Change + Loss = Grief

On change, loss, and the growth that follows

I learned this simple rule many years ago, at the time of my life when great many things were going really well for me. Change, plus loss, equals grief. My wife and I had been through a lot as a newly wed couple, and we were about to embark on a move to Athens, Georgia. Although that would turn out to be one of the better decisions in my life, at the time we were both experiencing a lot of sadness. A lot of grief. I kept asking myself, does this feeling mean we’re doing the wrong thing?

I’ve been thinking about this little formula a lot the last two weeks. I was not directly impacted by this round of layoffs, but I have friends, colleagues, and even a direct report who were let go. A lot of people I care about faced a sudden change and loss. I know that feeling, even if I’m not feeling it right now; I’ve been laid off before.

I experienced that sudden unexpected change and the loss and the grief about three years into my very first job after college. I’d worked hard (even nights and weekends), but it wasn’t enough for that company, and so I found myself, literally, in the unemployment line. With just those few years under my belt, I really wasn’t prepared to deal with the feelings of inadequacy and underappreciation and fear that came with a transition like that. I was a few years out from even learning there was a tidy little math-like formula. I struggled.

After a weekend of grief, I got to work putting in applications, and, as has happened to me several times in my career, I got lucky. It turned out that while all the stuff I’d been making for that first company (all the poesis I’d focused on) hadn’t helped me keep my job, my focus on learning, quality, and kindness (my praxis) set me up to not just find another job, but to jumpstart my career. Before I even got that first unemployment check I had started a new contract on a larger scale project at significantly improved pay. I still felt the change and the loss, but that little bit of luck helped me realize a grief-to-growth swing that I will never forget.

Fast forward a few years later, and the move out of West Virginia was evoking similar feelings, but all in reverse. I knew that moving would be growth, but we were losing the connection to our friends that we had built in West Virginia. We were leaving the state we’d been born into and where we had grown up. In order to grow, we had to accept that change, that loss, into our lives. Armed with the knowledge that what we faced was natural (almost mathematical), we forged ahead. I’m really glad we did. If we’d listened to the grief and tried to avoid the change and loss, we wouldn’t have found the joy of the community we live in now. A place we are really happy to call our home.

I don’t expect that experience has imparted me with wisdom to even begin to really redress the pain of someone who may be, even now, staring at an slop-encrusted job board and shaking their head. I can just share that at these two moments in my life I faced change and loss and felt grief, and on the other side of it was growth.

That is the silver lining I look to when I’m feeling my own grief over the change in my workplace and the loss of coworkers. Every person faces change and loss in life. Some are small, consensual changes. Some are inscrutable and irrevocable losses. Many will spark grief. Some will also spark growth.