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Health care strategist Dana Y. Lujan discusses her article, “Grief and leadership in health care.” Dana shares her devastating personal story of losing both her son’s father and, six years later, her only son, Joey, and how this profound grief exposed the failures of the health care system when faced with pain that cannot be captured by a diagnostic code. She describes her own experience (including a suggested 72-hour psychiatric hold) and how the system offered labels like complicated grief and PTSD but not true understanding. Dana contrasts this with her career in health care leadership, arguing that true compassion and resilience must be redefined by those who have experienced profound loss. She explains why leadership must move beyond metrics to address the hidden grief in our clinics and boardrooms and how persistence is about surrendering to growth, not just “pushing through.” Discover how she learned to lead herself through unimaginable pain and turn that perspective into purpose.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi. Welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome back Dana Y. Lujan. She is a health care strategist, and today’s KevinMD article is “Grief and leadership in health care.” Dana, welcome back to the show.

Dana Y. Lujan: Oh, well thank you for having me.

Kevin Pho: Tell us what your latest article is about.

Dana Y. Lujan: This latest article is about my personal loss and how it transformed my leadership. It explores how grief, rather than breaking me, taught me to lead with vulnerability, empathy, and purpose. It is a reflection on the human side of leadership and how true healing begins when we stop hiding behind strength and start leading with authenticity.

Kevin Pho: And for those who didn’t get a chance to read your article, tell us your story.

Dana Y. Lujan: My backstory is that my leadership foundation actually started off in the military back in the 1990s. I don’t know how the leadership continues with that foundation now, but we have always had this stoic approach involved in the military. You always have this armor on, always push through, “Suck it up and drive on, soldier.”

Then you come out to the civilian world. We do have empathy and we do have compassion, but what are really empathy and compassion if you haven’t really felt it from inside your family tribe?

When I lost my son’s father, Joseph, I learned to compartmentalize that loss. As a true leader, you are thinking: “OK, I need to make sure my in-laws are taken care of. I need to make sure my child is taken care of. I need to continue on pushing through because I need to pay the mortgage and the rent and the bills.” Then late at night, you just close the door and start crying or doing what is needed. But once you wake up in the morning, you have to perform.

When you are hit with another loss, your child, your only child, that is a moment where it really strips you down of everything you knew. Your whole identity is stripped away. Who are you, and how do you climb out of that?

Kevin Pho: Tell us the type of support that you leaned on during these tragic times.

Dana Y. Lujan: If I take it back to when I lost my son’s father, it was mostly his family and his friends. But again, it is a different type of loss. When you are looking at losing your spouse, you are looking at your present, but you still have to continue pushing forward for your kids, especially if you have kids. You make sure you are pushing forward and showing that everything is going to be OK, and getting them into therapy. But then we kind of forget about ourselves because as individuals and being leaders, we tend to think that we need to make sure everyone is supported.

When I lost my only child, that is where it really shattered me because one, your whole identity is lost in a sense because I no longer have his father to lean on during this hard time. Then you ask yourself: “Am I a mother?” I was a mother for 20 years, and here I am in leadership. You look at yourself like: “Wait, I am pushing to start pushing through. It is time for me to get back to work, but I don’t know who I am.”

During that time, I thank God for his friends because they really rallied around me to make sure I was OK. My son’s 20-something-year-old friends are the ones who supported me during this loss, which was really amazing. When you have friends who have kids, it is very hard for them to really understand because who wants to think about their own kids passing away?

Then, your leadership friends, it is kind of like you are living in shame. You have guilt, and you are dealing with all these emotions, and people don’t know how to handle that version of you. It is a very tight rope to walk on.

Kevin Pho: As a health care leader, you mentioned that sometimes you have to show up despite the tragedies, despite unimaginable tragedies that you just described. How did you make it through that situation? What are some of the things that you did?

Dana Y. Lujan: I remember walking into my therapist’s office. She said: “OK, as long as you do three things a day, that is good, and you can go lay down.”

I said: “Well, I need to go walk my dogs because we had two dogs at the time.”

She said: “No, hire a walker.”

