Latest / Women Who Lead: Leadership, Career & Influence / The Grief of Packing Up Your Desk: Why Leaving a Job Hurts More Than You Expect | Women Who Lead
Transcript
- You are standing in front of an empty cubicle, and you realize the hardest part of quitting isn’t the negotiation or the notice period—it’s the silence where your coffee mug used to be. Let’s talk about why clearing off that desk feels like losing a piece of your identity. I want you to picture it for a second. It’s 4:30 on a Tuesday. The office is quiet, just the hum of the HVAC and the distant clack of keyboards from people who haven’t noticed you’re gone yet. You are standing at your desk. But it’s not your desk anymore. Or rather, it is, but it looks wrong. The personal photos are gone. The stack of books you were reading is boxed up. The sticky notes with reminders that only made sense to you have been peeled off the monitor and thrown away. There is just this clean, sterile surface. And you feel a strange, hollow ache in your chest. We tell ourselves we are ready to leave. We list the reasons why. The commute was too long. The culture didn’t align. The growth had plateaued. We are logical about it. We have our exit interview prepared. We have our LinkedIn updates scheduled. But no one prepares us for the physical act of erasure. When you take down that framed certificate from college, or that small stone you picked up on a walk three years ago, you aren’t just packing objects. You are dismantling a monument to the version of yourself that lived there. That woman worked hard. She stayed late. She figured things out. And now, she is being packed into a cardboard box. Let’s get real for a second. We live in a world that celebrates the new. The shiny new job, the fresh start, the exciting next chapter. We are taught to look forward. But grief lives in the backward glance. And nowhere is that more potent than in the ritual of cleaning out your workspace. It is a micro-funeral. You are mourning the loss of routine. You are mourning the specific chaos of your own workflow. Think about the little habits you built. The way you kept your pens sorted by color. The specific spot where you placed your water bottle so it wouldn’t knock over the lamp. These seem trivial, right? They are just habits. But they are also proof of presence. They are evidence that you were here, that you belonged, that you contributed. When you remove them, you are sending a message to your subconscious that you never existed. That your time here didn’t matter. And that is a lie. But your brain doesn’t know that yet. It only sees the emptiness. So when you feel sad, don’t shame yourself for being weak. Recognize it for what it is. It’s the cost of caring deeply about your craft. Here is the hard truth that I learned after walking away from my own corner office years ago. We tie our self-worth to our location. We think, 'I am important because I have this view.' 'I am respected because I have this title on the door.' 'I am capable because I have this desk.' When you strip away the physical markers, you are forced to ask a terrifying question: Who am I without this place? This is why the grief is so confusing. You might love the new opportunity. You might be thrilled to escape the toxicity of your old boss. But your body still remembers the safety of the known. Your nervous system liked the predictability of that chair. It liked the smell of that carpet. By leaving, you are triggering a primal fear of displacement. You are saying goodbye to the container that held your professional identity. And containers break. Or they are moved. Or they are repurposed for someone else. Someone younger. Someone with different energy. Someone who will fill that space with their own hopes and fears. And you are left holding the box, wondering if you gave too much of yourself away. There is a practical side to this, too. The logistics of moving your life out of a box are exhausting. You have to decide what is worth carrying. Do you keep the notebook? Do you keep the pen? Do you keep the memory? Most of us throw away things we should have kept, just because we are tired. We are emotionally drained from the final weeks of a job. The politics. The handovers. The awkward goodbyes. So we rush the process. We clear the desk quickly. We want to be done. But rushing this ritual robs you of closure. Closure isn’t something that happens automatically when you submit your resignation letter. Closure is a process. It is a series of small, intentional acts. It is taking the time to look at each item and ask, 'Does this honor my journey?' If the answer is no, let it go. But if the answer is yes, pack it with care. Wrap it gently. Treat it like the artifact it is. Because it is. Every object on that desk represents a decision you made, a problem you solved, a day you survived. Dismissing them as clutter is dismissing your own history. And you deserve better than that. So, what do you do with this grief? Do you ignore it? No. You acknowledge it. You say, 'This hurt. This mattered. I am allowed to miss the person I was there.' Then, you use that energy to fuel your next step. You don’t have to do it all at once. You can carry the lessons, even if you can’t carry the desk. Think of your career as a garden. You tend to one plot for a season. You pull weeds. You plant seeds. You watch things grow. And then, the season ends. You move to the next plot. But the soil changes. The light changes. The plants change. You cannot bring the same garden with you. You have to start fresh. But you carry the knowledge of how to grow. You carry the resilience you built. You carry the wisdom of what didn’t work. That is what stays with you. Not the stapler. Not the monitor. Not the nameplate. Those are props. The story is yours. And the story is far more durable than any piece of furniture. As you close this chapter, I want you to give yourself permission to mourn. Take a moment before you walk out the door. Look around. Breathe it in. Thank the space for holding you. Thank yourself for showing up, even on the hard days. Then, lock the door behind you. Walk away. Don’t look back. Not because you are ashamed, but because you are busy. You have a new life to build. A new desk to claim. A new identity to forge. And when you sit at that new desk, remember this feeling. Remember the weight of the old one. Let it remind you that you are resilient. That you can leave. That you can begin again. That is the power you hold. Not in the office, but in you. Always in you. Now, go forth and lead. But lead with your heart, not just your head. The world needs both. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for doing the hard work of growing. I’ll see you in the next one. Keep leading, keep loving, and keep being brave. Until then, take care of yourself.