I have read it many times, and it always resonates with me. In the early stages of my grief, it would make me sadder, sometimes angrier. After a few months I felt let down by it’s truth. As if God, or life, or even my own husband could’ve prevented this painful life sentence I now have to carry forever. He didn’t do it to himself, some arrogant fools decided THEY had the right to take life. Their like-minded kind are STILL deciding that. They did it in Manchester a week ago and that “triggered” a response in me that included grief & all the anger that goes with losing a loved one for a stupid reason. Excessive drinking, spending, eating, and gambling (poor decisions) that suppresses angry feelings and can cause irreparable harm to yourself and your relationships.

This is so true. I may be swimming in loss, but not drowning. Or I may go down for a while and feel like I am drowning, but finally surface to the top of the water. Or I may be calm. I remember four years after my mother’s death receiving a prestigious award and thinking I needed to go and call her. I cried when I remembered I could not. I am facing the death of several friends recently, when a memory of them punches me in the gut. I think I am dealing well with my hearing loss until I come home from a social gathering in tears because I have missed so much of the conversation. I love the old Groucho Marks quote, “ I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member,” but I like to rephrase that quote a bit for the good of my letting go process , However, after my accident, I was unable to perform or play my instrument. I was out of work and I had lost all confidence in myself and my abilities, felt lost and with no direction.A decade ago I set out to write about compassion. In our increasingly connected world, I believed compassion was going to be very important if we wanted to preserve human creativity, health, and prosperity. So I decided to write about that. Hey all, I recently joined this sub and try to comment on as many of the posts as I can that I feel I can help out a bit. I am dealing with my own grief as well, but I wanted to share some information I found some years ago, posted on reddit before I even knew what reddit was. It is really great advice, and I hope everyone gets a chance to read it. I wish I could say you get used to people dying. But I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing … not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares. --- Henri Nouwen

A part of the process of working through your grief requires you to accept your feelings and emotions and become comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Grief work isn’t easy. You may need to reach out to your grief resources and trust in the people you know and love to help you get through it. Reasons Grief Comes in Waves Anger is a very complex emotion. It presents itself physically, emotionally, and psychologically. We are taught about anger in our families of origin. Often it is an emotion that is tolerated or stifled to various degrees. As children, we model what we observe and are taught how to self-regulate anger. It might range from slight annoyance to rage. Anger is a reaction to pain, loss of control, or a perceived threat or injustice to our self or someone we care about. One’s reaction will differ based on the perception of the threat. Our reaction can frighten us as well as others. How may we feel and express anger? We don't know where it originated and I don't know who wrote it but the following resonated deeply with me.When you consider the why of life , the incredible wonder of life, and even the chance of being here at all and having the joy of life’s beautiful experiences, you can understand life and love are sometimes a battlefield, as well as a beautiful garden of compassion and joy. Grief is typically conceptualized as a reaction to death, though it can occur anytime reality is not what we wanted, hoped for, or expected.” Grief is like crazy weather. Sometimes showers and storms pop up when you least expect them. ~LauraJay Out of so many writings about grief, there is one particular piece that has been an important part of my own journey. The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.”

As you go through some of the more challenging experiences in your grief journey, you’ll learn to recognize the signs and triggers of your grief. In time, you’ll be better prepared to handle the flow of negative emotions associated with your loss. The first time we face grief as children, it can feel very foreign, even cumbersome, and unknown. We hardly know what or why grief is and certainly do not understand how to intellectualize it or work through it. The irony about grief is that the person you want to talk to about how you feel is the person who is no longer here .”— Unknown When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time — the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes — when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever — there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.” Its onset causes an overwhelming barrage of intense emotional, behavioral, interpersonal, and physiological symptoms. In the early days, life is merely about managing the pain and getting through the day. The good(ish) news is that the pain should lessen after a few weeks or months, but grief is never gone.I have written in the past about the grief and loss cancer survivors feel when they realize their bodies may never return to the normal healthy ones they were before the disease. I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.” – Alyson Noel Waves of grief that appear when least expected can lead you to feel an erratic and overwhelming swarm of emotion. Until you get your grief under control, you may never know when you’ll experience a flood of emotions that are difficult to contain. The emotional pain you suffer after a significant loss can be immense. The level of pain is often beyond words, and trying to navigate through it may seem impossible at the time. Your grief gets triggered Ruminating about things that make you angry, resulting in physical and emotional harm to yourself or those around you by giving anger unbalanced weight in your life.