Life Clubs

You Are Not the Only One in That Club

Deb’s Note: From time to time, I bring in guest authors to Perspectives to share their point of view and bring a different take on a topic I want to learn more about. When I first read this piece from Molly, I found myself going back through my own life, thinking about the clubs I am in, the ones I never announced, the ones I carried quietly for a long time before finding someone else who was in them too. There is real generosity in writing something this honest, and I think you will feel that as you read it. I hope it gives you the same thing it gave me: the relief of feeling a little less alone in something you thought only you were carrying.

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Life is full of clubs you don’t know exist until you’re in one.

I first discovered this when I had my first miscarriage. It’s one of those binary life moments: either you’ve had a miscarriage, and you know what that experience is like, or you don’t. When I met someone who was in the miscarriage club, I didn’t have to explain why it was hard. They already knew.

That’s what clubs are. When you meet someone who’s in yours, you feel immediately understood. You skip the part where you have to justify yourself. You just... know that they know.

There are so many of these clubs. In work and in life.

The “I got laid off” club
The “children of first-generation immigrants” club
The divorce club
The IPO club
The IVF club
The harassment club
The “I got acquired and had to run the integration” club
The “I had to shut my company down” club
The cancer club
The “I’ve lost a child” clubThe list is actually endless.

It goes without saying that being a member of different clubs varies wildly in terms of both what it feels like and how important it is to your identity. Some of those you’d choose again in a heartbeat. Others you’d give anything to not be in. But either way — once you’re in, you’re in. You keep the membership card forever.

Some clubs carry shame

Some clubs make you want to actively hide that you’re in them.

Getting laid off or fired can feel like a mark you’ll carry forever. I’ve watched a lot of friends go through it — especially at the CEO and C-suite level, where, honestly, it happens a lot. The more senior you get, the more likely you are to get fired at some point. It’s just the nature of a bigger, more public role. Every single time, the person feels like: “this defines me now. No one will ever be able to look at my resume or hear my story without the headline being ‘they got fired.’” UNTIL they meet someone else in the “I got fired” club, particularly someone whose career they admire. Finding other people who have been through it and come out the other side makes such a difference to the level of shame and isolation you feel.

I’ll tell you a story about a club I’m in. A while ago, I took a C-level job at a company that needed to be turned around. It didn’t work. I have carried shame and embarrassment about that role and my feelings of failure ever since — on almost every level. If only I hadn’t taken the job. If only I had gone in with a much stronger, clearer plan. If only I had done a layoff sooner. If only I had asked for X or Y. If only, if only, if only. That kind of failure has a way of becoming a story you tell yourself over and over, and the story is rarely generous.

Recently, though, I was talking to a friend who’d been through something similar — a turnaround that failed. As he walked me through it, I found myself listening differently than I listen to my own story. I could see clearly all the external factors working against him – the bad board, the structural problems that existed long before he arrived. What I saw was that he did some of the best work of his career in an impossible situation. And I thought: there was genuinely no way for him to win.

And then, quietly, my brain said: why is it so easy for me to see that for him and so hard to see it for myself?

Shame clubs make you think you’re the only one in them — and that you deserve to be. The “I failed” club, the “my company didn’t make it” club, the “I was pushed out of something I built” club. These aren’t clubs people announce at dinner parties. And because nobody announces them, you can go a long time thinking you’re the only one in them, when in reality there are people all around you carrying the same thing quietly and judging themselves just as harshly.

The “I’m struggling with my mental health” club. The “my marriage is falling apart” club. The “I burned a relationship I really valued” club. The “I’m drowning financially” club. These aren’t clubs people want to announce.

One of the most powerful things about finding your club — especially the ones with shame attached — is that naming it out loud is often what creates it. The club doesn’t exist until someone is willing to say “me too” first. When you share that you’re in it, you give other people permission to find you.

