Our grief becomes part of who we are ...

In response to a fellow grief traveler who is worried that she is becoming a mean and angry person:

We don't return to the past, to our old selves, after we pass through the acute stages of grief.

Every day, with or without grief, we are evolving, learning, changing ... usually in ways so slight we don't notice their assimulation.

You are not the same person you were when you were five, or six, or fifteen or twenty. To those who are parents now, you know you are not the same as before you were parents. And to all of us who have lost someone, we will not be quite the same even after the grief passes.

We have new knowledge and new experience ... and it is becoming part of who we are. We are full of a whole realm of emotions that are part of the grief process, but they are our feelings, not WHO we are.

It will be up to us to shape and mold it a bit here and there, trim off the anger by letting it out in some way, walk off the depression, fill in those moments of sadness with good memories and positive actions of remembrance, and to move forward. Anger is part of grief, just as is the sadness. We often don't want to be angry at the person who left us (but deep inside we sometimes are, just at the fact they left us), and there are plenty of people who could have done things differently, responded differently, done more, or who just didn't do it OUR way that we often turn our anger towards. Very frequently we turn our anger inwards at ourselves (depression is usually anger turned inwards).

But there will be anger. And if you work through it - talk to people about it, write it out in a journal, take a fast paced walk and stomp it out - then eventually you'll find yourselves feeling less angry, or not angry every day, and you'll find there are more days in between the days you are feeling angry and spiteful ... just like the days of shock ... and the ones of sadness ... You'll also find something in the future that will bring on angry feelings, seemingly out of no where, just like the sadness part of grief. You might see someone acting like someone who made you made in the past, or you'll hear words that stir up the anger. Or you'll even just see a color or smell something, and you might not even notice that you have, and all of a sudden you'll have a day of rage.

Please know you are not turning into a "forever angry, mean, spiteful" person ... this, too, will pass ... of course, it takes time and work. Be patient with yourself.