For this reflection, we are challenged to document the experience of processing the news about the dissolution of HHI delivered via email to partners, Rose and Gail, on Friday, Oct. 11, 2013.

 It's a real life example of being knocked back, stunned, and stopped. I'm reflecting on that experience and the experience of creating a path forward which summons resilience as in awakening a kind of muscle or opening a vault of capacity. I'm thinking of what it's like to do that in the crucible of a difficult experience that brings disappointment, anger, betrayal, awareness of one's own culpability, and so on. I can see both tapping into something I have and adding to it at the same time. I wonder how that "something" became there in the first place. It is easier to see how I am adding to it. I'm thinking of "resilience by fire" as a capacity developed in the heat of experience.

At approximately 3:30 EST, Gail and I literally put our pencils down just two sentences from completing the employee module on Purpose. I said feebly, in an act of deliberate denial, "Shall we just finish these two?" But the oxygen was gone. What had mattered so much just a second before now didn't matter at all. I stared at John and Sarah's stories. Poignant then and stupid now.

Rose's voice said, "Go and look." There were words like "never thought this would happen" about a guy who was still making assignments the day before. It was incongruous. Slowly, a feeling a betrayal crept in. He had to have known. His daughter, the COO, had to have known. She had noticeably withdrawn any communication with me in the prior two weeks. Why didn't I question that?  Did I just fall for hyperbole? After all, there were no customers waiting, ready to buy. We had built it and they didn't come. Disbelief became anger and that was trimmed with guilt and resentment.

 Perhaps it was there for the seeing the whole time - over-exuberance and big promises ("The boys can just put it on accounts of 130,000 students...easy...they'll never even know it.") Could we have recognized that the emperor was unclothed? Or did we suspend disbelief because these were people we loved and trusted. If we were working in vain, they would surely say something...right? They wouldn't make empty claims...right? Or did they warn us and we just didn't hear.

I remembered an ex who said "Why didn't you tell me?" and I thought, "How can that be? I've been screaming this for years!" Sometimes, we just don't want to hear or we just don't want to say unequivocally - until no veil of hope remains. Perhaps, this is a first and tiny step towards resilience in the heat of hurt - sensemaking that includes a seed of charity. I say it can't be because they are bad, malicious, deceptive, defrauding people...and I wrestle with that incongruity.

What was your initial experience?