99 Words of Encouragement for Someone Going Through a Tough Time
Ninety-nine words for grief, courage, difficult seasons, and the moments when encouragement needs to feel like presence rather than pressure.
2:14 a.m. and Eleven Deleted Drafts
Jennica set her phone face-down on the kitchen table and stared at the ceiling. It was 2:14 in the morning. She’d been a physician for eleven years. She’d delivered bad news in hallways, had conversations that broke people open, had learned to hold her face still while the world fell apart around a patient. None of that had prepared her for this.
Her college roommate had texted at 11:58 p.m.: I don’t know how to do this anymore. That was more than two hours ago. Jennica had written eleven responses and deleted every one. She turned off the kitchen light twenty minutes in because it felt too bright for this particular kind of thinking, and now she was working in the blue glow of her phone screen. Her daughter’s crayon drawing was still spread on the table from dinner. A rainbow with uneven stripes, labeled “For Mommy,” the letters slightly wrong in the way of a four-year-old who hasn’t gotten them quite right yet but drew it with absolute conviction anyway.
What do you say to someone when you know words aren’t enough but silence is worse?
If you’ve ever sat in that particular paralysis (phone in hand, cursor blinking, starting and deleting and starting again), this article is for you. It’s also for anyone who’s the one in the dark right now, hoping someone finds the right words. Both experiences are real. Both deserve attention. Jennica is an illustrative example, not a real client, but that moment is real for a lot of people.
What I want to offer here isn’t a formula. It’s a collection of 99 words of encouragement, organized by what the person actually needs to hear at different points in their pain, along with some clinical context for why certain words land where others miss entirely. In my work with clients, I see how much weight language carries, even when we tell ourselves it shouldn’t. Words don’t fix things. But they can make something feel less lonely to carry. That’s not a small thing.
What Words of Encouragement Actually Do
Let’s start with what we’re really talking about, because “words of encouragement” is a phrase so softened by overuse that it can feel almost meaningless. We see it on greeting cards. We hear it from coaches at halftime. We scroll past it in Instagram captions beside sunrise photos. What actually separates words that help from words that land like furniture in the wrong room?
In the clinical sense I mean here, words of encouragement are words that name what someone is going through and offer presence rather than pressure. They don’t try to talk a person out of a feeling or hurry her toward a better one. They let her know she isn’t carrying the hard thing alone.
In plain terms: The right words don’t fix the problem. They can make it feel less lonely to carry. When someone says the thing you couldn’t say yourself, and says it without flinching, something in you can ease.
This is clinically distinct from toxic positivity, which also uses words but in the opposite direction. Toxic positivity tries to move someone away from their current feeling, toward a better one. “Everything happens for a reason.” “At least you have your health.” “This will make you stronger.” These phrases aren’t neutral. They create a secondary wound. The person now has to manage your discomfort with their pain on top of the actual pain they came in carrying.
Effective encouragement doesn’t require optimism. It requires presence. The best words of encouragement say, in some form: I see you. I’m not leaving. You don’t have to pretend this is okay. That’s it. The length of the message, the eloquence of the phrasing. Those matter far less than whether the words are rooted in actual witness.
The Neuroscience of Being Witnessed
Compassionate witnessing, as I use the term here, means having your inner state (pain, confusion, or fear) accurately reflected by another person without judgment, minimizing, or pressure to change it. It draws on what Daniel J. Siegel, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, executive director of the Mindsight Institute, and author of The Developing Mind, calls attunement: “the focusing of our attention on the inner nature of a person.” To be witnessed isn’t simply to be heard. It’s to have your experience held in someone else’s mind without being distorted or rushed.
In plain terms: When someone says something that lands, something that feels true to the inside of your experience, you’re no longer alone in the feeling. This isn’t about “feeling better.” It’s about not having to do it alone.
