Victoria Noe

Award-winning Author, Speaker, Activist

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grief and anger

The Grief That Takes You by Surprise

The Grief That Takes You by Surprise
Apr 12, 2017 by Victoria Noe
They seem to come in waves. You go for months, even years, when no one close to you dies. And then, bam: two or three or four in a matter of weeks. I remember a year when everyone I knew seemed to lose a parent, including me. But lately I’ve heard from several people who have lost a best friend.

“I’m angry,” insisted the minister in The Big Chill. “And I don’t know what to do with my anger.” These people feel a lot like that minister.

We expect those older than us – grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles – to die before us. But no one anticipates losing their friends. Some of those losses are normal: as we age, those around...

Friend Grief's Top Five List for 2014

Dec 19, 2014 by Victoria Noe
The year is almost over and I thought it would be a good time to look back on the posts that generated the most interest this year.The funny thing about writing is that you don’t always know what resonates with people. Sometimes you write something that you believe is so brilliant it will change the lives of everyone who reads it – and obviously, everyone in the world will read it. That usually doesn’t happen. Sometimes you write something that’s definitely not your best effort, but there’s something about it that hits a nerve.This list certainly surprised me:#5 Update on Friend Grief and AIDS The second book in my series has been the most popular by far. It’s also the...

Don’t Ask…Do Tell

Don’t Ask…Do Tell
Apr 09, 2012 by Victoria Noe
freepresshouston.comLast week I posed a couple of questions: If a friend of yours had a terminal illness, would you want to know? If you had a terminal illness, would you want your friends to know?I got some interesting feedback – both privately and on my Facebook page.For the exact same reasons, the consensus was:“I’d definitely want my friends to tell me. But I wouldn’t tell my friends.”I wasn’t terribly surprised that people feel that way. Often we expect others to do things we ourselves are reluctant to do.But…This isn’t expecting someone to bail us out of jail or share their psych notes. This is about sharing something so serious that anything else pales in comparison (with the possible exception of...

It’s Time to Get Angry Again

It’s Time to Get Angry Again
Apr 02, 2012 by Victoria Noe
The late, great Keith HaringI attended the “Beyond Disenfranchised: LGBTQ Community Resilience and Healing” session at the ADEC (Association for Death Education) conference last week. It was my last session of the only day I was able to spend there. Much like the lunchtime networking group on Buddhism, something drew me to this.It was clear from the start that there was frustration in the room. Some of it was directed towards ADEC, and how the LGBTQ community’s experiences (particularly in terms of medical directives and emotional support for end-of-life issues) were not being included in the larger discussions. The panelists were on the front lines, both in terms of the LGBTQ community as a whole and HIV/AIDS services (which are...