Friend Grief and Anger

"It's not like they're family." Sound familiar? If you're grieving the death of a friend, you've probably heard that from people who just don't get it.

A resource by Victoria Noe

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"It's not like they're family."

Sound familiar? If you're grieving the death of a friend, you've probably heard that from people who just don't get it. And if it made you angry, well, you're not alone.

In the first of a series on grieving the death of a friend, "Friend Grief and Anger: When Your Friend Dies and No One Gives A Damn", you'll meet people who also struggled with anger after their friend died. And they'll help you answer the question "okay, I'm angry: now what?"

My Inspiration

In 2006, I told my friend, Delle Chatman, that I had an idea for a book about people grieving their friends. I'd never written a book before, but she encouraged me to do it. Six months later, she was dead from the ovarian cancer that had been in remission when we had that discussion. It took several years to figure out what I was doing, and along the way I decided to break up the book into a series of short books, each on a specific experience. I started with anger, an emotion not always associated with grief and not always acknowledged. When she died, I felt like the minister in the movie, The Big Chill, when he said, "I'm angry. And I don't know what to do with my anger." But anger is part of my story about Delle, and part of so many stories about grief. It's time we admitted it.

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