Kristin Neff, PhD, associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a leading researcher on self-compassion, names common humanity as one of its three core elements, alongside mindfulness and kindness: the recognition that suffering connects us rather than separating us from others. In my work, I often see that this kind of message is easier to take in when someone else offers it. The voice of a friend, or even a poet we’ve never met, can carry the message our own inner voice can’t yet deliver.
This is why the quotes in this collection aren’t just aesthetically pleasing lines from famous people. At their best, they name what the person inside the experience hasn’t been able to name yet. They arrive from outside and say: Yes. This is real. Other people have been here. If you’re searching for words of encouragement for a friend going through a difficult time, consider reading a few aloud to yourself first. The ones that shift something in you are the ones most likely to reach across the gap.
How This Shows Up for Driven Women
There’s a particular version of this I see frequently in my work with driven women: they’re incredibly capable of giving encouragement. They’ve talked friends through divorces, sent flowers at exactly the right moment, written cards that made people cry. What they’re far less practiced at is receiving those same words, or even believing they need them.
Kusum is an illustrative example, not a real client. Picture her, a senior product manager at a tech company in the Bay Area, sitting next to her best friend at the hospital after a miscarriage and knowing exactly what to say. Two years later, Kusum has her own loss and can’t bring herself to call anyone. She tells herself she’s fine. She keeps saying it. She goes back to work four days later. She doesn’t want anyone to say any of those kind things to her, even though they’d be true, because then she’d have to stop being fine.
The avoidance of encouragement is its own wound. When we can’t receive the words that might help, we stay stuck in a kind of emotional efficiency mode: everything processed alone, at speed, without letting it cost us anything visible. What I often see in driven women like Kusum is that the words weren’t the problem. The receiving was. That’s not a character flaw. That’s what happens when someone has learned, over a long time, that being seen as struggling comes with costs.
If you’re reading this for yourself rather than for someone else, I want you to know: sitting with these words without immediately forwarding them to a friend counts. Letting them land counts. That quiet, private moment of recognition, the one that says yes, that’s it exactly, is you giving yourself permission to be witnessed, even if only by the page.
For more on how driven women navigate crisis without asking for help, the work at Annie Wright Therapy explores exactly this territory.
The 99 Words: Seven Buckets for What Your Person Needs
These 99 words of encouragement are organized not by author or sentiment but by what the person on the receiving end actually needs. The same quote that would feel hollow in the first week of a crisis might be exactly right three months in. Match the words to the moment, not just to the topic.
Words for the First Hours
“Only through mourning everything that she has lost can the patient discover her indestructible inner life.”
Judith L. Herman, MD, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (2015), p. 188
“Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no. Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also, like the diligent leaves.”
Mary Oliver, poet, Devotions (2017)
“Look, we are not unspectacular things. We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?”
Ada Limón, poet, The Carrying (2018)
“Freedom lies in learning to embrace what happened. Freedom means we muster the courage to dismantle the prison, brick by brick.”
Edith Eva Eger, Clinical Psychologist, The Choice: Embrace the Possible (2017), Introduction
“Every time the beast returns, I have to fight it slightly differently. The wars are shorter now, and often, the old tools work well.”
Stephanie Foo, Memoirist and Journalist, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (2022), Chapter 43
“People grow up, victims grow around; we strengthen around that place of hurt, become older and fuller, but the vulnerable core is never gone.”
Chanel Miller, Author, Artist, Know My Name (2019)
“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.”
Peter A. Levine, PhD, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences (1997), p. 2
“Suzanne’s sudden death had awakened me to the idea that I wanted more joy and meaning in my life. I couldn’t continue to live with my own complacency.”
Michelle Obama, memoirist, Becoming (2018), Chapter 9
“Sharing our strengths while honoring our weaknesses together is not a contradiction but a way to make love powerful.”
Loretta J. Ross, Reproductive Justice Activist and Author, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (2016), p. xviii
“It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much / and too little.”
Ellen Bass, poet, Like a Beggar (2014), p. 46
“The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.”
Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self (1981), p. 59
“to heal / you have to / get to the root / of the wound / and kiss it / all the way / up”
Rupi Kaur, Poet, The Sun and Her Flowers (2017)
“In that singular focus, the smallest gesture, the quietest moment was transformed into an unimaginably exquisite gift of grace.”
Brigid Schulte, Journalist and author, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time (2014)
“Tears can also help us realize that our loneliness is now causing us much unnecessary pain. This in turn can motivate us to open to the possibility of finding safe connections.”
Pete Walker, LMFT, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma (2013)
Words for the Long Middle
“I’d like to begin again. Not touch my own face, not tremble in the dark before an intruder who never arrives. Not apologize. Not scurry, not pace.”
Deborah Garrison, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (2010)
“For a perfectionist, the hardest thing to do is to be a beginner.”
Katherine Morgan Schafler, Psychotherapist and Author, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power (2023)
“If you don’t need to do everything in order to establish your worth, you can really begin to delegate, ask for help, and let others shine.”
Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey, Immunity to Change
“Change must start inwardly in order for your life and world to change outwardly.”
Mat Auryn, witch and occult teacher, Mastering Magick (2022)
“Rebuilding self-trust involves tuning in to your experiences and courageously choosing to believe yourself, even when no one else does.”
Sharon Martin, DSW, LCSW, Cutting Ties with Your Parents: A Workbook to Help Adult Children Make Peace with Their Decision, Heal Emotional Wounds, and Move Forward with Their Lives (2024)
“Each moment becomes choice, and each choice leads us to the next intersection of what-needs-be with what-is.”
Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold, Author and Occultist, Serpent Songs (2013)
“To move forward, you have to leave the past behind.”
Susannah Cahalan, Journalist & Memoirist, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (2012), p. 200
“By understanding the behaviors we adopted to survive, we can begin to choose healthier ways of being.”
Joy DeGruy, PhD, MSW, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (2005)
“You can claim the freedom to express yourself and take action on your own behalf.”
Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, Clinical Psychologist, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (2015)
“I stepped into those woods and my life began.”
Madeline Miller, novelist and classicist, Circe (2018)
“All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal’s voice, let me have the rest.”
Madeline Miller, novelist and classicist, Circe
“Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right.”
Glennon Doyle, Memoirist and Activist, Untamed (2020)
“I would learn again that it is all right for women to follow the wisdom in their souls, to name their truth, to embrace the Sacred Feminine, that there is undreamed voice, strength, and power in us.”
Sue Monk Kidd, Author, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996)
“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”
Tara Westover, Memoirist & Historian, Educated: A Memoir (2018)
Words for Grief and Loss
“The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.”
Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., Stanford Professor of Psychology, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006), Chapter 2
“Self-doubt can indeed motivate us to work hard and achieve, but there are serious costs to being motivated this way.”
Tara Mohr, Founder of the Playing Big Leadership Program, Playing Big (2014)
“In mindful recovery, you appreciate the wonderful mystery of being alive without the need for work highs or numbing yourself with multitasking and busyness.”
Bryan E. Robinson, psychotherapist, PhD, Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them (2014)
“Most of the time, I fail at this target, but I am not aiming at perfection. I am aiming at survival.”
Tracey Helton Mitchell, Recovering Addict & Mother, The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin (2016), p. 194
“Transformation requires a willingness to challenge your basic beliefs about who you are.”
Peter A. Levine, PhD, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)
“Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.”
Sheryl Sandberg, former Chief Operating Officer of Facebook and Author, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013)
“Many people dismiss self-compassion, because they think it conflicts with their ambition or hard-driving attitude, which are qualities that they believe have made them successful.”
Rasmus Hougaard & Jacqueline Carter, Mindfulness Experts and Authors, The Mind of the Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results (2018), Chapter 4
“We must believe we are worthy of rest simply because we are human, not because we have earned it.”
