Hold On to Anger Long Enough, It’ll Tell You Its Real Name—Grief
Hello, my name is grief.
Life is made up of repeated cycles — Recurrent patterns in behavior that we often undergo without recognizing their existence. Cycles derive from how we’ve learned to survive and shape us more than we realize. As children, we are taught how to adapt to the world around us. We intuitively move throughout life balancing the ups and downs, while being guided by the lessons our upbringing, our culture, and our experiences have taught us. But what happens when these learned behaviors… these cycles become less about survival and more about stagnation?
Many emotions that we hold on to, are echoes of the past, buried deep within us. Overtime, we harden… Forming scars that shape our outlook on the world around us. The hardening isn’t just physical—it’s emotional. The layers we build around our hearts derive from the repeated cycles of hurt, disappointment, and unmet expectations… And to cope, we begin to blame the world for our sense of brokenness, as though it is something the world has done to us.
But the truth is: those repeated cycles often stem from unresolved grief.
Grief isn’t always recognizable. Sometimes the signs are not as obvious as when the loss of a loved one or a traumatic life event that has happened… It can manifest as anger, an easier emotion to hold on to. Anger can make one feel powerful—it can make us feel in control… But if we hold on long enough, it all will eventually reveal its true form. Beneath those layers, beneath hardened exterior, anger often carries the heavy weight of grief.
We spend our lives searching for ways to fix what we feel is broken… looking for people, places, and things to make us feel whole again… to fill in those cracks that life has left. And overtime, we’ve learned how to maintain that — we have learned how to keep those broken pieces together by managing. Not healing, but managing and maintaining (a band-aid solution that allows the wound to fester underneath).
We fail to realize that managing often does not fix any problem —it doesn’t address the root cause of the damage. The foundation for our pain is often built on unresolved grief, masked by the layers of anger that we’ve learned to use as protection. We’ve become stagnant.. stuck in survival mode, too afraid to dig deeper into what’s hiding beneath the surface.
It’s only when we allow ourselves to confront our grief head-on with true vulnerability, that we begin to heal. We must sit with it and understand it before we can begin the real work.
Breaking free from the cycle means letting go of the impulse to manage our pain. This means no longer searching for those external fixes, but instead doing the hard work and exploring our inner wounds. Only then, we can begin to heal the foundation and be released from the cycles that have kept us in a survival mindset.
By no means is grief a weakness —it’s a testament of how deeply we’ve lived, loved, and lost in our lifetime… And while anger may feel easier to hold onto in the interim, it will only be through recognizing our grief, we will be able to truly begin to heal. So, the next time you feel the fire inside of you.. the next time when anger arises, ask yourself: what is this anger masking? Is it grief? What wounds am I trying to protect?
We stall our own healing by holding on to anger… But as we acknowledge our grief, we open the door to allow for transformation and healing. So now, it’s time to break all the cycles that hold us back. It’s time to let go of the hurt and confront the grief that’s been there all along, waiting for you to set it free.
Until Next Time..