Layers of Grief

My (what may appear to be unusual) career path has taught me a lot about how important it is to me to do meaningful work that utilizes higher thinking skills.  Over the years, I've had jobs that tapped into one or the other but rarely have I found a job that leans into both.

So when I accepted my current job, a role I have been in for just over seven years, I was so excited to finally find one that had the potential to meet both needs.  This was my dream job.  It was a slow start as I learned on the job the skills I needed and as it took time to demonstrate the ways my team could depend on me.  

And then the pandemic hit just as we had been handed two huge cases both of which had heavy influence from the central office which is likely what pushed them forward to such good outcomes (as my local office didn't really prioritize this type of case).  Despite the challenges of suddenly switching to telework without all the technology figured out, I had a chance to really shine and make a difference.  2020 and 2021 (and I think into early 2022) were probably the years where I dd the most meaningful and high level work of my career.

And then in late 2022, when our office lost our investigator, I stepped into her responsibilities and had a chance to shine in new ways.

But then there was a change in my direct management.  I think this happened at some point in 2023, probably earlier in the year.  

And in September of 2023, there was a huge shift.  I was at home getting ready to board a train for an extra long weekend in DC.  I had taken some leave days for this trip.  As I was getting ready to leave, my manager called me to tell me he was putting a hold on the case type that was my entire role.  I was taken aback that he would call me to tell me this as I was getting ready to go on a trip and that he would do so without any real substance as to why or what his plan was going forward.  In the moment, it left me with so many doubts about the security of my job and the work I do.

When I got back from that trip and was talking to a team member who is my biggest advocate in the office, he shared with me that he had asked my manager not to call me before my trip.  He had encouraged our manager to wait until I returned.  It's not like there was anything I could do while I was on vacation and the call just left me with worries and doubts.  The fact that he went ahead and called me anyway felt so inconsiderate.

From that point on, my work became less meaningful as we were so limited on what we could do even with my team member doing his best to push the limits.  My whole team strongly disagreed with the decision and how it was handled.  Two of the three of us were funded specifically to do this work.  We were passionate about the importance of our work and worried about the loss of funding if we weren't actually furthering these types of cases along.

Then in early 2024, they posted the job for the investigator role that had been vacant for over a year, the role I had been handling along with my regular responsibilities.   I took a lot of time to update my resume, draft a cover letter, go through the lengthy application process, and then ultimately, even participate in an interview.

A couple of weeks later, we were told they had decided to not fill the position because of budget reasons.  This made my team especially concerned about the loss of funding because this role was a separately funded position that didn't come out of our office budget (similar to the funding for my position and one other person's position).  My team member who has been my biggest advocate tried hard to get some answers but the responses were always vague.  It felt like we were being lied to and gaslit.  My job felt even less meaningful at that point.  I suspect that for a number of months already, I had already been grieving the loss of the meaningful job I thought I initially had.

Then that spring of 2024, my now ex-husband traveled a lot for work, with a trip with his mom and brother thrown in, so frequently that he was away more than he was home.  I managed my job grief on my own.  Although, who I am kidding?  He wouldn't have helped me manage it even if he had been home every day that spring.  The lack of his physical presence though felt especially lonely.  

Then he came back from one of those trips in late May and told me he was questioning the marriage.  As we tried to navigate that conversation over the next month or two, I found myself trying to process his re-written story of our marriage, a web of lies, a shifting of blame onto me for things I didn't understand, and a huge incongruence with what I thought I knew to be true.  The gaslighting and lack of consideration I had been experiencing at my job now entered my home.  Or more accurately, it had always been there but I was finally noticing it.  

I remember thinking this was the worst time for him to abandon me although I'm not sure I could clearly articulate my reasons at that time for feeling that way.  But I think it was that underlying layer of grief from my job mixed with my underlying premonition of the grief that would come with the results of the upcoming election that fall.  And although, I now realize he wasn't a support to me, at the time, I was still under the illusion he had been.

Then there was the election in the fall of 2024, just a week or two after my divorce was final that resulted in drastic changes in our government starting in 2025.  With this change in our country in 2025, came devaluation of the roles my colleagues and I played and a disrespect for who we were, an exodus of employees, and even less focus on the work I found most meaningful as the office was stretched thin.  I started getting assigned mindless tasks to keep the parts of our office running that we still had the capacity to handle.

I was still so deep in grief from the loss of the marriage I believed I had for at least the first half of 2025 (and even into the fall) that I didn't even have the bandwidth to really process what was happening to my job and my country.  But I was aware enough to recognize that the lack of consideration and gaslighting that had started with my job (at least my recognition of it) and then seeped into my home, had now openly seeped into my country generally.  I can probably add to that a lack of consideration from the person I thought was my closest friend to that list.

So I'm finding that as I start to come out of the darkest clouds of my grief surrounding my marriage, I see the other layers that I haven't even had the bandwidth to process yet.  And although I have no legitimate reason to feel this way, I feel a bit guilty at how easily I have and continue to be able to just push some of them to the side while the people around me try to do their part to respond to the horror of the world being on fire.  I just need to remind myself that there is immense value in investing in becoming the best person I can as I hold on to the humanity we all need to see in each other and that there is immense value in the good work I do in my job, even if it so often now is mindless and seems to lack much meaning.