Tricia Hersey, Poet, Activist, and Author, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022)
“We overwork to prove we are worthy, yet the system we are trying to please relies on our continuous exhaustion.”
Tamu Thomas, Somatic Coach and Author, Women Who Work Too Much: Break Free from Toxic Productivity and Find Your Joy (2024)
“Control encourages restriction; power encourages freedom.”
Katherine Morgan Schafler, Psychotherapist and Author, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power (2023)
“Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it’s they who aren’t ready. At the end, it’s their product that’s not.”
Peter Bregman, Bestselling Author and CEO Coach, 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (2011), Chapter 43
“In order to stay in the game, you must let go of your fantasy of perfection.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Author and Speaker, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (2015)
“People have to change on the inside before things can change outside. One person at a time. Then the world will reflect our inner beauty and peace, our spiritual wisdom.”
Phyllis Curott, Wiccan High Priestess and Attorney, Book of Shadows: A Modern Woman’s Journey into the Wisdom of Witchcraft and the Magic of the Goddess (1998)
“I am trying to learn how to love this world without wanting to possess it.”
Ada Limón, Poet, Bright Dead Things (2015)
Words for Rebuilding Self-Trust
“We own our worth and gifts just as we own our pain. We stop playing life and start living it.”
Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, and How to Find Our Way Back (2025)
“Love makes you vulnerable, but it also makes you brave.”
Christy NaMee Eriksen, Poet, Organizer, and Mother, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (2016), p. 85
“I will love myself enough to be honest when I fail at loving.”
Kiese Laymon, Author, Professor of Creative Writing, Heavy: An American Memoir (2018)
“I want to live in a world in which each of us can show up, fully, as ourselves, every day, with confidence, connection, commitment, and courage.”
Peter Bregman, Leading with Emotional Courage
“When we force our truths and stories into hiding, secrets can become their own trauma, their own prison.”
Edith Eva Eger, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, The Choice: Embrace the Possible (2017), Introduction
“Never dim your light in order to make someone else feel comfortable. And never, ever allow anyone to write your career narrative.”
Minda Harts, CEO of The Memo LLC, The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table (2019)
“Wisdom grows as understanding births humility and open-mindedness, both requisites for seeing things as they are.”
Judith Grisel, Neuroscientist & Author, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction (2019), p. 222
“And at the end of the day it is this love that sustains us and gives life meaning.”
bell hooks, Feminist Cultural Critic and Author, Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002)
“The inner critic can motivate you to be a meticulous worker bee, but it can’t motivate you to be a game changer.”
Tara Mohr, author, Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message (2014), Chapter 1
“Doing good work, having quality time for family and meaningful relationships, and the space to refresh the soul is about having a good life.”
Brigid Schulte, Journalist and author, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time (2014), Appendix
“What we know matters, but who we are matters more.”
Brené Brown, PhD, Research Professor and Author, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (2012)
“Who was I before I became who the world told me to be?”
Glennon Doyle, Memoirist and Activist, Untamed (2020)
“The more I have personally experimented with rest, the more I have been cracked open and expanded into what is truly possible.”
Tricia Hersey, Poet, Activist, and Author, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022)
“None of the paths of magic leads away from the world, setting you free from life’s troubles at a stroke; they lead you deeper in.”
Marian Green, author and occultist, A Witch Alone (1991)
Words for Courage Without Pressure
“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
Mary Oliver, poet, New and Selected Poems, Volume Two (2005)
“The first thing we must put into that emptiness is boundless courage.”
Zsuzsanna Budapest, author and activist, The Grandmother of Time (1989)
“There’s a beauty to imperfection. This is the essence of the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi values character and uniqueness over a shiny facade.”
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework
“Grieve with the grieving, share joy with the joyful. / May you build a strong path with beautiful and truthful / language.”
Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate and Indigenous writer, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015)
“The sea is always different. Some days dreamy, / waves hardly waves, just a broad undulation / in no hurry to arrive.”
