#232 Overachieving

I listen regularly to the podcast “Revisionist History” by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve been reading what he writes and started listening to his podcast around the pandemic.

In the tenth season of his podcast, he focused on successful screenwriters who had a failed script that had never become a movie. I started listening to the episode with Patty Jenkins, the director of films such as Monster or the recent Wonder Woman films. When discussing about her career and success, it came up that Jenkins’ father had died when she was seven.

Malcolm Gladwell has written about this before, but I hadn’t read it. They discussed the effect on children who lost a parent before 16. They mentioned that losing a father will have a strong impact in their lives (obviously).

After Janne died, a few good friends came forward to tell me about their lives. There are more people than I realize who have undergone this. Losing a father or a mother is just the worst fear for a child. All of my friends gave me encouragement as all of them are doing good even if they’d give anything to have their parent back.

Gladwell mentioned about a UK study where researchers explored the impact on children losing a parent before 16. A child losing a parent experiences the realization of their worst fear so nothing could be as hard as that. They might become overachievers on trying to cope with their experience. There is also some risk associated with it, but it depends on many factors. The impact could last as long as 71 years after the death of a parent.

One of the suggestions is to be open with children on what they are going through in a honest way. At least on this, we did the right thing. As soon as Janne was diagnosed, the boys knew about it. And when she was about to leave, I had the hard task to tell them. Today, we talk about what they are going through even if it might be hard.

Besides trying to be Ok, I am focusing on giving them an experience that will help them become what they want to be. Janne will always be missing and that loss will be impossible to mend. I just hope that with the right intentions, this serves as a trampoline so they can be achieve whatever they want.