At first, these ideas seemed to me to be pretty unrelated. As I thought about them, wrote about them and put them together on paper, I began to see that maybe they are more connected than I thought and that maybe acceptance is an important part of resolving some of the anger we may feel in our grief.

Acceptance

One of the most difficult but also one of the most important parts of the healing process is finding acceptance within ourselves of all that has happened and changed in our lives.

Acceptance is often a very difficult place to reach. There is often regret, guilt, anger, sadness and probably most of the other emotions that live within grief that we experience and have to work through along the way. The journey is filled with uncertainty and unknowns as we do the work of thinking through all that has happened and decide or learn how we are going to respond, accept and deal with it.

Coming to gradually and slowly understand and accept what happened to our loved ones and that our loved ones are not coming home, that the place they occupied in our material lives is going to be empty of them forever, is perhaps one of the hardest and most painful of these things. We are also faced with finding acceptance of the very many changes in our lives and of our futures that we never expected to face or never expected to face alone and for which in our grief, we may be ill-prepared to experience or handle.

Unfortunately, since many of the things that have happened are also outside of our ability to change, we really can’t do anything about them now. They happened. They are unchangeable and nothing we can do will make it any different. So now, somehow, we will need to learn to deal with those changes and find acceptance of them to help us and allow us to move forward. Those changes certainly include in large part whatever it was that happened to our loved ones that we couldn’t stop or change or fix and of course that our loved ones are not here with us any longer. 

Dealing with denial in our grief can also be a part of the process of how and when we reach acceptance. It’s not necessarily linear or part of a list of stages we have to go through. The magnitude of what we are experiencing is just so very difficult to believe and come to terms with that sometimes it may just be easier to deny it. 

Sometimes it’s easier to keep the hope alive in our hearts that we may yet somehow see things turn around, that things will go back to being the way they were and specifically, that we will have our loved ones back in our lives again and that everything will go back to being the way it was. Sadly, that isn’t going to happen. : ( 

But in the end, acceptance at some level is almost essential to healing and building the next part of our lives, to allowing us to start to look for and find ways of thinking, of acting and of living that both honor what was and create what will be as we transition from us, into me alone. Until we accept what has happened and what has changed, it is difficult to want to even look for alternatives.

Acceptance in our healing:

Once it begins to appear, acceptance doesn’t usually come in one single flash of insight or light. It more likely will grow gradually within us over time as it slowly comes into focus. It can also move like our grief does, sometimes we go forward and think we’ve got it and sometimes we go backwards and don’t have it at all and sometimes we stagnate and don’t seem to be going anywhere. These are all part of the process and kind of a “normal” way for us to learn to accommodate the huge changes that have occurred in our lives.

It may also be “one thing at a time”. We may find acceptance of part of the changes and not others, different things may come into focus at different times in our journey.

Like everything else, once acceptance does begin to appear, there may be times when our acceptance is strong and healing and then at other times, often unexpectedly, the reality of what has happened reaches out and grabs us again and the pain of that realization triggers lack of acceptance back into full intensity, but usually, only for a short time before that too passes.

As with so many parts of grief, there is no timetable. We each reach acceptance in our own time and in our own way and when it happens for us, that’s when it happens for us. 

Here’s a maybe “too long” list, in no particular order, of (other) things to consider that we may not have thought about that we may have to come to accept (temporarily or forever) and deal with in some way in this next part of our lives. We don’t necessarily have to accept all or even any of these things. They are possibilities that may or may not appear along the way in our healing journeys. There may be others you can think of to add here too: Please look through these lists and pick some that resonate with you to talk about and think about.

• That our grief journeys are long and hard
• That we need to find a new equilibrium in our lives
• That we need to find a new meaning and purpose in our lives
• That grief and grieving are going to be painful
• That we need to grieve to find healing
• That we are looking for healing of our grief and not of what happened to our loved ones.

• Being alone.
• Living alone.
• Spending our time alone.
• Having to become comfortable being alone.
• Sleeping alone.
• Eating/cooking alone.
• Having no one to talk to, especially in the evenings.
• Having to do everything our spouse or partner used to do.
• Figuring out what to change, keep in or leave out of our lives without our loved ones.

