"We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told her that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there'. This was unclear to her first, 'I've been where?' But I explained that deep grief sometimes is like a specific location, a cordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope. "So sadness is a place?" she asked me. "Sometimes people live there for years" I said."