Grieving in Color Episode #4:

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[00:00:04] Welcome to Grieving in Color, a podcast that explores the various ways we navigate our experiences with grief and loss and a place where we find courage to intentionally heal in our daily lives. I'm your host, Dr. Chinasa Elue, a professor, speaker, and grief coach. And I'm inviting you to join me on this journey, embracing our grief and the full spectrum of our emotions, a palette of feelings that colors our lives even in the face of loss. Each episode, we dive into real stories of healing and growth, as we also feature guests who have found strength in sorrow, love in loss and joy even in their darkest times. Grieving in color is about acknowledging the pain, the loss, and the grief. But it is also about finding hope, love and joy again. Whether you are currently on your grief journey or supporting someone who is, this is a space for you. We are here to remind you that you are not alone, and it's okay to grieve in your own color.

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Welcome to this new episode of Grieving in Color, a podcast that explores the various ways we navigate our experiences with grief and loss, and the ways that we find courage to intentionally heal in our daily lives. I'm your host, Dr. Chinasa Elue, and I'm excited to get into our topic today as we talk about the ways that we experience grief in the midst of our career transitions. So good people, as we kick off our conversation today, I think it's important to acknowledge first that when we think about grief, typically is around conversations around the loss of a loved one, but it's also important in this context to acknowledge that grief can actually happen in other areas of our lives. In fact, we experience loss each and every day. And so as we begin our topic today, I want to share some important reminders, because if you're in the midst of a career transition, you may find this topic a little bit triggering in some ways.

And so I really want to encourage you to be gentle with yourself, take what you need and give yourself the space and grace you need as we have this conversation today. So I want to first talk about what is a career transition? So a career transition can be a couple of different things, right? It could be our intentional decisions to shift into a new job or role. Given the fact that we may find that the current jobs that we're in no longer serve us, we may choose to voluntarily leave and make those transitions. And it could be for a host of different reasons, right? We could find ourselves out of alignment in our current positions. We could find ourselves in need a more financial resources, given the current economic climate and realizing that look more is needed to live and do life each and every day, right?

But also, career transitions can be involuntary, right? And this is what we're seeing right now amidst multiple layoffs in various industries all over the globe, right? So if there ever were a time for us to begin thinking about our career transitions, we can really acknowledge here in this moment that there has been a shaking of organizations over the past three years. In fact, as we have navigated the pandemic and all the unprecedented events over the past couple of years, we know that as working professionals, that the context that we've been working under is not business as normal. In fact, a lot of us have been working under duress for a prolonged time period, right? So we may find ourselves in roles or in companies that we are recognizing no longer are in alignment with our values or our professional goals for ourselves. So you may be having a moment or your own reckoning right now professionally where you're like, hey, I know it is time for me to go.

And there may be times where we have overstayed on a job, out of comfort or out of necessity, or out of a host of different reasons. But if you can think about right now, in this particular moment in time, if you find yourself in a place or in a position where you know that it's time to transition and move on, it's important to tease out the various emotions that you might experience on the back end of you moving and transitioning to a new role, or leaving your field altogether and doing something new and different that could really set your world on fire if you give yourself the opportunity to explore something new, right? I think the important thing here though, to acknowledge is that transitions are never easy. In fact, they're very hard. And so we know that people are voluntarily choosing to leave their workplace due for a variety of different reasons.

Perhaps you might be in this place right now where you find yourself operating in a toxic workplace environment. We know that over the past couple of years, as people had an opportunity to break away from working in person particularly I know for a lot of communities of color, people of color, as they had a chance to break away from the workplace, [00:05:00] a lot of them really expressed the amount of joy they had, being able to step away from some of the systemic issues that they saw emerging, whether it was the daily microaggressions or all of the incivility that they experienced in the workplace. And I think for just the general population at large, I think if you're in a place or position where you know, you're thinking that the work that you're doing no longer serves you, you may also recognize that it's time to move on based on some unrealistic expectations that have been placed on you.

