Career grief rarely arrives with clean timing or polite manners, which tracks, because the moments rearranging your identity tend to show up with the emotional grace of a flat Diet Coke.

Some career moments don’t leave when the meeting ends, which is deeply inconvenient for women who enjoy being efficient with their emotional processing.

The résumé can say “led cross-functional initiatives.” The body can say, “Yes, and we were dead behind the eyes by Tuesday.”

The old list still looked like success on paper. Your body knew the career promise had expired before your résumé had language for it.