Ellen Bass, poet, Like a Beggar (2014), p. 15
“But though I have learned to act as if I feel differently, the truth is that my feelings haven’t really changed.”
Maggie Nelson, writer, Bluets (2009), p. 37
“Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down.”
Jane Kenyon, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (2010)
“We believe that in order to fight and win a revolution that will stretch for generations into the future, we must find reliable ways to replenish our energies.”
Zsuzsanna Budapest, Author and Dianic High Priestess, The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries (1989)
“The crone phase is a time of self-knowledge, when shifts occur in outer and inner life and you may find new archetypes as sources of change and vitality.”
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., Jungian analyst, Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty (2001)
“She proved that women could lead with strength and compassion.”
Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, Authors and Creators, Rebel Girls Lead (2020)
“Trust is a confident relationship to the unknown. If we accept that the certainty we long for is something we may never truly have, we can reframe the notion of trust.”
Esther Perel, LMFT, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity (2017), p. 298
“I have dreamed of accomplishment. I have fed ambition. I have traded nights of sleep for a length of work.”
Mary Oliver, poet, Devotions (2017)
“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
Mary Oliver, poet, Devotions (2017)
“We create families of choice because our families of origin could not hold the truth of who we are, building sanctuaries where we can finally heal.”
Irina Contreras, Multi-Media Artist, Writer, and Queer Mother, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (2016), p. 94
Words for the Body That Needs a Different Pace
“They trust the body to enlighten the soul.”
Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and professor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (2009)
“Through breath we can begin making peace with our physicality.”
Hillary L. McBride, PhD, researcher, clinical psychologist, and counsellor, The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living (2021), Chapter 1
“We need to encounter our physicality and to know that this breath, these hands, these lungs and eyes and cerebrospinal fluid, this body is good.”
Hillary L. McBride, PhD, researcher, clinical psychologist, and counsellor, The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living (2021), Chapter 1
“I trusted that when I gave my body love, soft touch, stretching, sunlight, strength, and sex, what was lost would be regrown in new form.”
Chanel Miller, Author, Artist, Know My Name (2019)
“The way we move, hold our postures, use our muscles and faces can reflect our emotional and thinking life.”
Manuela Mischke-Reeds, MA, LMFT, somatic psychotherapist and author, Somatic Psychotherapy Toolbox (2018), p. 90
“Feminism can begin with a body, a body in touch with a world, a body that is not at ease in a world; a body that fidgets and moves around.”
Sara Ahmed, Feminist Writer and Scholar, Living a Feminist Life (2017), p. 22
“Connection to our bodily selves allows us to internalize a sense of safety and connection that tells us who we are, what we long for, and how to be most fully alive.”
Hillary L. McBride, PhD, researcher, clinical psychologist, and counsellor, The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living (2021), Chapter 1
“Caring for your body, your psyche, and your soul is not optional.”
Resmaa Menakem, Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and Somatic Therapist, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (2017)
“Before you can learn to track your cycle, you need to learn to listen to your body.”
Amanda Laird, Holistic Nutritionist, Podcaster, Heavy Flow: Breaking the Curse of Menstruation (2019)
“The stillness is where I feel safe and grounded, and that the frantic living spins me away from myself, from my center.”
Shauna Niequist, Author and Speaker, Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living (2016)
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
Mary Oliver, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (2010)
“Every part of my body was simultaneously healing and giving.”
Lisa Factora-Borchers, Writer, Poet, and Editor, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (2016), p. 155
“Your body speaks through sensations.”
Livia Shapiro, somatic psychotherapist and teacher, The Somatic Therapy Workbook (2020), Chapter 2
“The mind must have a reprieve from thinking.”
Saundra Dalton-Smith, Board-Certified Internal Medicine Physician and Author, Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity (2017)
Words That Help Us Find Each Other
“Rituals renew our connection with the spirit world and our ancestors. This interaction brings peace, love, and magic into our homes.”
