We Made It Through: Ambiguous Loss and NeuroSpicy Leadership

As a grueling year comes to a close, Chinyere Oparah reflects on grief, ambiguous loss, and the particular resilience required of neurodivergent leaders who keep showing up, even as the ground beneath them has shifted.

As the year comes to a close, I’ve been sitting with the weight of what this season has asked of us, especially those of us who are ADHD, autistic, or otherwise neurodivergent, and who have been living and leading in systems that were not designed with our nervous systems or ways of thinking and being in mind.

I suspect I’m not alone in feeling that this has been one of the hardest years I've lived through. Many of us are ending the year carrying immense grief — sometimes sharp and overwhelming, sometimes stifled and unnamed because there was simply no time to stop and feel it. We have much to mourn. We’ve witnessed the upending of long-held commitments to equity, education, disability rights and the public good. We’ve seen workplaces reshaped by political attacks, job losses, budget cuts, surveillance, and silencing. For some, there has been the loss of a role, a professional home or the freedom to speak openly about work that has defined a lifetime. For others, the loss has been quieter but no less real: a sense of safety, belonging, meaning, or the ability to bring one’s full self to work without constant masking.

For neurodivergent leaders, these losses often land in the body first — through exhaustion, shutdown, sensory overload, emotional flooding, or the slow erosion of motivation and joy.

Understanding Ambiguous Loss

What has felt particularly present for me this year is a form of grief that often goes unnamed: ambiguous loss. Psychologist Pauline Boss coined this term to describe losses that are real but unresolved, such as someone being physically present but psychologically absent, as in dementia, or physically absent but psychologically present, as in a disappearance. These losses lack socially recognized rituals to help us move through the feelings. The grief doesn’t resolve; it lingers in a kind of frozen uncertainty.

This concept resonates deeply for neurodivergent leaders navigating 2025. Too many have lost jobs this past year, especially Black women, due in large part to the massive withdrawal of federal and state investment in the public sector alongside the attack on DEI. For those who still have our jobs, the work continues and yet something essential has changed. Core organizing principles like equity, justice, accessibility and respect have been stripped, rebranded, or made unspeakable. Community needs have never been higher, yet resources are shrinking and we face real existential questions about whether the institutions we lead can deliver on the promises we make. Urgency and burnout squeeze out joy and celebration. Accommodation requests are quietly deprioritized.

Because the work hasn’t vanished, it can feel inappropriate to grieve. But the conditions that once made the work sustainable, humane, or aligned may seem out of reach. The sense of psychological safety may be gone. The ability to work in alignment with one’s rhythms, values, or access needs may have eroded.

This is ambiguous loss.

Why Ambiguous Loss Hits NeuroSpicy Leaders Hard

Ambiguous loss has a way of freezing grief. When loss isn’t named or acknowledged, it often shows up indirectly — in the body and nervous system. For neurodivergent leaders, this can look like chronic fatigue, emotional dysregulation, shutdown, irritability, brain fog, insomnia, or an intensification of ADHD or autistic traits under stress.

It can also feed self-doubt. Why am I struggling when others seem to be coping? Why can’t I get started today? What’s wrong with me?

Nothing is wrong with you.

Many neurodivergent leaders have spent a lifetime adapting, compensating, and overfunctioning in order to belong. When systems become more rigid, less humane, or more hostile, we may respond by trying harder — masking more, working longer, abandoning rest and self care. Ambiguous loss makes that pattern even harder to interrupt, because the grief doesn’t feel legitimate enough to slow down for.

Naming ambiguous loss matters — not to sink into despair, but to loosen its grip. To allow compassion to replace self-blame. To make space for choice.

Resilience Amidst Heartbreak

And still, somehow, we made it through.

What has stayed with me most in my work with NeuroSpicy Leaders this year is the depth of resilience I’ve witnessed. Even in the midst of exhaustion and disorientation, I’ve seen ADHD and autistic leaders continue to show up with integrity and creativity. I’ve seen you reclaim your purpose, advocate for your wellness in meaningful ways, and insist — sometimes quietly, sometimes fiercely — on joy alongside the grief.

That insistence matters. Joy, in this context, is not denial. It is not constant positivity. It is a form of resistance. It is how neurodivergent leaders reclaim agency in systems that push us toward numbness, perfectionism, or self-abandonment. Joy is how we remember ourselves when we are tempted to disappear.

An Invitation to Retreat

As we turn toward the close of this season, I want to offer a gentle invitation — especially for neurodivergent leaders who are depleted from constant pivots and adaptation. Over the winter break, take at least one retreat day. A real pause. Step away from the noise, the notifications, the urgency. Let go of the demands of the holiday season for a moment. Create space to let feelings surface that may have been suppressed in order to keep functioning. Name the losses you’ve been carrying, especially the ambiguous ones, especially the ones you don’t feel justified grieving. Hold what arises tenderly, without rushing to fix it or focus on the positive.

You might sit with questions like these:

• What visible or ambiguous losses have shaped this year for me?

• Where have I been asking myself to “just push through” something that actually deserves care?

• How has my neurodivergence shaped both my exhaustion and my resilience?

• Where did I choose integrity, courage, or joy, even when it was hard?

• What kinds of support would actually help my nervous system — not just my productivity — in the season ahead?

  
  

As you step toward whatever comes next, I invite you to pause, not to fix anything, but simply to notice. To hold your feelings with tenderness, without rushing yourself back into doing and performing.

You made it through. And the way you did — by creating, imagining, persevering and empowering others — matters. May the next season meet you with more gentleness than the last, and may your leadership be rooted not in urgency or masking, but in the deep wisdom of a nervous system that knows it deserves safety, rest, and ease.

A Gentle Invitation

If this reflection resonates, you don’t have to navigate it alone. NeuroSpicy Leaders exists to support ADHD, autistic, and otherwise neurodivergent adults who want to lead, work, and create without burning out or disappearing themselves. Through coaching and community, we create space to slow down, feel into what matters most, and design lives and leadership practices that honor how your brain actually works. If you’re feeling called to explore support in this season, you’re warmly invited to connect.

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Chinyere Oparah is a seasoned leader, executive coach, entrepreneur and educator. She has served in senior leadership roles in the nonprofit and higher education sectors, including dean, provost and vice president for academic affairs for over three decades. Chinyere is the visionary behind NeuroSpicy Leaders and Founder and CEO of the Center for Liberated Leadership. Sign up for a free leadership consultation with her here.

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About NeuroSpicy Leaders

NeuroSpicy Leaders (NSL) supports ADHD, Autistic, and other neurodivergent leaders, entrepreneurs and change-makers who are ready to lead differently—on their own terms, and in alignment with their brilliance. Through one-on-one coaching, community, and creative tools, NSL helps leaders build systems that work with their brains, not against them. At its heart, NSL is about creating a world where neurodivergent authenticity isn’t an exception to leadership—it’s the evolution of it.

Learn more or sign up for The Spark! newsletter at www.neurospicyleaders.com

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