The Angry Side of Grief

Everyone talks about the sadness. They talk about the tears, the heavy blankets, and the quiet hollow ache in the chest. But nobody warned me about the fire, the anger, the rage of anger.

​For a long time, I felt guilty about it. How could I be angry when I’m supposed to be mourning? But the truth is, grief isn't just a sense of loss; it’s a sense of deep, enraged injustice.

​I find myself getting frustrated at the smallest things. Sometimes everything feels like sandpaper against my skin.

​I’m starting to realize that my anger is actually my bodyguard. It’s my protective layer that shows up when the sadness feels too vulnerable to bear. It’s my heart saying, "This isn't right. This shouldn't have happened."

After many instances of feeling numb and exhausted, anger is the only thing that feels like "power.” Anger refuses to sugarcoat the pain.

​I’ve stopped trying to "nice" my way out of this feeling. I’ve learned that if I don’t give the anger a voice, it just turns inward and starts burning me.

​Now, when the anger wave hits, I don't apologize for it. I sit in my car in utter silent. I scream into a pillow in my bed. I write down all the "angry" things in my journal until my eyes swell. I’ve learned that being angry doesn't mean I loved DT any less—it means the hole he left is so large that it sometimes consumes me.

​If you’re grieving and you’re angry—at the world, at the person you lost, or even at yourself—know that you aren’t "doing it wrong." You’re just processing the magnitude of what’s been taken away from you.

​Anger is just love with nowhere to go. Let it burn until it turns into ash. Eventually, the ground will be cool enough to walk on again.