Mary-Grace Fahrun, Author and Folk Magician, Italian Folk Magic: Rue’s Kitchen Witchery (2018)
“We had to learn to love each other differently after our marriage ended, to ensure our children felt safe in their home and free to love both of us.”
Deesha Philyaw, Award-Winning Author and Essayist, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (2016), p. 125
“no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.”
Adrienne Rich, poet, Your Native Land, Your Life (1986)
“The drama of love is all about this hunger for safe emotional connection, a survival imperative we experience from the cradle to the grave. Loving connection is the only safety nature ever offers us.”
Sue Johnson, EdD, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love (2008)
“The risks of hope are disappointment and loss. The risks of trust are betrayal and abandonment. Alongside these risks, however, connection also carries the potential for help, reconnecting with hopes and dreams, and creating meaning, healing and recovery.”
Karen W. Saakvitne; Sarah Gamble; Laurie Anne Pearlman; Beth Tabor Lev, PhD, Risking Connection: A Training Curriculum for Working with Survivors of Childhood Abuse (2000)
“Attachment is the building of a relationship through connection. In order to connect, there has to be a foundation of trust.”
Christina Reese, PhD, LCPC, Attachment: 60 Trauma-Informed Assessment and Treatment Interventions Across the Lifespan (2018)
“I had to learn how to trust people again after years of betrayal.”
Yeonmi Park, Human Rights Activist and Author, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom (2015), Chapter 20
“A sense of safety is essential for a child to be able to relax and explore. Without safety, we may never learn to really go out into the world.”
Jasmin Lee Cori, MS, LPC, The Emotionally Absent Mother (2010)
“When people fall in love, they are all but putting their soul in their partner’s hand for safekeeping, and that you both have the responsibility to keep it safe and make it prosper.”
Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment (2010)
“Secure love promotes exploration and growth, expanding inner and outer worlds. It allows for a world based on trust and touches the most human quality of all, the one that we all share, our vulnerability.”
Sue Johnson, Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships (2013)
“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.”
Esther Perel, LMFT, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006), p. 25
“It is a radical act to love someone without wanting to change them.”
Maggie Nelson, Writer, The Argonauts (2015)
“Reliable, high-quality care cannot simply be bought, because it requires empathy, connection, and commitment.”
Nancy Folbre, Feminist Economist and Professor of Economics, The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy (2021)
“We must heal now and give the gift of wholeness to our progeny.”
Joy DeGruy, PhD, MSW, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (2005)
“When we feel safe, we trust that our personhood will be cared for and our survival is not in peril.”
David A. Treleaven, Ph.D., psychotherapist and researcher, Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing (2018), Chapter 7
Both/And: The Text Matters and It Isn’t Enough
Here’s something I want to name directly, because it’s the tension that makes this kind of article hard to write and hard to use: the words you choose to send your friend tonight genuinely matter, and they’re not a substitute for showing up. The text and the presence are both necessary. Neither is enough alone.
I say this because I’ve watched driven women who are good at words and know how to communicate clearly use the perfect text message as a way of completing an obligation. They find the right thing to say, send it, and feel that they’ve done the thing. The box is checked. And sometimes, especially when geography or timing makes physical presence impossible, a thoughtfully chosen message really is the most that’s available. That’s real. That counts.
But other times, the text is a way of managing our own discomfort with someone else’s pain from a distance. It lets us stay in our kitchen rather than driving over. It lets us be supportive without letting the grief touch us. And the person on the receiving end, who can feel the difference between witnessed and managed, will know. Maybe not consciously, but somewhere under the skin, they’ll register that they received words but not presence.
Picture Elena, a therapist in private practice in Chicago and an illustrative example rather than a real client, reading a long, beautifully worded message from a friend after her father died. It says exactly the right things. Every line is kind. She cries. Then she puts the phone down, and she’s still alone in her apartment, and her friend is still at a dinner party, and the words are still just words. The message wasn’t wrong. It was insufficient. But then, most things are, when someone is grieving. That’s not a failure of the sender. It’s a fact about loss.
