Life & Wisdom Quote by Anne Wilson Schaef

Grief gets framed here as a backhanded compliment: if you are wrecked by the ending, it may be because the thing deserved you. Schaef’s line doesn’t offer the usual consolation ("time heals", "everything happens for a reason"). It offers a sterner, almost bracing reframe: the pain is proof of participation, not a symptom of weakness. That’s why it lands with such quiet force.

The phrasing is doing subtle moral work. "Something" stays deliberately unspecific, letting the reader plug in a relationship, a job, sobriety, a caretaking role, a season of ambition. By refusing to name the loss, Schaef universalizes the structure of it: an ending that demanded excellence, attention, self-control, generosity. "Required the best of you" is both praise and indictment. It implies you had a best to give, and that you actually gave it. The subtext is anti-numbing: don’t cheapen what happened by pretending it was nothing, or by rushing to replace it with a smaller life.

Then comes the clean, unsentimental future tense: "You will miss it". Not "you might" or "it’s okay if you do". It’s a forecast, almost a permission slip disguised as a fact. In the context of Schaef’s work in recovery and self-help culture, that matters: she’s normalizing the aftershock of change. Even healthy endings can feel like withdrawal. Missing it doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice; it means you were fully alive inside the choice.