{"id":140408,"date":"2021-06-23T09:55:45","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T17:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=140408"},"modified":"2025-03-25T10:23:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T18:23:01","slug":"leaving-academia-loss-grief-and-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=140408","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Academia: Loss Grief and Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lisa Munro writes in 2017<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been out of academia for two years, having finished my PhD in 2015. I think I\u2019m finally on the road to healing.
\nI often joke that leaving academia feels like the worst break up ever.*
\nHAHAHAHAHA. That\u2019s a good one!
\nExcept that I\u2019m not joking. Giving up on something that you thought was your life\u2019s calling hurts like hell. When you experience rejection from the entire institution of academia after devoting years of your life and thousands of dollars to become an academic, betrayal and rage sometimes become your only emotions for a good long while.
\nFor me, the grief of leaving academia feels about the same as the loss and grief of the end of relationship. Even when you know that the relationship wasn\u2019t right for you (\u201dIt\u2019s not you, it\u2019s me. Well, okay, it\u2019s you.\u201d), loss is loss. The loss of my academic dreams also triggered a whole avalanche of of old, deep losses that I\u2019m never going to really get over.
\nWe\u2019ve all got dreams that don\u2019t work out, even when we really really really want them to, but academic grief hit me so much harder than the novels I want to write that won\u2019t get written or the places I want to travel that I know I\u2019ll never visit. In academia, your work becomes a part of you; you become your work. Losing the academic part of us feels like losing a limb, complete with phantom pain when it\u2019s gone. Loss often involves a lot of self-blame, shame, second-guessing and endless asking why and what\u2019s wrong with us and why the fuck are we never good enough anyways.
\nAcademia requires a life commitment. I devoted a total of seven years of my life to trying to understand a single thing. I was committed to my research in ways that were sometimes deeper than commitments I\u2019ve had to people. I was fully prepared to spend the rest of my life focused on this one particular thing. Some days I didn\u2019t like my research very much and found it hard and difficult and frustrating. Nevertheless, I never for an instant wavered in my devotion to it. Like in any relationship, academia and I went over rough patches. I thought about calling it quits several times, but didn\u2019t want to throw away something to which I\u2019d devoted so much time. I was not a quitter.
\nI\u2019m now working in victim advocacy and now talk to people about grief, trauma, and loss every day. I wish I\u2019d had someone like me to talk to about grief and loss after my PhD. I wish someone had told me that they were sorry that I didn\u2019t get a job. That it wasn\u2019t fair. That it wasn\u2019t my fault that the market had collapsed and hadn\u2019t recovered. That sometimes stuff just happens to people for no reason. Sometimes the story doesn\u2019t end the way that we want it to or expect it to.
\nThe grief I felt when I conceded defeat on the job market was the real deal. I cycled through every one of the Kubler Ross model\u2019s stages of grief several times. And as anyone who has been through the five stages of grief knows, they are not really stages at all, but rather suggestions. Grief is a full body contact sport that involves cycling and recycling through the stages of grief, moving forward and backwards and sideways at the most inopportune moments until the heart and soul decide there\u2019s nothing more to be done and they\u2019ve let go. There\u2019s nothing rational about grief and no time table to \u201cget over it.\u201d It\u2019s insanely confusing and consumes massive amounts of emotional resources. Grief is involuntary and wild and frightening.
\nIf you\u2019re coming to the realization that you\u2019re going to have to walk away from academia, let me hasten to tell you that your feelings are real and valid, whatever they may be. I believe you. (Maybe your feelings aren\u2019t grief. Maybe they\u2019re relief? That\u2019s valid and legit too.) Nonetheless, you\u2019re going to have to do some stuff to get through the emotional crap swamp. Here are some suggestions. (Keep in mind that I\u2019m not a counselor. I\u2019m a victim advocate and post-ac historian. If you\u2019re struggling with mental health, please please please connect with mental health resources in your community.)
\nYou\u2019ve lost a big chunk of your identity, both personal and professional. Grief is a normal reaction. You ain\u2019t crazy.
\nSelf care is key. Emotional eating is okay for a little bit, but you\u2019re eventually going to have to make real food. I know it\u2019s hard.
\nLet yourself be very not okay for a while. It\u2019s okay to be sad. It\u2019s okay to be really really sad.
\nHealing isn\u2019t a matter of \u201cgetting over it.\u201d It\u2019s a matter of incorporating loss into your story and telling it in a new way.
\nThere\u2019s no timetable. Anyone who thinks that you should be ready to move on according to any kind of timetable can shove it.
\nTake life one day at a time.
\nKnow that healing isn\u2019t a destination; it\u2019s a journey and a process.
\nYou might think about investing in a good therapist.
\nLeaving academia isn\u2019t just a \u201ccareer change.\u201d It\u2019s the worst breakup of your life and you might not even be able to see into next week, let alone imagine possibly being happy and okay again someday. Be in grief for as long as you need to.
\nYou\u2019ll heal. Eventually. You\u2019ll have the scars to prove it. Healing will happen so slowly that you might not even notice it. In one of the biggest cliches ever, I\u2019ve learned (and now teach people) that healing is a PROCESS.
\nYou\u2019re going to get through this. One day you realize that you haven\u2019t cried in a few days. Then maybe you notice that you\u2019re daydreaming about something you\u2019ve always wanted to do. Some idea for interesting and engaging work crosses your mind. And then you might find yourself wondering if you could actually do that. And then maybe you start thinking of how you might do that. And then you start talking to other people about how you might do that. And then you\u2019re off and running again.
\nYou\u2019re healing.
\n*This may not be your experience at all. A lot of PhDs these days are actively planning NOT to become academics, so I suspect their sense of academic loss may be less. I don\u2019t know. Those of the tenure track or bust generation, from my conversations with other people about their experiences, seem to have taken academic loss pretty hard. We didn\u2019t have backup parachutes ready; we made up the post-ac life as we went. We\u2019re still figuring it out. As always, YMMV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lisa Munro writes in 2017: I\u2019ve been out of academia for two years, having finished my PhD in 2015. I think I\u2019m finally on the road to healing. I often joke that leaving academia feels like the worst break up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16281],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140409,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140408\/revisions\/140409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}