In North American culture, many of us aren’t very good at confronting death. As a culture, we think of death as something to be avoided at all costs. There’s a sense that death is unnatural. That we’ve failed as human beings because we die.
It doesn’t make sense to me. Death is an ongoing important part of living.
Confronting our mortality is an opportunity to ask the ultimate Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC™) question: what’s my relationship with death?
Death is all around
Some people completely avoid the issue. Their relationship with death is similar to someone avoiding a bad break-up: if they see that person’s car on the street they immediately want to go to another section of town. Under no circumstances do they want to talk about the ‘d’ word.
Over time this can create a challenging relationship with something that all of us are going to go through. We are all going to die, and ironically, we are all dealing with death all of the time.
The seasons are all about the arc of a life of a year. We have spring, the youth of the year. Summer is of course when we are in our prime. Then comes the beauty of fall, followed finally by death which is winter. The trees are bare. It’s a time of profound quiet and sinking down into the roots. We go through it every single year. It’s a natural cycle, yet we don’t think of it that way.
What is the beauty in the bare branches? In the restfulness of dropping down into the roots, quietening and slowing, and confronting our mortality. Because nature does it. Every. Single. Year.
Beginnings, middles and ends
Everything we go through has a beginning middle and an end. Every system in your life, whether it’s your family or your team—will have a beginning, middle and end. As coaches, if we cannot confront ends, then we’re failing our clients. Organizations come to an end. If they don’t, then the teams within them will change radically or disband at the end of a project. Projects come and go. Products come and go. Everything has a life cycle.
We need to know how to coach the parting of a team, the end of a marriage, the death of a family member, the bankruptcy of a company, the break-up of a friendship. All of us will encounter these kinds of experiences, over and over. How can we coach the ending of something, whether it’s a person, project or team?
What’s next?
I had a dream many years ago after a very painful break up of an early relationship. In the dream, there was this beautiful set of glass buildings. They were stunning. And these glass buildings began to crumble and break and smash to the ground, and then they all came down. There was just rubble everywhere. In the next part of the dream, I was sitting in the rubble stunned. Looking at the rubble of this beautiful thing that had broken. I sat there for what felt like a long time in the dream, just being in the quiet of the aftermath, listening to the wind blow.
I looked down at the ground and there were some brand-new shoots just starting to come up. Tiny little shoots. Then, I woke up.
What I realized from that dream is that there is a time of the death, which is the coming down of the beautiful structure. There is the time of sitting in the rubble listening to the wind blow, when there is nothing there. Then, there is the time of the new shoots that need to come up, to inform us of what is next. Every death comes with a what is next. The what is next may take years. And it may be painful. But something will always follow.
Coaching endings
When we’re unable to acknowledge that someone is dying, or that a relationship has run its course, we rob ourselves of the richness of that phase. The phase that realizes the preciousness in the finite quality of a life. It’s when we truly recognize how much we love someone or how much we’ve enjoyed something. It gives us a chance to celebrate and prepare for what’s next.
Honoring grief
For those of you out there dealing with grief over a loved one, I don’t want it to sound like I’m saying there’s always a lovely next thing. Grief is a harrowing thing, and sometimes it takes years to recover and sometimes we never recover. And that’s the shape of the new world post-death. So, this isn’t some ‘get over yourself and look for the next thing’ article. Death is harrowing. But it also can be deepening. Looking into the abyss of loss brings the unexpected. And sometimes we don’t have a choice. But we do always have a choice around how we want to be with it.
Life goes on
The other true thing is that life goes on after any kind of death. After we die the world will go on without us. We can choose to leave chaotically, still in denial that it is even happening. Or we can acknowledge it so that we are free to squeeze the goodness out it, the appreciation and the planning for what will happen next.
The same thing applies to the end of a project or a colleague retiring. How will you continue after that project or person is gone? What is the new shoot that will emerge? It’s an opportunity. It’s a major myth change and we have to honor it. If we don’t properly honor it, we can’t properly prepare for the next arc.
Rethinking the relationship
I’m pushing for a change with our relationship with endings so that we can more skillfully coach our clients through it. And the first step is to acknowledge that it is happening. It’s happening to all of us. And it’s a normal, natural part of life. Planning and celebration can be a part of death. Celebrating the beauty of that glass building, of a life, or that project. And then creating space for the new shoots to emerge. Clearing away the path.
Author
Faith Fuller ORSCC, CPCC, ICF-PCC
Faith co-founded CRR Global and co-created Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC™). She is a psychologist and experienced trainer and coach, with decades of experience in working with organizations, couples and communities. Faith is also the author of Relationship Matters: A New Paradigm for an Evolutionary Leap in Relationship.
