Being honest with grief means holding multiple truths and making space to feel

Grief, Goodall, and Gandhi

Some November days taste like grief:

a bland biscuit on a dull silver tray—

tender, fragile and

hard to swallow.

A few weeks ago, Michael Anderson of Tangelo Tree Consulting voiced something powerful simply by naming “grief in nonprofit leadership.” Admitting grief into our leadership lexicon is radical in a context where some still think leaders aren’t supposed to feel—let alone feel loss, which can imply failure. Michael shares how leaders can be supported by holding space for the emotion of grief, tapping into the reality that many nonprofits are facing constraints that compel them to let go of staff, programs, or ambitious visions for the future.

Even in the midst of a narrowing set of choices, doing the hard thing is still damn hard. There’s hurt and loss in having to readjust our expectations of how things are “supposed” to go, despite all our best laid strategic plans. Michael acknowledges that this can give rise to denial and advises:

“Repeat key messages: The hard truths may take many repetitions before they can be accepted. Grief is often accompanied by denial, and the repetitions reinforce reality.”

This put me in mind of the power of song, chants, or spells—of repetition not as cruelty but as a process of making/unmaking. In this case, words repeated to unmake an old reality or mental frame and clear the way for a new one: one perhaps unsought but emerging all the same. An example he later shares, about inviting a group of board members to hold hands while making a hard decision, echoes the simple rituals that for ages have helped communities navigate shared loss.

Michael’s post lifts up the importance of knowing that our decision making is not divorced from our emotions and urges us to free ourselves, as leaders, to feel grief.

From the very first reading assigned to Pause & Effect’s “Reimagining Research” cohort, I was gifted a different way of seeing the role of the researcher: as being anything but neutral. This enabled me to prod my own conscience about when my work as a consultant may have caused harm. It was with this fresh in my mind that I learned of the passing of Dr. Jane Goodall.

Like many, I grew up with a positive view of her work: groundbreaking as a woman in primate research and for her bridging of the human and more than human world. But I also intuited that her work—like my own—undoubtedly served colonial structures, enabling them to perpetuate injustices. As the remembrances filled social media, it wasn’t long before I saw someone name what I had felt only as a vague discomfort or hesitation.

Independent consultant Avishan Chanani (آویشن چنانی) posted a deft reminder not to let eulogizing turn to canonizing. Specifically, she lifted up the need to hold more than one truth: respect for someone’s lifetime contributions alongside their complexities. Goodall’s support of narratives blaming overpopulation for ecological collapse, her eponymous Institute’s partnerships with multinational corporations, and the context of conservation policy in which she worked that separates people from their lands can be viewed in all fairness as serious shortcomings, contradictions, or moments of outright complicity with systems of oppression and erasure.

Chanani also lifted up the role of Global South/Global Majority communities and ecologists who have gone uncredited for generations while eco-celebrities like Goodall have received accolades. In the end, she asked us to think at a system level:

“Legacies are complicated. But when we strip away those complications in our eulogies, we don’t just mythologize individuals, we also launder the systems they upheld. If we can canonize Goodall, surely we can also name the harm embedded in her narratives and actions. And more importantly, we can ensure that we don’t replicate the same harm nor do we continue to uphold systems of oppression.”

Around the same time, I came across a separate thread about colonialism and the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. A dialog between Shruti, a mental health researcher, and Varan Sri Raman, a researcher and storyteller brought into relief the complexities of colonialism and caste, whose voices we remember, and whose get overlooked. Again, it was a reminder of the importance to reject all-or-nothing thinking and be both patient and rigorous in mining the complexities.

Sri Raman uses the term “critical remembrance” for what she says can be a confrontation of a legacy’s limitations—to preserve the good while rejecting what harms. Shruti pushes us to not just gloss over the harm, but to be explicit in naming those failures.

In reflecting, I think we all have a rare advantage over Goodall and Gandhi, in that we can choose to be more honest about our history AS WE MAKE IT. There’s great value in looking back at someone’s career with a critical eye and being able to say “she did some good and some not so good.” But I’d truly value a heads up about the not so good BEFORE I’m dead, please.