{"id":743,"date":"2025-08-05T11:37:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/?p=743"},"modified":"2025-08-06T13:38:48","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T13:38:48","slug":"on-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/uncategorized\/on-grief\/","title":{"rendered":"On Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"

A therapist once told me that our lives follow a path that we think we can see stretching out before us, as far as the eye can see. When something changes\u2014when the path takes a sharp left turn because of events we couldn\u2019t or didn\u2019t predict\u2014we begin traveling in a new direction, but we can still see the other path we thought we were on. Grief is the space between the two paths, she said. It\u2019s the gap between reality and desire; reality and our previously-rooted hopes.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
by Peter Holmboe courtesy of pexels.com<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It strikes me that there\u2019s a lot of grief in higher ed right now, much of it going unnamed. Many of us joined our chosen profession thinking we were walking one path, and then found we were on another. Much of that grief isn\u2019t new. Contingency, a shrinking job market, the interest rate on loans, the fractures caused by racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism, transphobia\u2014the list goes on. And on top of all of this a global pandemic that demanded \u201cemergency lifeboat learning\u201d (in the words of Courtney Joseph), and the navigation of a rocky path to the kind of learning we\u2019re facilitating now in a wholly new political moment. GenAI is firmly in the mix, too, a tool that complicates our practice without adding much (any?) value.<\/p>\n

We can see the path we wanted to walk, whatever the details of that which are particular to us; age, discipline, ambition, dreams. And for the vast majority of us it\u2019s not the path we\u2019re on anymore. I see and hear a lot of anger, and a fair amount of hopelessness, derision, and maybe even bitterness too as I read blogs and socials across higher ed. Grief is often loud and ugly and born out of circumstances that are desperately unfair\u2014it\u2019s not that anyone\u2019s \u201cdoing it wrong.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s simply a place, a location, a period we have no choice but to move through, whatever responses we have.<\/p>\n

There are no perfect steps to move through to process loss, and I have no prescription for healing what aches. I can offer only this: that it is absolutely legitimate to feel what we feel and that naming things brings clarity. But it\u2019s also true that pre-emptively blaming students, en masse, for the sins of tech bros and standardized testing and the monopoly of The College Board is missing the mark, and that accepting that the road has forked is not the same as passivity, or resignation. It can be the locus of resistance, of rebuilding, and of reframing where we are to take into account the toll of loss.<\/p>\n

We are, despite everything, still doing vital work. Our students need our imagination, creativity, and flexibility; more than that, our colleagues and we do too.<\/p>\n

Mark the loss. Mourn what hasn\u2019t turned out the way we hoped. And refuse the attempts by so many bad actors to take choices out of our hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A therapist once told me that our lives follow a path that we think we can see stretching out before us, as far as the eye can see. When something changes\u2014when the path takes a sharp left turn because of events we couldn\u2019t or didn\u2019t predict\u2014we begin traveling in a new direction, but we can still see the other path we thought we were on. Grief is the space between the two paths, she said. It\u2019s the gap between reality…<\/p>\n

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