It’s Not Just Grief

“I’m angry, and I don’t know what to do with my anger.”

The opening scene of the 1983 film The Big Chill introduced us to a group of old college friends preparing for the funeral of one of their own. To the soundtrack of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, they struggled to process the news of his suicide and gathered together to memorialize Alex. The minister’s words acknowledged something that most of the mourners were experiencing, but were probably unwilling to admit out loud: they were angry. That describes what a lot of us are feeling right now.

Anger has fueled the response to AIDS since the very beginning. So it is not surprising that the anger felt these days is reminiscent of those early, terrifying days. The difference, though, is simple: forty years ago we were angry that we had no way to stop it, no way to help; today we have the tools, but they’re being taken away.

Anger is not an emotion that is universally loved or respected. Many people believe they should avoid getting angry, no matter how justified. They apologize for angry outbursts. Anger is messy, often loud, occasionally destructive. Anger disrupts the peace and can be uncomfortable to witness. It is stigmatizing, proof that someone is unable to control their emotions.

And while the anger may build up over time, it can still be shocking. Anger is, after all, the ‘fight’ in ‘fight or flight’.  But, let’s call it what it really is. Grief.

In Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ groundbreaking 1969 book, On Death and Dying, she describes the emotional journey of people who are dying. She broke it down into five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Over the years, her findings were used much more widely to describe the emotions of people who are grieving. And while the five stages were never meant to occur in a neat, straight line, I think it’s useful to look at the stage that most people try to avoid: anger.

People in the HIV/AIDS community are all too familiar with grief because it has defined the epidemic. In the early days, we were overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of deaths. Compounded, or cumulative, grief is defined by multiple losses piling up, often in a short amount of time. We are overwhelmed because of the inability to process individual losses before another one occurs. Grief is not just about lost lives. It’s the loss of possibilities, the loss of hope, the loss of a shared future.

The shock and awe tactics of the current administration were designed to knock people off balance, to sow confusion, to traumatize us. And it certainly worked, especially at the beginning. We felt numb and even in denial at what we were witnessing. “Why isn’t someone doing something?” was a familiar plea in the first weeks after the inauguration. Many of us were waiting for someone to take the lead, to show us the way out of this growing nightmare. But there was no deus ex machina ending to this play. There was only more destruction, more loss.

Even those of us who read Project 2025 and tried to warn others did not anticipate the speed of eliminating government programs and policies. No one can process that much loss from so many different angles at once, which is what the Trump administration was counting on. But eventually, the paralysis and depression we all felt began to morph into something else: anger.

Anger, after all, was at the root of most if not all great accomplishments in the HIV/AIDS community. ‘United in anger’ is not just a founding principle of ACT UP. It’s what binds us all together. Ignore us? Try to stop us? Expect a very public, creative, and effective response.

Anger feeds us, gets us moving, brings us together. It’s a response to what we believe is injustice. It’s a response to helplessness. But underneath the anger is the undeniable reality of grief. We are mourning so many things these days - referred to as cumulative grief - that it’s hard to keep track:

• -  Destruction of PEPFAR and USAIDS, which the New York Times estimates will kill 1,650,000 people the first year.
• -  Halting of critical research and clinical trials that have given us the hope of ending the epidemic once and for all.
• -  The rise of anti-science conspiracy theorists in the highest levels of government, most notably Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at HHS.
• -  Erasing of history and over forty years of accomplishments that changed the course of the epidemic.
• -  Inability to depend on established public and private financial support for our community.

• -  Loss of faith in our fellow human beings, especially those who represent us in Washington.

  There are people reading this whose life work has been destroyed. There are people reading this whose lives are in jeopardy. They’re scared. They’re hurt. Why would they not be angry at what has been done to them?

When I was interviewing women for my book Unstoppable: Straight Women on the AIDS Frontlines, I was initially surprised at the anger they expressed. They had valid reasons for being angry. Before the election, many of those reasons centered around a perception that the role of women in the community had not progressed, that there were decades-old issues that had not been resolved. That they were second-class citizens in the HIV/AIDS community. And though I agreed with their reasons, I’d never heard them expressed quite so strongly. That frustration and anger only intensified after January 20th. It didn’t take long to realize that their anger was an expression of grief for all that they were losing, and for the necessary fight ahead.