The Both/And here is this: send the words, and show up when you can. Don’t wait until you have the perfect thing to say, but don’t use the perfect thing to say as a substitute for your actual presence. A bag of groceries left on the doorstep with a text that says only “I love you” may accomplish more than eleven deleted drafts of exactly the right paragraph. If you’re unsure how to offer support in person, that’s a good question to bring to therapy, and therapy with Annie is one place to explore it.
The Systemic Lens: Who Is Saying These Words to You?
Women are socialized to be the encouragers. We know what to say to everyone else. We send the texts, make the soup, organize the meal trains. We track who’s struggling and what they need, and we deliver it with specificity and care.
This article is built around the assumption that you’re the one searching for words to offer someone else. And that’s beautiful. It’s one of the most caring things a person can do. But here’s the question I want to leave with you: Who is saying these words to you?
Because the same women who can reach into this list and extract exactly the right phrase for their friend often have no equivalent practice for themselves. They’ve built a strong infrastructure of outgoing care and a nearly nonexistent infrastructure for receiving it. When their own hard times arrive, and they always do, they find themselves sitting alone at 2:14 in the morning, unable to ask for the thing they’d drive across town to give.
This isn’t a personal failing. It’s a cultural inheritance. Many girls are rewarded from early childhood for emotional responsiveness to others. We’re taught to notice when people are struggling, to respond, to comfort, to minimize our own needs. We become expert at the outgoing direction of this particular river and largely untrained in the incoming direction. Then we wonder why we feel depleted.
The systemic question this article quietly raises isn’t whether you’ve found the right words for your friend. It’s whether you have people in your life who would sit at their own kitchen table at 2:14 a.m., wrestling with eleven deleted drafts, trying to find the right thing to say to you. If the honest answer is “I haven’t let them,” that’s worth sitting with. Not as a crisis, but as an honest assessment. The essay archive addresses this pattern regularly, as does the work inside Fixing the Foundations. You don’t have to be the sole provider of care in every relationship you’re in. That’s a role, not a requirement.
If the women in your life are the ones who always show up for everyone else and find it nearly impossible to receive, the relational dynamics that make receiving feel so threatening are something executive coaching with Annie can help you look at.
How to Use This List Without Feeling Like a Script
Here’s the practical question: you’ve read through these 99 words of encouragement and identified four or five that seem right. You’re still not sure how to send them without it feeling scripted. A few things worth knowing.
It’s okay to use something from a list. Sending a quote from a poet or a psychologist isn’t inauthentic. It’s curation. You’re selecting words that carry something true and offering them as a gift. Don’t disqualify yourself from using language you didn’t generate. No one writes their own funeral music.
Add one line in your own voice. The quote plus your own sentence is almost always more powerful than either alone. “This made me think of you” or simply “I don’t have better words than this”. Your voice, however imperfect, is the whole point. The quote gives you scaffolding. Your sentence is where you actually show up.
Match the bucket to the moment. If your person is in the first twenty-four hours, go to Words for the First Hours. If they’ve been in the long middle for months and everyone has stopped checking on them, go to Words for the Long Middle. Timing matters. The same words that would feel premature on day two might be exactly right on day sixty.
And let yourself be moved by this. If a quote lands somewhere in your chest while you’re reading it, if you feel something shift, trust that. What’s true in you has a much higher chance of landing as true for someone else. The words that cost you something to send are usually the ones that do the most work on the receiving end. If you think your friend might benefit from professional support, connecting with a therapist is something you can gently offer alongside your presence.
