{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"What Works","title":"EP 366: Unpacking Business Grief with Charlene Lam","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2709,"description":"\n\n\n\n\nIn This Episode:\n\n\n\n* Creative grief worker & curator Charlene Lam shares how grief impacts us—as humans, leaders, and business owners* How she discovered a passion for understanding grief and helping others process after the death of her mother* The practical exercises she uses to process feelings of loss\n\n\n\n\n\nToward the end of 2020, I started to hear the murmurs of something I’d come to learn was called “ambiguous loss.”\n\n\n\nOf course, 2020 was full of loss and grief. There were goals, events, and—of course—people who were no longer with us.\n\n\n\nBut there was also an amorphous, chronic type of grief that set in. The murmurs spoke softly of pain and exhaustion that couldn’t be attributed to any one particular loss.\n\n\n\nIn 1999, Pauline Boss coined the term ambiguous loss for exactly this kind of feeling. In a conversation with Krista Tippett, Boss said:\n\n\n\n“We like to solve problems. We’re not comfortable with unanswered questions. And this is full of unanswered questions. These are losses that are minus facts.”\n\n\n\nFor me, the ambiguous loss of the last 2 years has been felt as a sort of ongoing liminality. I’ve felt stuck between the life, goals, and identities that were part of my pre-2020 life and the next life, goals, and identities that have yet to take form. And while this is my sense of a personal ambiguous loss, I think it also mirrors the ambiguous loss we’ve faced as a society.\n\n\n\nAs the pandemic has worn on and social change has stagnated, we keep catching glimpses of what might be on the other side.\n\n\n\nBut the promises that “it’ll be over soon” have become ever harder to believe. We’re stuck between our pre-2020 world and the world that has yet to come into focus.\n\n\n\nGrief in general, and ambiguous loss in particular, might seem like an odd topic for a business podcast. But it was conversations with small business owners that made me realization how important talking about grief is for us.\n\n\n\nBusiness owners like us go through all sorts of...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/AmfGeDL96-fhMaeOcqmX7TK_eWrvTLco6OJj2QpZtZI/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80NGUx/OWY5ZDg1M2E5MmU3/ZjEwOWVmNDM3MWVh/ZjZlOS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}