• Taking care of all of our material world responsibilities by ourselves.
• Making decisions alone.
• Growing old or older alone
• Traveling alone.
• Dealing with medical issues alone.
• Being lonely.
• Being sad.
• Not being able to sleep as we used to!
• My mind keeps racing and looping.
• I can’t stop crying.
• Finding our emotions are out of control a lot.

• Dealing with finance changes or issues alone.
• Dealing with living arrangement changes.
• Raising children alone.
• Losing the support of old friends and/or family. 
• Figuring out how to accept it and what you want to do if family and/or friends don’t know what to say or start to avoid you or say hurtful things.
• Losing the future we had planned to have with our loved one.

• Going out to eat or to a movie etc. alone.
• Needing to make new friends.
• Not knowing know how to make new friends.
• Enjoying being with/going out with new friends.
• Feeling guilty for being with/going out with new friends.

• Feeling guilty for changing things, for wanting to do things on your own.
• Taking their things out of the closet or other parts of the house.
• Knowing we have to move forward.
• Finding wellness.
• Realizing it’s ok to be happy.

• Realizing it’s ok to be ok.
• Realizing there are times when its ok to be sad.
• Realizing it ok to have a good time. 
• Coming to like living alone.

• Being “relieved” to not be a caregiver anymore.
• Learning how to not be a caregiver anymore.
• Learning that we have to take care of and be gentle with ourselves now.
• Learning that we are strong.
• Learning that its ok to say no!
• Saying no!
• Learning to honor and remember our loved ones without grieving them.
• Realizing we are no longer actively grieving.
• Realizing its ok to not be actively grieving.
• Realizing its possible to meet someone else.
• Realizing its ok to meet and be with someone else.
• Learning that it’s ok to be happy again.
• Learning to build a new life.
• Others?

Some things we may need to accept doing without (temporarily or forever): 

• Affection in both physical and emotional ways.
• Touch.
• Affirmations. 
• Someone to share the story of our day with. 
• Someone to hold us when we are sad or need to cry. 
• Someone to be weak with.
• Someone to bitch to. 
• Someone to sit quietly and just be together with.
• Someone to sleep with.
• Someone special to eat dinner with. 
• Someone special to go out with. 
• Someone to rub our feet or back or whose feet or back we can rub.
• Your shared purpose in life. 
• Your future plans

Anger in our Grief and Grieving

Not everyone feels or expresses anger in grief. Not everyone has issues with anger while they are grieving. 

But, since I have heard people talking about anger at many support group meetings and that a few people recently asked me to talk about it at a meeting, I’m guessing that it is probably there at some level, at some time, in most of us. And we probably really do have some things to feel angry about considering what has happened to our lives, our futures and especially to our loved ones.

Anger: A strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.

Things I’ve heard about anger:

There can often be a lot of “lack of control” involved in bereavement and lots of unresolved questions we may be asking like: Why, why me, why now, how come, this is so unfair, why did this happen, why did you let this happen, how am I going to go on, why did you leave me here alone, why did that happen to you, why did they do that to you, how can I deal with all of this by myself, why did you/would you say that, why didn’t you understand and many other questions like these. 

Feeling out-of-control and/or not having answers to these types of questions can easily make us angry. We may also find ourselves being angry about many of the things that happened or are happening in our lives now that are outside of our plans, outside of our dreams, outside of our control, and certainly outside of our ability to change or effect, again, particularly about what happened to our loved ones.

In addition, anger can come from guilt for thoughts or actions we have now or that we have had in the past, and we can become angry just because we feel guilty…

As we talked about in the meeting about “Things People Say”, there is a lot of potential anger lurking in how and what we hear in the things that people say or do when they seem insensitive and cruel to us in our grief. There is anger lurking in how people from our past, like friends and family, respond to our grief and grieving, especially when their responses are not in line with what we expect from them.

Some people have talked about being angry out of fear of what the future might bring and how they would handle it alone. How could they make good decisions without having the shared decision making process they had grown to depend on with their loved one? I’ve heard people talk about being angry with God for all the changes and loss(es) in their lives.

