I didn’t understand why, especially since I had just spoken with him before his travels. The day my son’s father, Joseph, died, I was sitting in a nail salon. A friend from the military called, offering condolences. I didn’t understand why; until I checked social media and saw the news of an airplane crash. My heart knew before my mind could process it.

Six years later, same month, just five days apart, I received another call. I was at work that morning when the coroner’s office told me my only child, Joey, had died in a motorcycle accident. Two moments. Two phone calls. Two lives gone. And somehow, I was expected to keep living.

In the weeks that followed, I was a shadow of myself. I remember sitting in a doctor’s office, unable to stop crying. They gently suggested a 72-hour psychiatric hold, not out of judgment, but concern. My grief had become a language no one else could translate. I wasn’t just mourning my son. I was mourning the version of me that existed before those calls.

There’s no manual for how to go on when your entire reason for existing is gone. Grief doesn’t move in tidy stages; it’s chaos wrapped in silence. I was in survival mode when Joseph passed, thinking I was doing well. It’s called compartmentalizing, until something happens to unravel it. For a long time, I lived in that mode: showing up for work, keeping the lights on, and trying to convince myself that breathing was still worth the effort. But persistence, I’ve learned, isn’t about perfection. It’s not even about strength. It’s about deciding, over and over, that your story isn’t done yet.

Before my losses, I spent years in health care leadership, designing strategies, negotiating contracts, and guiding physicians through complex transitions. I cared deeply about the work and the people. But what I didn’t understand until grief broke me open was what it meant to lead from a place of profound personal loss. I became the patient the system didn’t know what to do with. Yes, they had diagnostic codes for me (complicated grief, PTSD); but those labels didn’t translate into understanding. I was prescribed medications but declined them as they heightened suicidal thoughts rather than helped. I was offered therapy and encouraged to “move forward,” but what I needed was something the system couldn’t code: a way to rebuild meaning from devastation.

We talk so much about compassion in leadership, but compassion changes when you’ve sat on the other side of the clipboard. When you’ve been the one whose pain can’t be fixed with medication or charted with a diagnosis code. There is no code for what it feels like to lose your only child. There is no code for losing your son’s father. There is no code for losing yourself. You can’t bill for that kind of pain, and you can’t treat it in a follow-up visit. You just learn to live inside it and somehow, to lead from it.

That experience changed everything about how I now lead and serve others. Because before you can lead people, you have to learn how to lead yourself; through loss, through fear, and through the kind of pain that strips you of identity. In health care, we talk endlessly about burnout and resilience. But we rarely talk about grief; the kind that sits quietly in our hospitals, clinics, and boardrooms. I’ve seen leaders hide behind productivity metrics, pretending that showing up equals healing. But healing takes more courage than achievement ever will.

When I finally stopped trying to “get back to normal,” I began to see persistence differently; less about pushing through and more about surrendering to growth. Leadership became less about control and more about compassion, starting with yourself. Those lessons became the foundation of my work today, helping physicians and health care organizations rebuild with humanity at the center. Because systems don’t heal people. People heal people.

Grief taught me lessons that extend far beyond my story. Whether you’re a clinician, a leader, or simply a human being trying to keep going, we all meet moments that break us open. The question is what we do next, how we turn pain into perspective, and perspective into purpose. Here’s what I’ve learned about persistence and compassion:

• Acknowledge your grief: Instead of outrunning it. What we avoid only grows heavier. Naming your pain is not weakness; it’s the beginning of healing.
• Lead yourself first: You can’t pour from an empty cup, but you can lead from a scar that’s healed.
• Redefine strength: It’s not stoicism or control; it’s the quiet decision to show up, heart open, even when you’re afraid to.

I no longer measure my life by what I lost, but by what I can build from it. The ache never goes away, but it’s become part of my leadership voice; one that understands the quiet resilience required to keep showing up. Faith became my companion, teaching me that persistence isn’t the absence of pain; it’s the willingness to live with it while still creating purpose. My son used to tell me, “Momma, you always figure it out.” He was right; but not in the way either of us imagined. In medicine and in life, leadership doesn’t always look like confidence. Sometimes it looks like survival. Sometimes it looks like sitting across from a doctor who sees your pain and choosing to keep living anyway. If you’ve ever felt like you’ve lost everything, you haven’t lost your ability to rise. That’s where true leadership is born.

Dana Y. Lujan is a health care strategist and operator with more than twenty years of experience across payers, providers, and health systems. She is the founder of Wellthlinks, a consulting firm that helps employers and providers redesign care models through concierge and direct primary care. Lujan has led multi-state network development, payer contracting, financial modeling, and compliance initiatives that strengthen provider sustainability and employer value. She previously served as president of the Nevada chapter of HFMA and is pursuing a JD to expand her expertise in health care law and compliance. An active author on Medium, where she writes on health care innovation, direct primary care, concierge medicine, employer contracting, and compliance, she also has forthcoming publications in KevinMD, MedCity News, and BenefitsPRO. Additional professional updates can be found on LinkedIn and Instagram.