And once you’re a veteran — once you have some distance from the initial shock and some perspective — you have something valuable to offer newer members. The thing that helped you most when you were in it: someone who already had the words, who didn’t need it explained, who could say “I know exactly what you mean” and actually mean it. Someone who could also help you see the future. I’ve had people do that for me, and I’ve been able to do that for others.

Clubs give you more than comfort; they give you language

The best thing about finding your club isn’t just that it makes you feel less alone. It’s that it gives you language for something you couldn’t previously explain.

People talk about this a lot when it comes to losing someone close to them — a spouse, a parent, a child. That if they’re talking to people who haven’t been through that kind of loss, it can feel like a battle, but when you find someone who has, you immediately feel at ease.

It works the same way at work. The first time I had to do a layoff, I felt like I was carrying something I couldn’t put down and couldn’t describe. I felt shame, anger, guilt. When I finally talked to someone who’d been through one, I didn’t have to describe it at all. They already knew what it felt like. That conversation didn’t give me advice; it gave me words. And the words made it easier.

When you’re in something hard and you can’t find the words, it’s exhausting. Finding someone in your club ends that. You stop struggling to explain. They already have the words, and sometimes, in hearing their words, you understand your own experience better.

Sub-clubs

Clubs have sub-clubs. And sometimes, connecting with someone in the club but not your sub-club can actually make you feel worse, not better.

A friend of mine was diagnosed with a serious, scary, late-stage form of breast cancer. She found that talking to people who’d had early-stage diagnoses was actually disheartening because her experience was so different. It’s not that the broader breast cancer club doesn’t matter. It does. But the closer someone’s experience was to hers, the more she actually felt understood.

Someone gave me similar advice after I delivered my first child. There’s a club of people who have carried and delivered babies, but there are sub-clubs within that. My friend told me to find people whose delivery was closest to mine, because that specificity matters enormously when you’re trying to understand your own recovery and what comes next.

A relevant work example is acquisitions. There are so many different types of acquisitions, and finding people who have been through one with the same power dynamics or similar deal structure as yours can make a big difference to how relevant the advice is.

The instinct when you’re in the middle of something is to find anyone who’s been through it. And that can be a good start. But it’s worth going further — to find the people whose version most closely mirrors yours. It makes a difference to whether you leave feeling seen or more confused.

Go find your people — the specific ones

Once you understand the idea that there are all these clubs that people are in, you start to see them more easily, even the ones you’re not in.

A few months ago I was at dinner with a close friend. It was the one-year anniversary of her mom’s death — I hadn’t even realized it when we made the plan — and at some point during the meal it came up. She started talking about what the last year had been like, what losing her mom had actually felt like, and I found myself listening in a particular way, carefully, like I was being let into something. I feel lucky that both my parents are alive and healthy, but I know it’s a club I’ll be in someday. One of the ones I’m scared to join.

Recognizing the clubs you’re not in can teach you a lot. What do your friends who are in the “I’ve lost a parent club” wish they had known? If you watch a friend in the “chronic back pain” club it will make you both grateful for your lack of pain and want to do a lot of core strengthening.

Most of the clubs that have mattered most to me are ones I never asked to join. You don’t sign up for the miscarriage club, or the “really extremely fast acquisition” club, or the “taking care of your friend who is dying” club. You just wake up one day, and you’re in it. For a long time, I tried to muscle through those moments alone, like finding other people who’d been through it was somehow an admission that I couldn’t handle it myself. It wasn’t. It was the smartest thing I could have done.

When you find yourself in a club, the most useful thing you can do is go find the other members. Not just anyone who’s been through something similar. The members of your sub-club – the specific people whose experience most closely mirrors yours. Finding them will help you stop hiding or trying to muscle through it. It will give you perspective, tools, and immediate relief.

They’re out there. And somewhere, someone is hoping you’ll find them first — that you’ll be the one who says “me too” and gives them permission to stop carrying it alone.

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Molly Graham - company builder. Lover of weird metaphors. Current work: Host, TED’s WorkLife Podcast. Founder, Glue Club & The Guild. Previous work: Facebook, Google, Quip, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.