Bring your Father to work day

Once a year, at the very least, on the anniversary of my fathers death I have a good adult cry and spend some time reflecting. Today, June 4th is that day again - first time doing it here and although I think it's systemic to the fact I now work “here” but also that I’ve spent the bulk of the past year recognizing how what happened to him continues to shape how I go through life. Lately, more meaningfully at work, so this felt appropriate.

I’ll be brief, he was murdered. My father was a prosecutor investigating a corruption scheme at a Social Security Administration office some 250 miles from Buenos Aires, where I was born and raised. The spouse of a person with a lot to lose in the disclosure of that scheme took it upon themselves to walk up to his office one day and use a gun to take his life. It was a violent, desperate attempt to cover up what he knew, in broad daylight, in a busy office. My sisters and I lost our father that day, my mother, her partner, and the World, an honest man.

I am one story in many of the people who grew up in Argentina or places like it, some more scarred than others. But, upon reflection I look at my experience there as deeply transformative and constructive. It’s made me an unflinching cynic with a deep distrust of anyone who exercises belief over reality. It’s made me appreciate those who create through hardship more and how embracing things that may be hard/harsh or bad actually helps you appreciate what is good about them. Much like there’s no shade without sunlight - there are no things to appreciate without loss, nor good things without bad ones.

You may be wondering, as I have in the few weeks I’ve started and stopped this first writing exercise, why am I talking about something so deeply personal here? I’ll ask you to consider what you bring to work or your life every day and if you’ve ever dissociated successfully. Earlier in my career, before the advent of “bringing your whole self to work”, it was a bit easier to suppress and compartmentalize who you were into drone-like normative behavior. You know, the faceless man in a suit.?

But, here I am, telling you that I, too, sometimes experience aimless bouts of sadness, that I have a tendency to take things personally when I shouldn’t, that I maybe care too much about what other people think and that I am a fierce advocate for anyone who I consider my people (whether we work on the same team or not). I’m here to tell you how important I think it is to spend time figuring out why you are the way you are. In that sense, I am very lucky in that I have a big hairy awful thing to point to. A lot of what I ascribe to be my good qualities has come out of this immense grief. Therapy helped some, my family helped more and time did most to help me realize that the point all along is that there can be good things to come out of traumatic events and it’s also important that we embrace, acknowledge and examine that trauma – not just to be able to move on, but to actually understand its impact on how we live.

We just don’t talk enough about the difficult parts of who we are. This idea that we are meant to deal with the bad parts that are helpful towards the task in front of you every day can be severed from where you’ve been and what has shaped you is fundamentally untrue.?It's critical to how we deal with each other and difficult situations.

So, if I can leave you with anything it is to try to take the bad with the good, and acknowledge what you’ve been and what made you. Talking about it helps.