Perhaps the way to deal with it is first to recognize it for what it is. You’re angry over the losses. You’re grieving over the losses. Suppressing grief does not make it go away. It will come out, often when you least expect it.

The cemetery scene at the end of the 1989 film Steel Magnolias is a great example. M’Lynn has just buried her daughter, and has spent the entire funeral in control, graciously holding back her grief even as those around her, especially the men, fall apart. Finally, at the graveside after most people have left, the anger surges:

I'm so mad, I don't know what to do. I want to know why...I just want to hit something! I want to hit it hard!

At first, her friends are horrified at her outburst, and eventually get her to laugh. But no one denies her right to be in a rage. And she doesn’t actually hit anyone, though Clairee offers Ouiser as a convenient target.

Why does her rage finally explode in the cemetery at the graveside? Partly because she’d made it through her daughter’s death, funeral and burial holding herself together so that others didn’t worry about her. But I think it happened when it did because she was with friends who understood. No one told her to continue being strong for everyone else, no one told her to get over it. She was with people who made her feel safe letting her anger out.

So, how do we get through these horrific times? How do we face a new, more challenging fight than we’ve fought in decades, maybe ever? How do we find the strength to go on? We want to lash out, too, after all, without lashing out at each other.

It might be useful to think of your anger as a form of protest. You see what’s happening around you and it makes you mad. Why mask that? To avoid the social stigma associated with expressing anger?

There are days when I feel it’s all hopeless, that the grief for everything that’s been lost will never go away. In many ways, it won’t, because no matter what happens, we’ll have to rebuild. Every time we restore something, we’ll get angry again because we had to do this. We’ll always

remember this grief, this anger, this rage - and those who caused the destruction. But there is always one thing that helps me, and might help you, too.

Friends.

How do you approach someone who is grieving? Do you try to diminish their grief because someone else has it worse? Do you dismiss their grief as something to get over? Do you encourage them to move forward quickly? Would you say ‘let me know if you need anything’ and walk away?

Given the experience this community has with grief, I would be surprised if anyone was this callous. I expect you would feel a need to sit with that person, to listen, to allow them to express whatever emotions they feel without fear of judgment. You would do that because you’ve been there, too, on both sides

Will sitting with someone temper their anger? Maybe not, but if you allow them to vent (safely, of course), you will help them find a way to channel it.

Both of those movies came out in the 1980s, at a time when there was no good news about HIV/AIDS. None. And though neither movie is about the epidemic, both of those scenes have popped into my head more than once this year, in the context of so much loss. Not just because

of how grief is expressed in each one, but because of the friendships that help the characters heal.

When we’re grieving we need to be with people who understand. In the grief community, there are grief accomplices or grief companions: people who walk with you as you navigate a world changed forever by loss. In the history of HIV/AIDS, we have had buddy programs. We may not be involved in a formal buddy program, but that’s what we need these days: a buddy, a companion as we navigate this wildly uncharted territory that is our new reality. We need each other.

Reach out to your friends. Let your anger and grief fuel you now as it did so long ago. And remember: It’s not ‘alone in anger’. It’s ‘united in anger’. That’s how we fight back. That’s how we act up.

That’s how we win.
(First printed, POZ Magazine, Sept. 2025)

About 

I promised a friend who was in remission from ovarian cancer that I would write a book about people grieving their friends. She was very enthusiastic, though I'd never written a book before (my background was theatre and educational sales). Six months later she was dead, and I put the idea aside for several years. Eventually I wrote a series of six small (under 15,000 words) books - the Friend Grief series. Those books also brought me back to the HIV /AIDS community after a 20 year absence. Since the series ended in 2016, I've written three full-length books - two on straight women in the AIDS community, one on grieving friends who died during COVID. I enjoy public speaking, occasionally collaborating with Marty McNabb. I've had a blog since 2011, and many, if not most of the posts are about grief (usually friend grief).