Some have expressed anxiety and anger about how they would be financially impacted, about how they could continue to live at a level close to what they were used to or needed to without having their spouses income available? People have talked about being angry for being left to raise their kids alone.

Some people have said that they are angry with their loved ones for leaving them alone, for leaving them to do so many of the things their loved ones used to do or that they did together that they now have to learn to do on their own. The same type of anger was expressed when they described trying to do some task their loved ones used to do and things went wrong! 

The anger we may feel about what happened to our loved ones is a potentially strong one. Especially if their passing was unexpected or due to some error in something someone did or should have done or because of someone’s carelessness or negligence or perhaps what happened during an illness that didn’t go as planned or expected. There is a lot of anger potentially generated by things that happened to our loved ones that were or became out of our or their control.

If we have been hiding from our grief, if we are not addressing the pain and sadness we feel by avoiding it or diverting ourselves from it repeatedly, at some point, our avoidance may stop being enough to keep our grief at bay. Sometimes, all the unresolved feelings and emotions we have been avoiding can turn to anger within us and begin to express in our lives. We may find ourselves being angry because our grief doesn’t seem to be getting better or isn’t over yet.

If we were caregivers, we may feel or hold anger over the amount of time and energy we spent in that role. We may be angry that we had to be caregivers in the first place.

It is often possible that we are not even aware of why we are angry and/or that we become angry at things, situations and people who are not the real cause of our anger at all. Sometimes those things are just “smoke screens” hiding the real cause of our anger that we have been avoiding.

Sometimes our anger may be so strong that it makes us verbally or physically act out or strike out in some way that can release some of our tension and frustration at what has happened to us, to our loved ones and to our lives and futures. Sometimes our anger can make us enter into behaviors and situations that are not in our best interests, just because we can’t find a way to resolve what we are feeling.

I think it’s important that if we feel anger that strongly, that we try to learn to recognize and accept the causes of our anger and learn how to control how our anger expresses. We may need to find a way to learn to control it, especially if it becomes directed at others when they may not really be the cause of our anger. We may need to seek professional help to find ways to gain that control if it begins to get out of hand.

Because what happened to our loved ones may be a large source of anger for us now, we may need to find ways to come to accept that what happened to them cannot now be changed. In dealing with the reality of all that has happened, especially if it is a source of our anger, it becomes important to find acceptance of what we are faced with and what happened to our loved ones. Accepting that we cannot change those things can help to let our healing move forward and help us to find resolution of some of the anger we feel. By accepting what happened instead of fighting against it or denying it or continuing to hold or cast blame, we can begin to find ways to let go of the anger we are holding in our minds and emotions.

Something we might try to help us work through our anger and find acceptance of what happened that we now cannot do anything about, is writing about our anger using the Zen Writing techniques of detaching as you write and just let things come out on paper as they will, with no need to pay attention to grammar or even sentences. By writing with the knowledge that you don’t have to share it with anyone when you are done, that you can shred it or burn it or keep it private, you are free to write anything you want or that comes out on the page.  It’s the writing and what you discover there that has the learning and the healing in it. Why would you not want to at least try it?

Let’s pick some of the questions I’ve posed here and talk about them. Think about what else you have experienced or heard about anger and how it has impacted you that we haven’t talked about? How did you/do you deal with it?

Questions: 

Where are you at in the process of learning to accept what has happened?

Is there an aspect of denial in your thinking?

What parts of acceptance are you having a hard time coming to grips with?

Can you think of ways to overcome those things to help acceptance grow?

What have you come to accept so far?

What would you most like to be able to accept now that you haven’t come to yet?

Have you have experienced anger in your grief?

**What things have made you angry or are you angry about in your bereavement?

What are you angry about! Can you identify them or is it a more nebulous anger at things in general?

Are any of the thoughts or feelings I’ve written about here things that sound familiar to you?  How do they make you feel?

Do any of them make you feel angry now? 

If it’s something different, what are you feeling anger about now if you are feeling it?

**What parts of your grief or the changes in your life make you angry?

**How do you deal with your anger?

How does your anger express in you?

**What coping skills, social skills and life skills do you think you might need to learn to deal with your anger, particularly if it gets in the way of your moving forward in your life?

What about rage rooms?