The Doctor Won’t See You Now

By Susan Shaw

This past weekend, I returned to Colgate University for my 25th college reunion. It was my first time back since graduation, and it was deeply meaningful. My husband Nick and I gave a lecture about the power of love and resilience, how we’ve navigated the past six years as a couple and a family after the death of our 9-year-old son, William, in 2019.

It was an honor to speak on something so personal and purposeful. To return to the place where my dreams first took shape and now share what has become my life’s work: grief advocacy, storytelling, and the radical act of making space for sorrow.

Many classmates already knew our story from the Colgate alumni notes or from reading the description of our talk in the reunion program. I had no hesitation showing up fully as myself - open about child loss, willing to speak plainly about grief. But even when you’re grounded in your truth, there are moments that catch you off guard. And for me, that moment came during cocktail hour at our class dinner.

I struck up a conversation with a woman I didn’t remember from our undergrad days. She told me she’s a dermatologist. When she asked what I do, I shared that I’m a grief advocate and educator, and that my son died six years ago.

And then everything shifted.

Her body recoiled. Her shoulders hunched. She waved her hands like she was swatting away the air between us and said, “Oh, I just can’t. I can’t even…”

It was as if my story, my presence, my truth, was too much.

Suddenly, I felt the need to defend myself. To justify my work. To explain why talking about my dead child matters. Why honoring William openly matters. Why making space for grief matters, not just for me, but for everyone who has ever known loss.

And yet, there I was, standing in front of a doctor, someone trained to treat the human body, who couldn’t bear to witness the human heart. It hurt.

And it made me wonder: what if I had responded to her profession the way she responded to mine? What if, when she told me she was a dermatologist, I had said, “Ugh, how can you even do that? That’s so disgusting—looking at boils and lesions all day?” Imagine how dismissive, how dehumanizing, that would be after all the years she spent studying, training, and dedicating herself to healing.

That’s what her reaction felt like to me. A dismissal not only of my work, but of my story, my grief, my child.

But then, later that evening, something else happened, something round and redemptive.

I was standing in the buffet line when I bumped into another classmate. He asked what had brought me back to reunion, and I told him that Nick and I had given a talk on child loss and resilience. His face softened. “Oh wow,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

Then he shared that his wife is a grief and trauma therapist. And that he’d recently lost his best friend.

I asked him his friend’s name.

“Andy,” he said, visibly moved that I cared to ask.

And in that moment, we saw each other. Two people in a crowded dining room, connected by something real. I made space for his grief, and he made space for mine. And it was beautiful.

Life gives us so many chances to connect. But we often miss them because we turn away from discomfort. We walk around pain instead of through it. And when we do that, we leave people feeling even more alone in what is already unbearably hard.

But what if we got curious instead? What if we leaned into the tender places, not away from them? What if we made room for grief, for stories, for vulnerability, for truth?

What if we saw each other?

Because when we allow people to show up as their whole selves, including the broken parts, we create space for healing. For connection. For love.

Let’s stop asking people to hide what hurts. Let’s meet them there.

Let’s be people who can see.