I harbor anger on Sundays. When the happy families of six or more surround our family of three in their praise and worship. And when the single teen mom who has her child baptized while surrounded by her family who will be surrounding her and her child throughout their entire lives, while I sit and my loss is forgotten. I'm not angry at God. I'm not even mad at the teen mom. I'm angry because I think people have forgotten I am still in pain and think it just goes away.

I'm kinda with you on this. I would actually LIKE to be angry, because I prefer being angry to sad: anger makes me take action, right letters, say articulate things, expend energy. Sadness makes me curl up in a ball and want to do nothing. And sadness is all I feel about this whole mess. I would love to get angry, but there is no one or thing to direct my anger toward: not the doctors, my body, medical technology, the universe. And when family deserts us and treats us like lepers, my first instinct is to cry in sadness, not yell at them. I was amazed when my neighbor accused me of being angry at her: "I'm not, never have been," I told her. I would like to be. It would make things easier.

I'm deeply sad that people behave boorishly, and that my daughter will grow up knowing she can only expect so much from certain family members during times of crisis. I guess I reserve my anger for the situation in Zimbabwe and wonder how on earth I can channel that in a positive direction.

I am finding that just past a year out, the anger is catching up with me. Before now, it's been more what you and Tash have described, a sadness that has made me too have to force myself to breath at its worst, and made it extremely difficult at times to take any sort of action, including just getting out the door. But now there is the anger, though really it is more of a rage. Against the doctor who should have figured things out in time, against members of my family who were either nowhere to be found through the worst of it, or who promptly disappeared the moment they found my grief too difficult. And mostly, against myself, for not knowing more in time for it to make a difference.

But as to use -- there is none. It is entirely destructive, this anger. It eats me up, it takes up all my time when it peaks. And I am doing everything I can think of to move past it. I would have said, before this, that my anger was a positive force, like Tash said -- but not this. It's only rage, and it gets me nowhere at all.

So a long-winded comment, only to say - I get the anger, but I think you're right about its pointlessness.

I think my anger was just directed at the unfairness of it all. We'd played by the rules. I'd done everything I was told to. I struggled not to complain or whine. I jumped through every single hoop, no matter how high, even if they were on fire. And then, for no reason other than the perversity of the universe, our happiness was ripped away. I was angry at me, for succumbing to the hope, for believe that THIS time I'd get the fairy tale ending. I forgot that MOST fairy tale endings aren't the way Disney portrays them.

But then, the anger always fades back into the sadness and leaves me feeling just that more hollow.

Anger surprised me about 5 months after we lost our girls, until then it was just deep sadness. I found my anger was completely related to depression - I was angry at everyone for not noticing that I was drowning. Even more though, I was angry at myself for not being able to reach out and ask for help.

Anger proved to be useful to me as it finally propelled me to get the help I needed to make it through a very dark time, although anger itself wasn't the useful part :)

I distinctly remember driving my car through a parking lot and contemplating running over the woman who walked in my path. A complete stranger. No rhyme or reason. Just anger.

Generally, I don't feel angry with other people without some underlying emotion. Myself...disappointment in my failures. My doctors...disillusionment that they aren't gods who could save my babies. Those perfect families cause the green-eyed jealousy monster to rear her ugly head. The earth spinning...my own helplessness to stop it.

There ARE certain things that deserve my anger...and get it. My mother-in-law who left her son standing alone at the cemetery to bury his son. My mother who, less than a month after I buried my son, sent me an email listing all the debts I owe her. My doctor, who lied about my son's cause of death. But I have to be very careful that I figure out what exactly it is that I am angry about...or I just might run over a stranger in a parking lot.

I don't get angry over loss; I experience rage instead. Anger implies that there is a reason and a target for the anger. Rage is something else altogether. It consumes me and demands a physical outlet. I will topple chairs, slam doors, throw objects, bite my finger... All ways to let the rage out of my body.

My emotions run the gamut from anger to despair, but the lingering emotional response is distrust. I distrust my body, I distrust God, and I distrust the people around me. I live in a prickly hedgehog skin, and I roll into a little ball every time someone reaches out a finger to poke at me. Two days ago I told my Mother-in-Law my fear no longer was restricted to my incompetent cervix, but now I had a knowledge of PPROM, cord accidents, and blood clots, and all kinds of other things that end with losing a baby. She laughed at me. So, I rolled my ball just a little bit more tightly closed and thought to myself, "this is why...".

I don't get angry over death; just sad. Immensely sad. But I do get angry over other types of loss: my parent's marriage for example. I'm a grown woman, but I'm angry for how they're handling it, how they're treating each other and me...and I don't think that my anger is productive, but I have to work to let it go. Anger, for me, is never a positive outlet, never something that, in itself, leads to resolution. It complicates things, and often hides the emotions underneath that are perhaps more difficult to deal with.

