Celebrations Without Posts
April 1, 2026
I haven’t been posting on social media often this past month. But I have been looking. 🙂 I see many postings of “I am here with this group!” Or “Just finished my keynote in front of (pick a number) attendees.” Bravo and brava to all who are celebrating those big moments at work. I am not trying to be Betty Bitter, comparative, or petty although it might look like that. I am here to offer another way to look at the work we do and how it might not be able to be celebrated so publicly.
Sometimes our deep work can’t be publicly acknowledges nor as outward facing. It’s work done in rooms with closed doors or on one on one Zooms. It’s done in the trenches, day to day. It’s quiet. It requires serious cognitive, emotional and dare I say spiritual heavy lifting BIG energy, it is confidential and it often cannot be memorialized with a post. Yet it sure is does deserve to be recognized and acknowledged. Bravo and Bravo to the important work that can’t be outwardly applauded.
So in this spirit, I would like to cheer on an admin I follow on Linked In. He posted….
“It’s that time of year again when everyone is announcing the next role, the new title, the exciting move….the [insert here].
So I thought I’d share my own big update.
I am applying for nothing.
I am studying nothing.
I have accepted no new appointment.
This year my grand plan is simply this: turn up, [and] do the work well.”
Thank you, colleague, for the reminder that doing the work on the ground, as is, no big group of people photo smiling, is also very often really good work and is enough.
My work is messy. I work with folks in schools around rolling out programs that will bring out resistance and they will struggle with the responses – with teams thinking about strategic communication around big changes that deeply affect those in the organization and how they will be doing their work moving forward – with individuals striving to have humane, growth producing and very hard conversations as things aren’t going well. It’s private, low volume work. It’s emotionally challenging ‘stretch’ work and often uncomfortable. Not camera ready.
Sometimes folks don’t feel at ease about putting out a picture of the group doing the work because it might ‘admit’ something. It might say, “We don’t have it together. We are struggling. We have challenges.” Sometimes a good, necessary, and important work isn’t photographable.
Your work too, I imagine, is also often messy and unphotographable. Working with the kid who is struggling, talking to the employee who is having personal challenges and bringing them to work in ways aren’t helpful, managing up with a supervisor who gets defensive, dealing with transitions that are bumpy or uncertain. We don’t announce or take pictures of these moments. And yet, it’s necessary and important work to be doing. Brava. I see you. In those moments, we need to refresh our mindset and discover new ways to value our moments of growth.
Ask yourself:
- How can you honor work that often goes unnoticed and unseen – yours and others?
- Where are you growing right now in ways no one else can see—but you know matters?
- We often can’t measure impact in visible ways or take that photo to say, “Woo Hoo!” How can you measure that impact anyways?
Yes, Yes, Yes, acknowledge and celebrate the big moments! Always! And work that doesn’t get posted is also work that matters. Let’s dignify the invisible. Join me.
Questions, comments, or suggestions? Feel free to email me at jennifer@jenniferabrams.com.
Cool Resources
When the Ache Remains: Lessons on Tending to the Unfixable and Finding Beauty Anyway Psychotherapist and author of Already Enough, Lisa Olivera blends her own personal experience of living with depression with therapeutic wisdom in a moving exploration of the emotional pain each of us lives with to offer readers guidance on holding the ache alongside the beauty. Emotional pain, of all kinds and magnitudes, is part of life. We’ll never be able to find ourselves free of it; no meditation or amount of therapy will cure us of the harder parts of being alive. The practice of turning toward the ache with care—reverence, even—might be one of the most meaningful gifts we can give ourselves. It might even save us.
Protocol Cards were designed to solve a need from our Nervous System Mastery community. They wanted a way to integrate the tools we teach into their lives more easily. So we initially created this as a resource for our student community, but after so much positive feedback we decided to open them up to the world.
How to Fall in Love with Questions: A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty by Elizabeth Weingarten. “Designed to inspire anyone who feels stuck, powerless, and drained, How to Fall in Love with Questions challenges us to unlock our minds and embark on the kind of self-discovery that’s only possible when we feel most alive—that is, when we don’t know what will happen next.”