Perhaps there's a lack of recognition for all the hard work you've been doing these past couple of years. Maybe you're walking into a chilly climate each and every day, and you want something different. You want something new. Maybe there's limited opportunities or mentorship, right? And so when we think about this, these are reasons that people are really grappling with. Is it time for me to continue to hunker down and stay, or do I really need to make the decision in this moment to move on? And I think for a lot of us right now, you know, we're noticing as well, given the economic climate the money is not up to par and it's time to move on and make these shifts. And so when it comes to making these career shifts and these transitions, we have to talk about the emotional landscape that oftentimes is associated with us moving on, right?

Because whether you're moving on voluntarily, as I've mentioned beforehand or involuntarily these transitions at times can be extremely hard. So if you're in a position where you have been involuntarily let go from your job, whether it's through layoffs or your contract was not renewed, I want to first just pause and acknowledge that what you are walking through is not a decision of your own. Oftentimes, when we have the rug pulled up inside of us, and we are thrust into these positions where we did not anticipate losing our income from our jobs, that leaves us in a state of despair because of the years of experience, the time, the expertise that you poured into landing that role in hopes of it continuing to materialize into something that you could be proud of in the long run. And so, when we're here, and we're at this place where we have to move on by force, because the role is no longer available to us, there are a host of different emotions waiting to meet us as we walk out those organizational doors.

So, to provide us context here, as I'm talking about grief, I'm talking about the natural and universal human reaction that arises when someone or something of personal significance was lost, right? And so in this context, when we are moving on from a job, right, we're not just moving on in a bubble, we're moving on in experience and a host of different types of losses in that current moment. So we may be experiencing a loss of our professional identity, right? If you are one where this was your dream job, your dream role, and you are recognizing that the organization has shape shifted or morphed into something unrecognizable, and that you can no longer tether yourself into an organization that is no longer serving you or is no longer in alignment with your values, then when you have to walk away from that job, there is a sense of grieving the loss of your professional identity, you're leaving that behind.

And in that response, there now is this space to begin to think about, well, who am I? Who am I without this job? Who am I irregardless of this organization? What matters to me in this moment? And that scares people at times, to be honest, to think about the shaking of our professional identities, which is something that in a lot of ways, we are deeply rooted in whether you've gone to school and gotten the educational experience, or you have the credentials to support you when you have to move on from something that you've trained so hard for that can be daunting. And that can elicit some of the feelings around feeling like you're grieving a piece of yourself. Because it no longer is an identity that you may hold, you may find in that same vein that you have a loss of purpose and meaning.

Because to be frank, you know, we tie a lot of our attributes to working to purpose and this being hard work at times. And for others, it might simply be just going there to get a paycheck and pay your bills. But if you're one that has tied your professional identity and tied your career purpose to a lot of meaning, then there's a grief that emerges when you realize that what am I called to do in this lifetime if I don't do this particular job? What meaning do I have to contribute to society if I'm not operating in this role? And to be honest with you, that's something that we have to walk through on our own as we begin to reimagine the host of different opportunities [00:10:00] that are available to us as we choose to move on and transition in our careers, right?

We also know that in the midst of these career transitions, that there are a loss of relationships and key networks that we may have been privy to. I think about even myself, when I've transitioned from various roles throughout my career, I think about the fears that I had about losing key colleagues that I've grown fond of over the years, and those relationships and networks that I knew I wanted to be a part of. But as I was making choices to move on in different directions in my career, I would have access to those different spaces cut off. And there was a lot of fear associated with that. There was a lot of angst and a lot of sorrow because those were relationships that had cultivated over time. And so, if you're here in a moment in time where you are walking through a career transition, you may be experiencing the gravity of those relationships shifting because they're no longer serving the evolution of your professional identity.

I think in the same vein, when we're talking about the grief that's present in our career transitions, we also have to acknowledge the fear of the unknown. The world has changed so much over these past couple of years. If you think about everything that we've known, nothing is the same, right? The only constant that has been here is change. And so that fear of the unknown produces so much turmoil and so much angst. We're thinking about, okay, what does it mean to move on and not knowing if the next opportunity's going to be better than what I currently have? What does it mean to move on to something different, not knowing if the treatment that I experienced beforehand is going to be present there? What does it move on if I decide to leave my field altogether and go somewhere else to know, will I make a name for myself?

