Private thread: Breaking the silence of goodbyes
Sam Kahn, of
, has a thought-provoking essay on Christopher Lasch in this week. Read “On ‘The Narcissist Society’” here and join us as a free subscriber.Jenn’s account earlier this week of leaving an institution that she’d served for twenty years brought back vivid memories for me. I don’t recall the exact order of my own announcements, but there were a series of them: a private Zoom with a mentor who had chaired the department through my own tenure review, a group email to a few friends to give them a heads-up before we could talk in person, a private conversation with the Dean of Faculty, and then the “big reveal” at the next department meeting.
There is no perfect way to tell people you are leaving. It is a break-up, no way around it, and even if it’s framed by “It’s not you, it’s me” language, it is not surprising that silence often follows the public announcement that you’ll resign. Some people are stunned speechless, others might feel a pang of something they can't name (maybe they’ve thought about leaving, too, or wish they could), and others might just not know what to say. It takes a pretty secure person to react quickly to that kind of news and to get beyond whatever their own preoccupations are. I was glad to see that at least one of Jenn’s colleagues was able to do that by the end of their meeting.
Silence might be the only “wrong” response when someone announces they are leaving.