Friday, November 6, 2026.
What a layoff hike can teach us about grief, friendship, and showing up.
Imagine getting laid off on Thursday and finding three former coworkers at a trailhead on Saturday.
One brings coffee. One picked a route that requires no ambition whatsoever.
Somebody has already muted the company Slack.
A group hike after a layoff is among the examples in a recent Harris Poll holiday trends briefing.
The pollster reports that 43% of its Gen Z respondents said they had created a ritual for a loss that usually goes unmarked, compared with 15% overall.
One survey gives us a glimpse of a practice, with no way to tell whether it’s growing.
Still, I keep thinking about the trailhead. Somebody had to pick one.
Who knows what to do?
The old genius of the casserole was that the bereaved person could stay in their pajamas.
Other people knew how to proceed.
They knew where the house was, what size dish to bring, and that they should come back after the first week, when the refrigerator emptied and the phone stopped ringing.
Plenty of losses come with no such instructions.
A close friend quietly stops returning calls. An adult child cuts contact.
A couple stops trying for a pregnancy after years of organizing their lives around one.
The people around them may know what happened and still have no idea what would count as a decent visit.
Some wait for an invitation. The person who needs company waits for somebody to come.
“Let me know if you need anything” can be sincere.
It also leaves the person having the worst week in charge of figuring out what would help, who might be free, and how much they can reasonably ask. “I’m free Saturday morning. Want me to bring coffee?” gives them one decision.
What the grief research gives us
Kenneth Doka’s work on disenfranchised grief names what happens when a loss, a relationship, or a mourner receives little public recognition.
Pauline Boss’s ambiguous loss describes a different problem. The status of the loss itself remains unclear.
A person with dementia may be physically present while parts of the relationship become inaccessible.
In family estrangement, someone can be vividly present in your mind while absent from your life. The two problems can overlap. You can know exactly when the layoff happened and still find that nobody understands why you’re grieving.
Alexander Burrell and Lucy Selman’s review of 17 studies found mixed evidence on whether funeral practices were associated with better bereavement outcomes.
The quantitative studies were observational. They could tell the researchers how funeral experiences and grief measures went together, with limited ability to tell what caused what.
The interviews offered a closer look at what mourners actually valued. In one small Hong Kong study included in the review, four widowers described Chinese or Christian death rites.
What mattered in their accounts included the parts of the ritual they could make personal.
Across the qualitative studies, the reviewers also heard how much it mattered for a funeral to show the bereaved they had people around them.
Being able to shape a goodbye and having people there for it were both part of what made the occasion meaningful.
Those studies concern deaths.
A hike after a layoff belongs to a different order of loss.
But the interviews help explain why I like the hike. Your friends can pick the trail and make the coffee.
You can decide whether to tell them what happened in the meeting, walk quietly, or spend twenty minutes discussing somebody’s ridiculous rain pants.
They’ve handled the invitation. You still get a say in the morning.
A marriage can lose a future
Imagine a couple driving home from their last fertility appointment.
One partner deletes a reminder for the next round of medication while they’re still in the parking lot. The other waits until they’re halfway home to say, “I thought we’d be telling people by Christmas.”
They’ve agreed to stop.
They may still have quite different feelings about what just ended.
One keeps imagining the call they’d planned to make to their sister.
The other wakes up the next morning relieved to have a day that will be measured in ordinary hours. At breakfast, both talk about the weather.
Relief can be hard to admit when the person you love is still picturing Christmas.
The partner who deleted the reminder may worry that relief will be heard as evidence they never wanted a child.
The one imagining the phone call may hear the word and wonder how long their partner has been waiting for all this to end.
Either could spend months answering a question the other has never actually asked.
That’s one cost of demanding closure from a decision that settles what happens next and leaves plenty to talk about.
Suppose the partner who deleted the reminder asks for a walk on Sunday.
Somewhere past the first bend they say, “I miss who we were before every month came with a verdict.”
Their partner says, “I still want to tell my sister.” They can walk the rest of the way with both things said. On Monday, one of them can call the sister.
When someone you love loses something the rest of the world can barely see, there is a generous thing you can do before you find the right words. Pick a trailhead. Bring coffee. Go back next Saturday.
Work with Daniel
If a loss has changed your shared life and you’re having trouble talking about it together, explore my couples therapy services or contact me for a free introductory call.
REFERENCES:
Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjhzrh4
Burrell, A., & Selman, L. E. (2022). How do funeral practices impact bereaved relatives’ mental health, grief and bereavement? A mixed methods review with implications for COVID-19. OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying, 85(2), 345–383. https://doi.org/10.1177/0030222820941296
Doka, K. J. (Ed.). (1989). Disenfranchised grief: Recognizing hidden sorrow. Lexington Books. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/8907717
The Harris Poll. (2026, November 5). America this week: November 5, 2026. https://theharrispoll.com/articles/america-this-week-november-5-2026/