Dear Prudence,
I have worked at the same organization for 10 years, and for the first 9 I loved it. I was (and am) pretty senior in title, and was deeply engaged in strategizing the future of the organization and the work we were going to do. Halfway through COVID, however, the organization went through a reckoning related to both racial equity and some workforce treatment issues—our constituents and some past and current junior staff revolted, our board conducted some investigations, and most of our senior leadership was let go—but not me. All that is likely for the best in the long term, but in the short term it means that most of the people I was closest to in the organization, and the ones who situated me where I was and were the best advocates for (and biggest fans of) my work, are gone. I find myself in fairly deep mourning about losing both my work friends and a set of people who valued and understood my work.
Our interim leadership is nice and competent, and is trying to right the ship, but also doesn’t either know me or seem to particularly value my work in the same way. It is possible that, as a vestige of the old regime, I’m actually being actively sidelined out of strategic dialogue, though that’s unclear. But what is clear is that major strategic conversations are occurring, and I’m mostly not at the table in the way I would have been. I want to be part of carrying forward, and think I have things to offer—but I find myself listless and disconnected, and often just caught up in cycles of thinking about what “could be happening” if the reckoning hadn’t occurred—and feeling more than a little like I can only try and ask how to be part of it so many times before I either look desperate or clueless.
My question is: How does someone faced with the loss of both human connection and a solid sense of place, positional influence, and value inside their workplace (but who is still there and doesn’t want to leave, particularly) move past the feelings of loss and mourning so that they can be an active part of what comes next, particularly when the “bright new future” that could be the outcome hasn’t come into focus yet?
— The One Who Is Left