later came to be recognized and diagnosed as depression.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

33. “By first grade, my sense of worth was in direct proportion to what I learned and what I contributed back to the class. I had already become a human doing instead of a human being.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

34. “I remember thinking I wanted to die rather than live through another February day of grayness; I didn’t tell anyone because I knew it wasn’t normal. And normal was all I ever wanted to be.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

35. “Laughter lightens my heart and therefore heals my soul as well.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

36. “I can’t cure anyone. I can’t guarantee they will heal. I can only tell them my story, remind them that they are not alone in their journey and offer a glimmer of hope for healing.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

37. “My body craved sunshine; winter felt like an addict’s withdrawal.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

38. “No one gave me the secret decoder ring on how to make friends.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

39. “I knew if I stayed where I was, nothing would get better; nothing would change. If I wanted to ease the pain, I had to try something different.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

40. “Extreme emotional pain has a profound effect on the body. I witnessed my already frail body become even more toxic and plundered.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

41. “I’m not ‘different’ from anyone else. Crises and tough emotional periods are the grit around which my inner self has been formed. Some, I have come through with more grace than others.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

42. “I wanted to live more than I wanted to die. I didn’t know how to live. I didn’t know how I would be able to live life on life’s terms. But I know God carried me to the end of that journey so I could start a new one. In those few days, God brought me to the point of willingness again, to start down a path with an unknown destination.”

— Sharon E. Rainey

43. “We are exquisite souls housed in physical bodies.”

— Sharon E. Rainey