Memento Mori: The Art of Dying to Lead Again

When Depeche Mode released Memento Mori, their haunting melodies transformed mortality into meditation. In the wake of a global pandemic, the phrase felt less like a warning and more like a whisper: Pay attention. None of this is forever.

That whisper has echoed through my life in unexpected ways — in a classroom, in a hospital room, and in the quiet spaces between who I was and who I am becoming.

When the Mirror Turned

My Memento Mori came alive not through philosophy, but through diagnosis.

Cancer has a way of pulling you into a mirror you didn’t ask to face. The sterile quiet. The hum of machines. The long pause between the words “we found something” and “we have a plan.”

In that silence, I saw both endings and beginnings. I realized how many parts of me had been running on survival — overworking, over-giving, over-proving. Cancer became my teacher, my mirror, and my invitation to reflect, release, and rewrite.

That moment didn’t just change my life, it changed how I lead.

The Death We Don’t Talk About

Years earlier, in a seminar at Harvard, Cornel West asked a question that cracked something open in me:

He wasn’t being morbid. He was naming a truth about transformation — that genuine learning requires a kind of death. A dying to illusion, ego, and comfort.

At the time, I didn’t understand. Now I do. Reflection is its own kind of dying — a conscious letting go of who we were in order to make space for who we might become.

The Pandemic as a Collective Funeral

The pandemic was our collective Memento Mori.

In education, it exposed the fragility of our systems and the exhaustion of our leaders. Decisions about safety and equity weighed heavier than any policy manual could hold.

In that disruption, many leaders began to ask deeper questions:Who am I now? What no longer fits? What have I outgrown?

We were witnessing not just the end of routines, but the death of identities built on endurance rather than evolution.

Dying to Lead

Memento Mori is a paradox: by remembering we must die, we learn how to live — and lead — more fully.

To lead reflectively is to practice small deaths every day:

• Die to ego, so we can lead with empathy.

• Die to certainty, so we can stay curious.

• Die to busyness, so we can dwell in being.

These deaths are not losses. They’re liberations.

Reflection is how we compost what no longer serves us and grow something wiser in its place.

From Reflection to Renewal

Through Sabbaticalize, I’ve seen how reflection can become a living Memento Mori — a way to pause long enough to let something new be born.

A sabbatical is a kind of sacred death and rebirth. It asks:

• What must end for something new to begin?

• What stories of leadership no longer serve me?

• Who might I become if I allowed myself to rest, to rethink, to renew?

Every transformational leader I’ve coached has faced these questions. The brave ones don’t rush through them. They stay. They listen. They let go.

The Paradox of Presence

There’s an unexpected freedom in remembering you must die. You stop pretending time is infinite. You stop chasing perfection. You start noticing the sacred in the ordinary — a student’s laughter, a quiet morning, the audacity of being alive.

Healing taught me that the goal was never to return to who I was “before.” That version of me had already done her work.

The art of leadership — and life — is learning to die many times and still keep loving the world.

Living the Lesson

Cornel West’s question still echoes:

Have you died by coming to Harvard?

Today, I might ask leaders a version of my own:

Have you reflected deeply enough to be reborn?

Memento Mori. Not as a grim reminder —but as a radical invitation.

Because when we remember we must die, we finally begin to live —and lead — with the clarity, courage, and compassion our times demand.

Author’s Note

I write this as both an educator and a survivor — someone who has learned that reflection isn’t an intellectual exercise; it’s a spiritual act of renewal.

Through Sabbaticalize, I help education leaders take intentional pauses — sabbaticals for the soul — to rediscover purpose, presence, and possibility. Because when leaders reflect, systems transform.

Memento Mori. Remember you must die. And in that remembering, remember to live.