Will I build up great relationships with colleagues and have rapport with them like I did in my past seasons? Right? These are things that are very scary and daunting, but that are very present as we move on. There are oftentimes the concerns around the financial adjustments. Y'all, let's just be real. The money has to do what it needs to do in real time, because these bills are always waiting for us as we are moving through various seasons in life, right? And so we may be grieving the fact that we are choosing to make a moral decision to move on from our careers and leave some of that financial compensation behind. And can we just acknowledge today good people, that that is absolutely a piece of the puzzle that often goes undiscussed. Because when we are choosing to move in alignment with our values, when we are making the deliberate choice to get into positions or roles that serve us in real time, and that we're not going to forsake ourselves for a job, those financial concerns take the front seat and can cause us a lot of grief, because we begin to contend with all of the emotions on will I survive financially?

Will my family survive if I don't have this amount of financial capability available for us as we move forward? Right? And I just want to acknowledge that that is a very legitimate concern, and that some of the emotion around that is real and has to be teased out as we're making choices on how to navigate our respective career transitions. And I also acknowledge here, right? That, when we're transitioning in our careers, and we're dealing. Sometimes if you're moving on, and we oftentimes think that when we are putting in that resignation letter, we're dropping that two week notice that we're like, okay, you know, I'm joyful. Yes, because something better hopefully has come, right? But we also have to acknowledge that in the same vein, that oftentimes not all career transitions are joyful. That there may be things that we have not given ourselves permission to tease out, that if we're not careful may show up again in that new job or that new role that we're walking into.

And so we have to take the time to do the deep, deep emotional work that's required so that we can make sure that we are presenting our best selves in the new opportunity, the new season that we're walking into professionally, and giving ourselves the space that we need to grieve what we're leaving behind. If you're one that ascribes to this notion that you have to have a dream job, and maybe what you've been walking in or working in you thought was your dream job in that context, you may be grieving the end of an era. You may be grieving the fact that this is what you thought would be a position or a role you would hold for a lifetime, but in this current moment, you know that it is time to move on. And can we acknowledge that when it's time to go?

Oftentimes those are some of the hardest goodbyes [00:15:00] because there are so many things that we are counting the cost for that make it hard for us to transition on. But it's necessary. And I think a big piece of this conversation here is acknowledging the fact that there may be times that we are involuntarily having to transition, because to be honest, there may have been a failure to launching your career. And what I mean by this is that oftentimes, when we're young, we hear this notion, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I know that in this current moment in time, you may be like, hey, I really, really don't know what I want to be, right? Like we may be whole grown adults and doing life and paying bills and living life each and every day, but may still find ourselves in a position or a place where we're waiting for our careers to take off, and they haven't.

And so there's a grief that we experience when our careers failed to launch in a direction that we had prepared for, or that we had trained for. Maybe you went to school and you got all the degrees, you got all the certifications, you got all the credentials, but the opportunities you had hoped for never came. Or maybe they were so competitive that year after year, you kept waiting to get into that job and it never materialized, right? And you're in this space recognizing right now that a dream that you've held onto for so long has to end because financially it may not be serving you to keep waiting as things have evolved over time, right? So what do you do with that grief that lingers when there's something that you have hoped for so long, something that maybe you proclaimed since you were a child, that you would be this thing when you grew up and it doesn't launch or doesn't take off for you, and you have to move on?

That's hard. These are the tough things that happen as we continue to evolve and grow as individuals, right? There's so many things that we don't anticipate grieving. There's so many things that we don't attribute as being part of our own stories. There's so many dreams that we hope for ourselves. So many things that we wish for ourselves, and when they don't happen, the grief that exists has to be dealt with. Otherwise, we will not be able to reimagine our lives in the context of what can be still in the future. And so, I want to talk a little bit more as I transition about some strategies that may be helpful for someone who may be in the midst of a career transition and is looking for ways to really get some support or insight on how to really navigate their current spot they're in. So as we transition, I want to share some strategies that may be helpful for you if you find yourself navigating grief in the midst of your career transition.

And so the first thing I want to offer today is that, you know, it's simply this, the first step to healing is acknowledging that the pain exists, right? So if you find yourself right now in the midst of a career transition, and you're in immense, immense sadness, and you're contending and dealing with and grappling with the gravity of the loss that you're experiencing from having to move on from a career or a job or a field that no longer serves you, the first thing you have to do, honestly, is just acknowledge the fact that this is hard. And acknowledging that gives you the permission to put language to the emotions that are currently present in the midst of the transition. Because to be honest, right? You might be experiencing a myriad of things, you might have some joy as you're moving on. Maybe you've landed a great gig, but you can also acknowledge at the same time that you're tremendously sad that you're going to miss your colleagues at the same time.