Jennica eventually sent her roommate three words: I love you. She pressed send at 2:31 a.m. Her roommate responded with a single heart. They talked the next morning for two hours. Neither of them remembered exactly what was said. But her roommate remembered the timestamp. Knowing someone was awake with her, in the dark, trying. That’s what words of encouragement at their best actually do. They don’t fix anything. They make the dark a little less solitary. They say, unambiguously: I’m still here. And that, it turns out, is everything.
For ongoing support as you do this kind of relational work, the resources at Annie Wright Therapy are here for you.
Warmly, Annie
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Frequently asked questions.
What’s the difference between words of encouragement and toxic positivity?
The difference is direction. Words of encouragement move toward the person’s current experience, naming it, witnessing it, sitting with it. Toxic positivity moves away from it, redirecting the person toward a better feeling before they’ve finished having the current one. “This is so hard and I’m here” is encouragement. “Everything happens for a reason” is toxic positivity. The test: does this phrase require the person to abandon where they are in order to receive it? If yes, it’s probably doing harm.
Is it better to say something imperfect or say nothing?
In most cases, something imperfect. Silence often registers as indifference, even when it isn’t. Most people don’t need perfect words. They need evidence that someone is thinking about them. An awkward “I don’t know what to say but I’m thinking of you” is more healing than careful silence. The exception is when the “something” is actively minimizing or redirecting; in that case, less is more. But pure absence almost never helps.
What do you say to someone who keeps saying they’re fine when they clearly aren’t?
Don’t argue with “fine.” Instead, offer a door that doesn’t require them to walk through it immediately. Something like: “I believe you. I also want you to know that if ‘fine’ ever stops being true, I’m here.” Or simply: “I’m not going to push. I just want you to know I see you, really see you. And I’m not going anywhere.” The goal is to make yourself available without forcing the confrontation. Many people say “fine” because they’ve learned that not-fine has social costs. What shifts that calculus is a person who keeps showing up without requiring performance. Over time, that kind of presence creates safety that permission-giving alone can’t.
Are there words that can make things worse?
Yes. The most harmful tend to fall into a few categories. First: unsolicited advice, which implies the person has a problem to solve rather than pain to witness. Second: comparative minimization (“at least you have…” or “some people have it so much worse”) which doesn’t ease suffering; it just adds shame. Third: premature silver linings (“this will make you stronger,” “everything happens for a reason”), which require the person to perform gratitude for their own pain. Fourth: centering yourself, as in “I can’t imagine how you feel, I’ve been so worried about you,” which shifts the emotional labor back to the person who’s already struggling. None of these are said with malice. But they all ask the person in pain to take care of the person trying to help.
What if I’m going through something hard too? Can I encourage someone else without depleting myself?
Yes, with honesty. You can say: “I’m in a tender place myself right now, but I want you to know I love you and I’m thinking of you.” What you can’t sustain is the performance of unlimited availability when you’re depleted. Naming your own limits, briefly and without making them the focus, models something important: that we’re all allowed to have them. You can hold someone in your heart without holding them up all by yourself.
References.
- Neff, Kristin. “What Is Self-Compassion?” Self-Compassion.org. https://self-compassion.org/what-is-self-compassion/.
- Siegel, Daniel J. “Interpersonal Connection, Compassion, and Well-Being: The Science and Art of Healing Relationships.” In Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation, edited by J. Loizzo, M. Neale, and E. Wolf. Routledge, 2017. https://cbrt.nalandainstitute.org/pdfs/siegel-2017-interpersonal-connection-advances-ch-8.pdf.
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Annie Wright, LMFT
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · Author, W.W. Norton 2027
Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is an EMDR-certified licensed psychotherapist and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, and she's been in practice since 2013. She draws on psychodynamic and somatic approaches alongside EMDR, and she is licensed in 15 U.S. jurisdictions and registered to provide telehealth in Florida (California, Colorado (telehealth only), Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington). Annie works with driven and ambitious women from relational trauma backgrounds, and everything she writes about is field-tested across thousands of clinical sessions. She is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited, and is currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information.
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