I was thinking: “No, I think I can walk them.”

I truly believe that decision of me having to get up and make sure my dogs got walked helped me along the road. People allowed me space to discuss my son. Everyone’s kids are their whole world to them. Even though my son passed away, allowing that space actually helped as well.

It is every day. At first, it is not every day; it is like every minute you have to make a choice that there is more to life than what I am currently going through. There is more to life than what I am currently going through; it is just a chapter. But I have to push through and really dig within myself.

There are times where you might see something positive. I was golfing one day and I did very well at this game, and I was excited about it. So there are times where you have to be grateful for those moments. Then you can just go home and close the door and just allow yourself to feel the pain. It is OK to feel the pain. It is OK to say: “You know, I think I need to take a break from corporate America, or from my job, or from what I am doing, and sit on the sidelines for a few months so I can feel it. When I come back, I want to be better. I want to be able to be a better leader, be a better person.”

Kevin Pho: How did these tragic episodes affect your leadership? How did these episodes make you a better leader?

Dana Y. Lujan: I am more in the present. Before, I felt like I was always rushed. If I had an employee come in or call me, I was trying to say yes, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking: “OK, I have this errand to go do. I have this deadline.”

Now I am more or less like: “OK, everything can park it. You have my undivided attention and what is needed from you.”

When I am listening to a person and they are telling me their situation, I am looking for pauses. I am able to grab that something is going on with them, so let me delve in a little bit deeper. I tend to be more like: “OK, what is going on? Let me see if we can kind of work this out because you are not alone.”

I think that is what makes me a better leader: the compassion. It is the vulnerability. It is saying: “Hmm, you know, I am having a rough day, so I may need your help.” It is OK to ask for help because people love to help out. No matter what their titles are, they are going to help you out, and it is OK to be vulnerable.

Kevin Pho: I love that word, vulnerability, because too often in health care, we ignore vulnerability. Vulnerability sometimes is seen as a weakness. I talk to a lot of physicians, and going through medical school, internship, and residency, they are trained not to be vulnerable. Talk more in depth about that power of vulnerability and how sometimes vulnerability in health care can make one stronger.

Dana Y. Lujan: I have really grown to learn to be vulnerable, especially in health care. When I do have moments (and I know I am not on the clinician side, but I do work with NPs and RNs and providers), when you start asking for help or for a different perspective, people are more inclined to help you out. That is a really healing moment because we can hide behind our screens and think we are doing everyone justice by holding everything in. But what you are not seeing from the other side is what might be portraying out.

I am going to give you a good example. I compartmentalized my son’s father’s loss. So here I am wearing this protective armor not being vulnerable and not asking for help because I am thinking that I have to continue on the way with my kids and my in-laws, and keep very stoic. But down the road when speaking to people, you start finding out: “You know, Dana, you were a little intense.”

I thought I was holding everything together. No, you were a little bit intense. So with my son’s loss (and I know I am smiling about it now because it is growth), that vulnerability comes into place and now I get a whole different perspective of me. It is not: “Oh, she was trying to hold everything together.” It is: “She needs help.” It is that connection because we as people, as humans, are entwined to help each other out. We want to be able to be helpful, we want to be able to connect. Within that connection is what helps you heal from that profound loss.

Kevin Pho: For those other health care workers who are going through or have gone through unimaginable grief, are there any pieces of advice or wisdom that you could share with them?

Dana Y. Lujan: This is just a chapter in your life, and you just have to go through the uncomfortable. It is going to be a tremendous growth. I know it is easy for me to see it now because I have been through it. But I am telling you, every day, choose life. Every day, choose it because that is just a chapter of your story. Your whole story has not been written out yet. So you always have that choice.

Kevin Pho: We are talking to Dana Lujan. She is a health care strategist. Today’s KevinMD article is “Grief and leadership in health care.” Dana, let’s end with some take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Dana Y. Lujan: You don’t grow where you are comfortable. You grow when you decide to face what hurts, sit in it, and still believe something better is coming.

Kevin Pho: Dana, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight, and thanks again for coming back on the show.

Dana Y. Lujan: Thank you for having me.