Greetings From Griefland

The writer is a current president.

Today, I know I should be taking the few moments I have before the whirlwind of the semester lands with full force to write the welcome letter to our campus. Somehow, I have to find the right words in this maelstrom moment for our country and for our colleges and our universities.

Instead, I give myself space: space for privacy (insofar as anyone in these jobs living on a campus ever has privacy), space to allow myself to grieve (which I too often defer), and especially space not to be strong for everyone else.

I know it comes with a cost: I won’t reclaim this time. Tomorrow will still only have 24 hours and I will need to sleep for at least some of them.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of my husband’s unexpected death. So instead of words to my community, I’ll write about being vulnerable—for myself and for other folks in these crazy jobs.

I came up through the faculty ranks at one institution and then moved to another as provost. When I was just about to leave that place, I was asked to take part in a campus event that required me to be self-deprecating, funny, and just a bit outrageous. I readily said yes. 

Of course I said yes. But my colleagues, nine years into our work together, were dumbfounded. The faculty expressed their surprise and gave me a standing ovation. Which was lovely, but I wondered whether, even after all these years, people simply couldn’t see or imagine me outside my administrative role. Really, what I wondered about was the parts of myself I had closed off while trying to do a good job in a really hard position.

That moment stuck with me as I reflected on how to prepare for my presidency. Was there a way to do the job and be my authentic self in a way others could recognize?

As I started, a president at another institution gave me advice: “Write to your new campus at 8 a.m. on your first day. Think carefully about how you introduce yourself to them and what your voice is.”

I decided to sign that letter with an image of my signature—and included just my first name. It felt authentic to who I was and who I intended to be in our community. I wanted to invite a level of familiarity. I wanted to be truly myself. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who commented on that decision.

It turned out that—and so many other similar small decisions—mattered, when, not long into my presidency, my husband died suddenly. While plenty of people told me what I should do—what sort of service to hold and where, who should speak, that I needed to take time off and how much—far more were there to help with what I needed.

I needed to invite people more deeply into my personal life than I would ever have imagined. I needed to do things in public that were personally meaningful to me, and I needed to continue doing my job. I found the idea of locking myself away in the house and not attending to our students unimaginable. One of my daughters said her therapist opined that I avoided grief by working. I replied she should tell the therapist that work was paying her bill.

Many terrible things happen in the lives of presidents; I wouldn’t wish the sudden death of a spouse on anyone. But I remain deeply grateful that I had begun an authentic relationship with our community even before my first day.

And while I would have preferred that no one witness my loss and vulnerability, it allowed me to see our community at their most generous, caring, and gracious. I am certain that experience made me more empathic and compassionate—and better at expressing myself—during the challenges of the pandemic.

These are lonely jobs that loss can make lonelier. But shit real life happens. If and when it does, living with humanity and humility, even with vulnerability, might be what real leadership looks like. And allowing oneself to take a day to just sit with that is OK, too.