Author and blogger Victoria Noe, who runs the Friend Grief website (which you should definitely visit!) recently posted to her facebook wall about her upcoming book release. The book is titled “Friend Grief and Anger: When Your Friend Dies and No One Gives a Damn” and that struck a chord with me.
A little history: back in the late 1990s, the self-publishing world was small and fringe. Mostly it was vanity presses (where the author pays the publisher to print the book) and the subsequent quality was very poor. Very few self-published books were taken seriously or sold well, and for a professional author, to self-publish was the kiss of death.
So, while I knew my audience for “Grieving Futures” was small, I also knew that the only way to publish it without destroying my professional writing career was through the traditional model: get an agent, get a publisher, and do what I was told.
The thing was that I couldn’t get an agent. This is not unusual; agent-hunting is a time honored trial for most professional authors. But the reason I could not get an agent was curious, at least too me: they felt my book was too angry. I got rejection letter after rejection letter telling me that the agent did not think my words of anger and despair were what anyone experiencing grief really wanted or needed to read.
I disagreed.
Since I disagreed, I refused to rewrite the book to conform to their ideas of what grievers need in a book. Thus, I never got an agent. Just as well; I rewrote the book almost from top to bottom ten years later in 2010, and I’m proud of the result.
But one thing I left in was the anger.
Anger is IMPORTANT and while I haven’t read Victoria’s book (yet!) I so impressed that she is bringing to the forefront of the conversation. Everyone understands the anger a person feels about the death they are mourning, that’s a given; but there is much more to it than that. There is anger at the person themselves (such as I had for my mother, due to our co-dependent and very messy relationship) and there is anger at feeling that we are marginalized in our grief (such as Victoria discusses in regards to friend grief) and anger at ourselves for not “bucking up little trooper” and dealing with our grief better (whatever the hell that entails, I do not know).
Anger permeates grief. Yes, it is a stage of grief but it is also an undercurrent. Even at the point of acceptance, where you are moving on in a healthy way, anger lurks around corners and in dark places. It flares up on holidays and anniversaries, and it feeds into discussions about death, and it lays us flat sometimes.
Kind words, condolences, uplifting aphorisms…yes, all well and good. But anyone who thinks that grievers do not need to confront anger while we grieve is naïve. It’s better to talk about it, and admit what we feel, rather than to shove it to the back of our minds out of guilt or shame.
Anger is healthy. What we do with it…that’s a better issue to address. I’m glad Victoria is addressing it, and I hope my own work does so in a way that helps others know they are not alone.