And those things can coexist is perfectly fine, but we have to take the time to really tease through our emotional landscape so that we can move forward intentionally. The next piece of advice I would like to offer is to think through your care strategy. And what I mean by this is that, oftentimes when we're talking about care, particularly self-care, we think about the bubble bath or the nice vacation. But I think even in the midst of career transitions, that we have to think about the ways that we care for ourselves as we move on. What are the things that you need present to support you mentally, emotionally, spiritually as you move on, right? And in this care piece I'm always big on talking about how do we even tap into community care in this regard, right?

How do we pull together assets and resources to support each other in our times of need? And if you're in a place where, particularly if you're in the midst of an involuntary career transition, if you've been laid off, [00:20:00] I want to encourage those who may be listening to this podcast and have a friend who was recently laid off, or who's looking for a role to really think about the ways that you can show up as a friend or a family member or a colleague to help that person through their career transition. I say this because oftentimes, you know, we may say, hey, I'm sorry, I'll keep an eye out of anything pops up. But I think we can go a little bit further to be intentional with that support, right? And so if you could offer care in this regard, I would encourage you to perhaps consider, offering gift cards for food or gas.

If they have an interview coming up, maybe offering to babysit if they have young kids and they don't have childcare available in addition to the encouragement that you might offer, right? The encouragement is invaluable in this sense, but we also need the physical resources that are present, and that may come from you cultivating time to really spend with them and provide those necessary resources to help them move through their career transitions and land something that may support them financially as they move on in their next professional role. So thinking through what that may look like for you individually varies. So if you're a friend, think about critically how you can be of support to someone who's walking through a transition like this, especially as they're experiencing and navigating the grief and the loss that's present there.

I'll say last but not least, the last piece of advice I would offer here is, we have to really contend with the truth here when we're in the midst of career transitions. And what I mean by that is that I want you to ask yourself, what do you know to be true about yourself as you move on? You see, the thing about these career transitions is that a lot of times there's a lot of noise that tends to emerge as we're moving on. Sometimes we may begin to doubt ourselves and let all these negative thoughts really consume our mind as we are moving or looking into that next career opportunity, right? But you have to anchor yourself in the truths that you know about yourself and what those things may be. I know for myself, when I've transitioned in the past, I have to remind myself that, hey, I am skilled, I am capable, and I'm highly trained, and that the right opportunity will come my way. And that I know that when an opportunity doesn't pan out, that something better is coming around the corner, right?

That all things literally are working together for my good. I think when we begin to center the truth of our stories in our career narratives, that helps us shift our mindsets away from this negative framing that tends to emerge when we are walking through career transitions and walking through the various emotions that are present, and most especially the grief that begins to emerge in that season, to allow us, and to remind us that although we are moving on to something different, although we are moving on to something that we may not fully know, the ways in which it may pan out, no matter what it looks like. We are moving on in ways that are honoring our needs financially, emotionally, spiritually, and understanding that we are in search of a job or an opportunity that will serve us better for the long run.

So if you find yourself in the midst of a career transition today, I want to encourage you to hang in there. We know that our stories, our career stories are not over. In fact, they're just beginning. It's never too late to seek out a new opportunity. And as we're seeking those opportunities, we have to remind ourselves that the best is yet to come. All right, good people. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Grieving in Color. Looking forward to chatting with you next time. Take care. Bye.

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Thank you for choosing to spend time with me on this episode of Grieving in Color. If today's episode has resonated with you, or if you know someone who might benefit from our conversation, please share this episode with them. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts, your stories, and the ways I can support you as you navigate your own grief. You can reach out to me on my website at www.drchinasaelue.com or connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram @drchinasaelue. Your participation, your feedback, and your story helps us keep this conversation going and reaches those who need it the most. Remember, there's no right way to grieve. There's only your way, and every shade of your grief is valid.

This episode of Grieving in Color is produced by Crys & Tiana.

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