I feel anger is almost always a secondary emotion, arising from something else- sadness, embarsassment, non-recognition, etc. But often that emotion it stemmed from is not recognize, because it is anger that brings forth the action, be it crying, writing, yelling, whatevers...
For me I think anger is an emotion like any other. No good, no bad, just something to be experienced, recognized, and let go. It can be a motivation for inspiration too. Although most times, it seems futile to even feel that anger. Not to mention that it has that stigma of one being out of control, unreasonable, etc when one is angry.

I tend to feel more sad than angry, but anger definitely makes a frequent appearance in my emotional repertoire. I find it to be a bit of a tiresome burden. I see it as hurt turned around backwards and it's far more useful for me to get to the hurt than to get stuck in the anger. I just don't think I learn anything when I'm angry, but I learn a lot when I deal with the hurt.

When my father died, my mom took us to see a psychiatrist. He was, incidentally, the dr. treating my dad at the time he took his own life. My sister was so mad at that doctor. In the middle of the session, she started yelling at him and she actually got up and started hitting him. I remember right before she ran out, she ripped his collared shirt. I swear, she stayed in that angry state for the next 20 years, only barely starting to come out of it in the last few years. To me,the anger has prevented her from feeling the sadness of loss and from growing through the pain. Being around her can be so exhasuting because everything is a trigger that nobody wants to ignite.

Ultimately, I think anger can be useful for a time, it prevents you from being vulnerable, but eventually it's something to get past because it's only working to hide the hurt.

me+anger=does not compute.

I am too quick to either excuse others' behavior or, when there's no one to be angry with, to shrug and say that's just the way it goes.

I think I wish I could get angry. But then I think what difference would it make?

i tend towards sadness, not anger. but the shrink always said that they were flip sides of the same coin - depression is anger turned inwards. so...

Magpie: People do say that. But I've never understood the basis for the theory.

I've seen the inverse fairly frequently: sadness turned outwards into anger. But I'm not sure I've ever seen something that looked like anger masquerading as sadness.

For me, I can control my anger better than my sadness. Anger is almost a relief, a way for me to get something out. Sadness keeps churning away and doesn't find relief. With my anger, I can swear, kick something, slam a door and it's a release of energy I don't get with sadness. I'm not an aggressive, angry person by nature- my permissible self finds anger challenging. But now, in this new life, I find I have to be angry sometimes. It just takes too much energy to be sad all the time.

I know anger masquerading as sadness. I was sexually and psychologically abused as a child and then raped as a teenager. My entire life I've been sad. Sad that I am such a horrible person. Sad that I deserved it. Sad that I'm destined only for bad things.

When I finally let myself feel anger about it all, it was like the world finally came into focus. Anger has been incredibly healing for me.

I only get angry at those who have no clue how lucky they have it. They have a beautiful, healthy child and they don't appreciate that. I get angry when I see people in the grocery store calling their children names, or belittling their child unaware that they're so very lucky to have children in the first place.

I've had a lot of anger to deal with around my husbands affair. When something precious to me is ripped away and there is an acute rupture of my basic beliefs and safety in the world for whatever reason (I've had a few events) it brings up a sense of no control/helplessness that triggers a reaction to action = anger/rage. I do feel sad (depression is the other side of anger but NOT sadness- 2 different things!) but that is so difficult for me to tolerate. My theory is it is because I am a functionner- no matter what happens I can not collapse and need help- and anger stiffens my back so to speak. Is it helpful? In the short run if it doesn't eat me alive but is that any different than sadness? I think accepting whatever feelings I have as serving an important purpose keeps me from overvaluing one over another and feeling ashamed of who I am and how I deal with things. Did I want to get even? Yes. Did I feel ashamed of that? NO. Could I actually do it? The reality is there is no going back- only forward and that is what makes me feel sad...

I am usually angry, often irritated. When it came to my experience with my daughter's illness, I feel only sadness, never anger.

For some reason I hold on to the delusion that life should be fair. So I am very angry.

I struggle with it hugely. It eats me rather than giving me power. It carries the suffocating weight of shame. I find it hard to choose to let go of it though. It is even harder then saying goodbye.

i pretty much agree with mad about the rage. i have WAY too much irrational rage pent up inside of me. after all the losses i've experienced i first experience rage, which quickly dissipates to deep, deep, depression.

