Loss, Identity, and the Pressure to Keep Going: A live conversation with Dr. Suzan Song
Something I've noticed over two decades of practice: the people carrying the heaviest things are often the ones you'd never know it from.
They're still in the meeting. Still delivering. Still the person others lean on. And underneath that: a loss they haven't had time to sit with. A role that ended, taking their sense of self with it. A grief that arrived uninvited and had to be quietly set aside because life didn't stop.
That's who I want to talk to on May 13th.
What this session is about
Loss doesn't always look like loss. For high-performing people, it often looks like pushing through a divorce while closing a deal, or losing a role you built your identity around and not knowing what to do with the silence, or having your mother die on a Thursday and being back at your desk on Monday.
I'll be going live virtually for 45 minutes, drawing from my clinical work and from the framework at the center of my book, Why We Suffer and How We Heal. The framework has three parts: Narrative, Ritual, and Purpose. Most people I work with are stuck in one of them without realizing it — especially when they're in the middle of a rupture they haven't yet named.
This is informal. There are no slides. I'll share what I've been seeing lately and leave time for questions.
Who this is for
People who are high-functioning and privately going through a loss. It can be the loss of a person, a role, a marriage, or an identity that took years to build. People who would never describe what they need as therapy, and who aren't looking for a support group. Physicians, lawyers, executives, founders, and people in public service.
If you've had a hard year that nobody at work knows about, I'd be glad to have you there.
Wednesday, May 13 at 1:00 PM ET
Free
45 minutes
Virtual
Register below. You'll receive the link by email.
Dr. Suzan Song is a Harvard and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, founding director of Global Collective Institute, and author of Why We Suffer and How We Heal (Harmony / Penguin Random House, 2026). She has advised UNICEF, UNHCR, and the U.S. Department of State, and has spoken for Google, Harvard, Stanford, and the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security.