The Place Where I Can Live - A Reflection on Grief and Grievance

A man—a fellow therapist I know—was recently let go from his public service job managing a city-sponsored farmer’s market. The market took place every Sunday morning. He provided strong leadership to his staff, was loved by farmers, vendors, and customers alike, and represented the city in a positive and uplifting way.

In a way, it was his church.

At the same time, he had begun urging the city to strengthen its safety standards for the market. The market is in a high-profile area with a large Jewish following. With the Israeli–Hamas conflict continuing to inflame tensions across the country, he felt compelled to press the issue. In doing so, he rocked the boat too strongly—and was dismissed.

He felt betrayed. Yet he also knew he was beginning a new career and would eventually leave his assistant manager position when the timing was right. He had long felt pressure from his supervisors to conform, and he distrusted the new manager he was slated to work under.

Still hurting from his firing, and knowing he was in the right, he began to build a legitimate case for a lawsuit against the city. When he sought advice from a former city commissioner, he was urged to reconsider the time, effort, and intrusion such a fight would bring into his personal life. In his defense, he had already positioned any legal liability for a crisis at the market onto the city itself. Accountability would rest with them, not his staff.

That was when he realized he had to let this loss run its course. From past spiritual experiences, he knew the importance of confronting himself in order to find clarity. He gave himself three days to fully grieve, allowing his body and emotions to process the loss without restraint. He told himself he could allow the weight of being a victim to play itself out of his body for those three days. After that, even as echoes remained, it was time to move his body as a way of healing and stepping forward into his practice.

He told me:

“When I realized that instead of fighting, I needed to accept the pain and allow myself three days to grieve, I was choosing to face it consciously and without denial. Then it was time to move on. My part in this severance was to accept it quickly and wholeheartedly. It was a choice between grief or grievance. Had I fought, I would have had to build a case, then wrap my identity around it—the energy and value it would bring me through the righteousness of my position. My grief would have hardened into grievance, a much harder thing to heal once self-righteousness had taken hold.”

He reflected further:

“Deciding to feel the deep pain of the firing showed me that the very act of feeling it was also an act of cleansing. I thought of a five-year-old boy scraping his knee on asphalt. His crying and screaming are complete. An hour later, with a bandage on, he’s laughing and playing as if nothing happened. The wound will scab. It may be picked. It will heal. A lesson is learned, and life goes on."

“Grief benefited me. Letting it harden into grievance would not. Grievance would pull my attention away from the present—the place where I can play, the place where I can live.”

"It was as if I had to row a boat made of grief over the deep waters of grievance"