I get angry but it almost always has a reason so to speak. I get angry at myself for thinking I was invincible, that I could easily carry a baby. I get angry that other people who I have watched do everything wrong still end up with perfectly healthy babies. I ate right, stayed in bed on bed rest until I could barely move from muscle atrophy, prayed, wished, did everything I was told to do by doctors that I thought knew what they were doing. And yet here I am grieving the baby I wanted so desperately that didn't make it. I guess you could say the anger stems from the loss and the complete "wrongness" of it all. I would have loved that baby beyond reason and yet people who don't love their kids have babies all the time. What did I do that was so wrong? I guess I'll never know an answer to that one...

My anger has always been a good thing when I've used it productively. It seems to motivate me to find answers, to find solutions, to fix things. If it becomes all-consuming then it is useless, but a little anger can be a good thing if it leads to questions and then closure.

Sadness on the other hand feels very useless to me. But then again I tend to slip from sad to self-blame to depression pretty easily so that may explain why I don't like it.

I am not angry at the situation, or at G-d, or at where I am. I never thought life was fair, and I never thought I was owed a happy ending, a happy anything. I had the hardest time dealing with my mother who kept asking "why?" and saying that we didn't deserve it. Well, duh! Nobody does. And what's with the "why," I asked her. Why not us? What makes us so special. The questions she was asking made me uncomfortable because, without meaning it, she was still implying that somebody else might deserve this. But not us. So yes, deep, deep, abiding sadness for me. Never anger.
Except. Except at dumbass people. I do get angry at them. At self-righteous morons who think they get to tell us how we should cope. At those who seek to make themselves feel better about the world by finding some way in which we deserved it. I get angry at people, the way I know you don't, because I do feel like we humans are required to rise to the occasion, to watch out for those most vulnerable among us, to check our needs in the face of greater need in front of us. And I do use my anger as a weapon. Not really defensive, because I figure they have already hurt me. Offensive, mostly, trying to make the dumbass feel bad enough that they won't run their mouth off next time, that maybe I get to protect someone else from the tender mercies of the big-mouthed twit.
I love the panther image, btw.

I've been thinking about this and having a hard time coming up with a response. As a child and young adult, I couldn't let myself be angry, it was too scary. Later I realized that so much anger was based in disappointment -- in others, in myself, in the universe. I've been feeling angry at the universe a LOT since we lost the boys and it's manifested itself in a number of different ways. I've written about this a bit, but I still can't quite get a grip on it. Sadness, anger, rage, guilt, frustration, disappointment. Something that borders on despair. Just depends on the day and time.

I tend to agree. I'm sad at the situation I'm in, but I'm also mystified. I think that I would behave differently if it were just natural causes, but that wasn't the case. My main damage or loss was from the errors of two doctors. I question it all the time, as if it were a car accident. What if I were on this corner OR what if I crossed on this side of the street, everything would be different. The same thing here, if I went to a different hospital, surely they would have treated me. If I had asked for my records, I would have figured everything out. But sadly, I believed and trusted my doctors and I just can't wrap my brain around it. I wonder what they will say. What can they say?

Oh I have felt anger this year. It took me four years but I have felt that level of grief. It's just another emotion in the mix and I accept it, like all the others. i don't think it's right or wrong, it's just something that goes along with this gig.

Anger is my first reaction to everything. It's easier for me to function angry than sad. So that's where I go when something upsets me. Fight or flight, I'm going to fight every time. It just doesn't work so well with something like this.

i agree. love your site, by the way. my losses were in 04 & 06 and im still an angry biach today. in fact my husband is 'making' me go to the dr to get more happy pills. i know he is right, but THAT makes me angry. makes me feel controlled and thats the last thing i need after 'fate, god' whatever, has stolen my dreams of being a mother, and i couldnt contral it at all. after all this time im beginning to think the anger will never go away. ive tried giving back, they say that helps. and it does, for a bit. the pills just mask it, make me kind of....fake. what do do? be angry and let it run its course.....burning the mill???? or just fake it. fake the '
im ok' ness........

I don't like feeling angry and sad, but I do. I agree with some others posted here, the sadness feels overwhelming, just won't let me out of its grip. I can be physically painful. But the anger doesn't seem to help either, it confuses me. I'm also angry at those who are blissfully unaware at how lucky they are. Pregnant women everywhere, who will coast easily through their term and deliver a healty baby... how dare they when I could not! Angry at the people who know about my losses and think to themselves, "thank God it's not me." Angry at the people who try to avoid my greif and pain, and say stupid things that hurt (even though they are trying to "help"). Angry at the people I cannot tell about my miscarriages because its still taboo, and "not okay to talk about" in general social situations. I know in my head its not anyone's fault, but even this makes me angry, I want to blame someone. Sometimes I blame myself, sometimes God, but I know its all in vain. My sympathies to you all who have lost precious little lives.