Grief & Anger as Activism

Anger that propels, protects & aligns.

Welcome to Evergrief.

A home for the kinds of grief that often go unseen: quiet, complex, and deeply human.
I write from the landscape of chronic illness, unresolved grief and the many other unnamed losses we all carry. But this isn’t just about pain it’s about presence. About living inside what doesn’t heal, and still finding meaning.

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Listening to a talk by Gabor Maté, in which he described anger as our emotional immune system, sparked something in me - a curiosity about the connection between sorrow and rage. He likened our emotional responses to the function of white blood cells: while these specialist cells move in to attack anything that threatens our health and balance, anger arrives in response to what violates our boundaries, wounds our wellbeing, or leaves us feeling powerless. It is a defence, not a dysfunction.

This made me wonder about the relationship between grief and anger. For some, anger may feel easier to access than grief -more active, more protective. I’ve heard this within the common fear- “I’m afraid if I let the grief in, I may never get up again.” And yet for others, sorrow might be more socially acceptable than the fiery rage simmering underneath. There are times in grief when all we can do is cry, sleep, collapse into the earth. And then there are times when grief burns, when the injustice of it all demands to be screamed, shaken, named aloud.

Photo by Benjamin DeYoung on Unsplash

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We live in a culture that worships ascension, that reveres those who transcend, who overcome, who rise as heroes from the ashes. But what about the descent? What about the places where we unravel, where we are reshaped by what we’ve lost? What about the grief, the rage, the fear, the exhaustion - the mess of being human when there is no triumph in sight?

These are the spaces that undo us and also the ones that bring us home to ourselves.
They are not meant to be skipped over.

Anger, when met with care, can serve us. It communicates what has been violated, what has been buried, what has been denied. And yet we live in a culture that forbids anger, that shames its expression while simultaneously allowing suppressed rage to wreak havoc in hidden, harmful ways.

What might shift if we honoured anger as a natural part of emotional completion? If we allowed it to move through us with ebb and flow without fear, without apology?

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When we let anger live in the body, not as an outburst but as a presence, we touch into something vital. Anger is life force. It is our refusal to collapse. It is the fire that keeps us standing. So of course we meet anger on the journey through grief — how could we not, in the face of so much loss?

In the wellness world, anger is often spoken about in terms of release. And while release is part of staying unstuck, I also wonder: when are we truly releasing and when are we exiling? We will never fully release our grief. Why should we expect to fully let go of our anger? Where does that desire come from — a true instinct, or a cultural discomfort?

Francis Weller speaks of non-redemptive mourning - the kind of grief that is not meant to be healed, resolved, or forgotten:

“Non-redemptive mourning acknowledges that some losses should never be allowed to settle, like silt, to the bottom of our memory… Some losses… should be kept present in our communal memory.”

This leaves me wondering about non-redemptive anger- the anger that doesn’t need to be fixed or released, but honoured. The kind of anger that propels us, protects us, and aligns us with what matters.

Maybe this is where grief, anger, and activism meet.
In the part of us that refuses to turn away.
In our growing capacity to hold what feels unbearable,
perhaps here is where we advocate for change.

Can we learn to welcome anger as a sacred guest, not to destroy, but to illuminate?
Can we grow into the kind of maturity that can sit with its heat and listen to what it says?

I’d love to hear your thoughts…

With care,

Madeleine

We are living through times that ask us not to escape grief, but to walk with it, to slowly learn its language and unfamiliar terrain. If you would like to explore this more, I’d love you to join us- subscribe for free for writings & reflections on what it is to be human in these times.