Retirement from Kaiser and the Gift of Saying Goodbye with Love and Connection
After working for Kaiser Permanente for 28 years, I retired from my job in July. I have much gratitude for my time there. Way back when I had just gotten my Ph.D., I was working at an administrative job at Kaiser as a Senior Consultant for Regional Health Education. When one of my mentors, Nan Shaw, LCSW left Kaiser, she was the one who brought me into the eating disorders clinic to replace her. And that was the beginning of a decade-long journey that concluded last month! Along the way, so many people like her were instrumental in my career development, providing opportunities to learn, grow, and speak.
Yet it was time to close that chapter in my life, and turn toward building my private practice and doing more public speaking. This meant saying goodbye to my Kaiser patients, many of whom I worked with for years. After I began letting them know, we would avoid the topic of retirement. “Oh, we’re not ready for this yet,” they’d say—and then laugh. I’d laugh with them, but I didn’t want to say goodbye to them either! I liked working with them. I’m a human being, too, and saying goodbye feels sad.
Despite the fact that we mostly met for our sessions through our computers, when it came time for me to stop working with Kaiser, most of my patients decided to come in to say goodbye in person. These last meetings were precious. We held the space and reflected on the work we had done together.
In those last sessions, they shared their journey with their eating disorder. They talked about feeling hopelessness at many points. They also talked about their pain—from the betrayal they carried from loved ones, and the pain from having such a fraught, complicated relationship with something everyone needs: food. While their eating disorder could provide a kind of comfort, with its routines and discipline and purpose, it also created isolation and shame. They talked about feeling defective and broken.
And they talked about how hard they fought and are fighting for their recovery—and thus for the totality of who they are. They thanked me for being at their side in this journey. It was an honor for me and I shared that with them. Being with someone who comes to reveal so much of themselves is the greatest gift anyone can give me. What a human moment to feel such tender gratitude for having each other in our lives—and then to say goodbye.
Those last sessions were a reminder of why I do this work as a psychologist. Closing the door behind them was so hard and with every closed door for every final session, I stood in the silence of that space—and I had a moment of thinking about where their journey will take them next. During my last week of work, the incredible poet Andrea Gibson passed—and my friends kept sharing her work. These lines especially jumped out me when I thought about saying goodbye to my patients:
I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color,
but I’ve seen flowers bloom at midnight.
I’ve seen kites fly in gray skies
and they were real close to looking like the sunrise,
and sometimes it takes the most wounded wings
the most broken things
to notice how strong the breeze is,
how precious the flight.
What’s next for me, as I take my own precious flight to the next stage of my life and career? I will be expanding my private practice. I will continue to work with clients and provide clinical trainings, consultations, and supervision. I’m also growing into a new area: public speaking about subthreshold eating disorders, the dangers of diet culture, and ways to create meaningful relationships with food and our bodies. I am eager and thrilled to see where this work takes me.