Grounded in Grief

Grief is not a single feeling. It is a system: complex, layered, and often hidden in plain sight.

For a long time, I understood my life through the metaphor of an engine: multiple cogs, each turning at different speeds, all requiring attention. On the surface, everything functioned. Work was delivered, children were cared for, relationships maintained. The system appeared to run smoothly. But that illusion only holds at a distance. Look closer, and the strain becomes visible - the uneven weight of certain cogs, the silent pressure of those that go unnoticed, and the constant effort required to keep everything moving in unison.

And still, even that metaphor falls short. Because no matter how well the system runs, it does not capture the human underneath it. It does not capture grief.

The visible cogs are easy to name. Three children, each at a different stage of life, across three different schools. Three calendars, three sets of expectations, endless events—exams, parents’ evenings, themed days that quietly demand time, energy, and presence. Beneath that sits the less visible labour of parenting: the emotional availability, the conversations that stretch growing minds, the daily work of nurturing. Add extracurricular commitments, the intention to care for one’s own health, and the system grows heavier still.

Alongside this sits the “village” - both family and friends whose presence brings joy, but whose relationships also require investment. A village does not sustain itself without intention; it asks for time, energy, and care. It needs to be nurtured for it to grow.

And then there is work. In education, work is not simply a task. Anyone in education knows that is a performance of care, authority, and consistency. Teachers are expected to inspire, to create safe spaces, to hold complexity with calm. As a senior leader, that expectation intensifies. It multiplies. You are required to lead with clarity while absorbing uncertainty, to support others while maintaining your own composure. The role demands presence, even when your internal world is elsewhere.

Within that system, there is little room to pause. Little room to reflect. And very little room to fall apart.

That alone is a challenge – albeit a rewarding, wonderfully exhausting one. But quietly beneath it all, for years, was a weight of anticipated grief that was crippling at times. My father was elderly and living with dementia, and so loss was never abstract—it was approaching, slowly but persistently. It was very real. Every ambulance siren carried a question. Every phone call held possibility.Every message was skimmed intensely first. I lived in a constant state of partial readiness, stretched between the needs of my children and the fragility of my parents.

This is a particular kind of pressure—being held between generations. It is not always visible, but it is deeply felt. At times, the competing demands felt irreconcilable. At work, I thought about home. At home, I thought about work. In both spaces, I carried my father.

There are specific moments and memories that capture this tension more clearly than any explanation. Whilst I was sitting in a leadership meeting, composed and professional, my phone rang and my father asked me to buy him a new shirt because he wanted to look ‘proper’. He was always a proud man – well dressed and smart. He called from his hospital bed, confused and disorientated, unaware of his present state or where he was. I returned to the meeting as though nothing had happened, but something inside shifted. There was no time to pause and take stock, let alone cry. For a moment the two worlds almost collided, but I went back in and moved to the next item on the agenda. Stopping on the way to the hospital, I bought him a shirt. I watched him wear it with pride and joy. I held both love and anticipatory loss in the same breath.

When he died in the summer of 2024, the moment was both expected and entirely destabilising. Years of anticipated grief did not soften the reality of loss; they simply changed its shape. My initial response was practical - relief that happened during the summer holidays, meaning I would need less time off from work. But beneath that was something far less manageable and far more profound: the loud recognition that a part of me had gone with him.

I had imagined this moment many times. I had rehearsed how I would respond, how I would hold my faith, support my family, and continue functioning. And in many ways, I did. I ran. I sat in nature. I drank endless coffee. But what I had not accounted for was the depth of exhaustion that accompanied grief - not just emotional exhaustion, but physical and cognitive depletion. By the time he was buried, I was already running on empty.

Grief did not arrive as a single, overwhelming wave. It arrived as disorientation. As fragmentation. As waves that sometimes swallowed me whole, chewed me up and spat me out. The system I had spent years maintaining was no longer functioning in the same way.

And yet, the external world remained largely unchanged. Work continued. Expectations remained. There is a limit to how long absence is accommodated, and an unspoken understanding that systems must keep moving. Alongside grief sits other quiet pressures: the desire not to let others down; the imposter syndrome, the magnaminuous fear of failure and the worry of adding to the workload of others.

Returning to work required a kind of composure that did not match my internal reality. I chose to be open with my students, uncertain how they would respond. What I encountered instead was a level of empathy that felt both unexpected and deeply grounding. One student, carrying his own anticipated grief, spoke about his mother’s illness. In that exchange, there was mutual recognition - an understanding that did not require performance. There were small moments of softness.

It is often assumed that adults model emotional strength for young people. But in moments like these, the reverse can also be true. There is a clarity, a directness, in how young people respond to pain when given the space to do so. They showed up in ways that some adults could not.

In professional spaces, however, grief is more complicated. It is acknowledged, but often briefly. Condolences are offered, but the system quickly reasserts itself. There is an expectation - sometimes spoken, often not - that you will, in time, resume your role without disruption.

What is less often recognised is that grief does not neatly integrate into productivity. It does not operate on timelines or align with institutional rhythms. Internally, it can feel as though everything has slowed, even stopped, even as external demands remain constant. The metaphorical engine continues to run, but not without strain.

In this space, many people learn to mask. Not out of dishonesty, but out of necessity. It becomes easier to appear composed than to articulate the complexity of what is happening beneath the surface. And yet, that masking can create distance - between how someone is perceived and how they are actually coping.

With reflection, I recognise both sides of this dynamic. I was capable of presenting competence, even when I was struggling. But I also recognise the absence of deeper, more sustained compassion within the structures I was part of. Not a lack of kindness, but a lack of space - for slowness, for softness, for genuine understanding.

Loss reshapes perspective. Loss changes our whole world. Loss changes our systems. Someone once described losing a parent as losing a limb. It is not simply an event; it is an ongoing adjustment to absence. Since my father’s passing, I have become more aware of others carrying similar loss. And while I cannot change the systems we operate within, I can change how I respond to individuals within them.

Sometimes, support is not about solutions. It is about presence. About asking a question and allowing space for the answer. About recognising that even when someone appears to be holding everything together, they may still need help carrying the weight.

Schools, like many institutions, are built on the idea of continuity. Lessons must be taught, meetings held, outcomes achieved. These systems matter. But within them are people - each carrying their own unseen complexities.

Before any professional identity, before any role or responsibility, there is the human being. The daughter. The parent. The individual navigating loss while continuing to function.

Grief does not disappear. It changes form. It surfaces in unexpected moments—a passing comment, a memory, the distant sound of an ambulance. It interrupts, softens and grounds. Sometimes grief can bury us beneath the ground itself and it’s difficult to resurface.

And perhaps that is where its quiet power lies. Not in resolution, but in its ability to remind us - gently, persistently - that beneath every system, every role, every expectation, there is a person who sometimes simply needs a hand to hold them above the ground and just a little space to breathe.