120 Weeks: When Grief Shows Up Angry

Two Years and Four Months Without You

It’s been 120 weeks since I lost you, my darling daughter. Time has marched on, but my heart remains suspended in that moment you left. The world gained a beautiful light when you passed, but I lost a piece of my soul.

Today, the weight of your absence hit me harder than I ever expected.

When Grief Wears an Angry Face

Grief doesn’t always look like tears and quiet mourning. Sometimes, it looks like clenched fists and sharp words.

Today, Lady Grief, as I’ve come to call her, arrived not in sorrow, but in fury. She demands to be acknowledged—and if you ignore her, she finds ways to crash into your life, often when you least expect it.

She showed up today as biting anger, lashing out at the one person who’s grieving alongside me: your dad.

“What do you want to watch on TV?” he asked—an innocent question.

“Anything—as long as you can make a decision and stick to it,” I snapped.

He looked at me, hurt. “Why are you being so mean?”

“I’m not being mean,” I told him. “I’m just tired. And angry. I don’t know why.”

But I did know why.

Because you’re gone. Because nothing is the same. Because your voice now only lives in my memory.

Anger as an Expression of Love

Lady Grief doesn’t let me run. She whispers, You can hide, but I’ll find you. And she always does.

But I’ve learned something important: if I sit with her—breathe, cry, and feel—something shifts.

I realize that this anger? It’s just love, reshaped by pain. Another way my love for you spills out.

I can’t fight it. I have to feel it. And when I do, peace slips in—if only for a moment.

Grief Is Not Tidy

Grief is messy. It’s not all tears and silence—sometimes, it’s fire. But even that fire is love, burning in a different form.

Let’s Talk About It

How do you navigate grief?

Does anger ever sneak up on you, too?

If you feel like sharing your story, I’d be honored to listen. Feel free to leave a comment below.

You’re not alone.

The Version of Me I’m Leaving Behind

April found me still reminding myself to pause before I speak. My patience feels thinner these days. But something else has shifted too. My relationship with my mother is ongoing and complicated. Boundaries have helped. It’s getting easier to hold them—which, strangely, makes saying yes feel cleaner too. I even set up a friendship blind date for her and a client, meeting them there to help it along. They both said they were lonely. They both said they wanted connection. Neither followed up. Instead, my mom booked a bus trip with the neighbor she insists she can’t stand. I laughed when she told me—really laughed. Not because it was surprising, but because it wasn’t. She moves toward what’s familiar, even when it doesn’t suit her. I know that pattern. I’ve lived inside a version of it. She either copies my hairstyle and clothes or criticizes them. There’s rarely a middle ground. I’m less affected than I used to be—not because she’s changed, but because I’m starting to see her m...

Week 152: Bearing Witness: Anne Frank and the Father Who Returned Alone

The third and final reflection on collective and personal grief and on the love that survives when everything else is lost. Bearing Witness: Anne Frank and the Father Who Returned Alone When Otto Frank stepped off the train back into Amsterdam in June 1945, the city he returned to was both familiar and unrecognizable. The canals still shimmered in the summer light, the bells still rang from the Westerkerk, but the laughter of his wife and daughters was gone. The war had ended, but for Otto, the silence had only just begun. For weeks, he searched. He wrote letters, visited refugee centers, and followed every rumor that his daughters, Margot and Anne, might still be alive. In his pocket, he carried hope like a scrap of paper—folded, worn, almost transparent. But each inquiry ended the same way: a shake of the head, a name on a list, a quiet apology. Eventually, the truth reached him—Anne and Margot had not died in Auschwitz as first reported, but in Bergen-Belsen, of typhus, just wee...

Week 153: Closing the Series & Turning Toward November

As I close this three-part series on grief—its collective echoes, its private chambers, its impossible tenderness—I find myself turning, as I always do this time of year, toward November. It’s the month that holds everything. Lily’s angelversary sits at its center like an ache I can feel before the calendar even flips. First in my dreams, then in my bones. My body always seems to remember before my mind gets the memo. One moment I’m functioning—answering texts, folding laundry. The next I’m swirling: emotional to numb, numb to sobbing on the dining room floor while her favorite pop songs pulse through the speakers, as if she’s just in the next room asking me to turn it up. And then the next morning… nothing. A strange, hollow quiet. Not peace, not calm—just a blank space where last night’s tidal wave had been. It still startles me how grief moves like unpredictable weather, sweeping in and receding on its own terms. November has a way of unearthing the memories I’ve tucked c...

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