What Happens When the Place That Shaped You Disappears

When my K-12 alma mater, Price, announced it was closing, people naturally focused on the practical losses I would experience. They asked about my job. They asked where students would go next year. They asked what would happen to the campus. Those are all important questions, but they aren't the focus of my grief.

What I've realized over the past few months is that I'm grieving multiple losses at once. Yes, I'm losing a workplace. Yes, Ava is losing her school. But underneath those realities is something harder to explain. Price is one of the few places that has existed across every chapter of my life. It wasn't simply a school I attended or an organization that employed me. It was the backdrop for many of the experiences that shaped me into who I am today.

The Place Where I Learned Who I Am

When I think about Price, I don't immediately think about classrooms or school events; I think about foundation.

Price is where I learned to think critically and love learning. It's where my faith began. It's where I developed a sense of cultural identity and pride. It's where I formed friendships, memories, and experiences that would stay with me long after graduation. So much of who I became intellectually, spiritually, culturally, and socially can be traced back to my years at Price.

We often talk about primary and secondary school as if they’re small chapters in a person's life. But I’ve never thought. The foundations we build as children often become the frameworks we carry into adulthood. (Just ask any therapist!) Long before I attended Stanford, completed law school, worked in education, got married, became a mother, or started rebuilding my life after divorce, there was Price. It was helping shape the person who would eventually do and become all of those things.

A Rare Opportunity to Come Full Circle

And then, one of the gifts I never expected was the opportunity to return as an adult. At different points in my life, I walked that campus as a student, a board member, an employee, and a mother. Each role gave me a different perspective on the same community, but all of them reinforced what I already knew: there was something so very special about this place.

But the greatest gift of all was sharing it with Ava. There was something deeply meaningful about watching my daughter walk the same campus that played such an important role in my own childhood. We participated in some of the same traditions. We knew some of the same faculty and families. For a moment, our stories overlapped. Not many parents get the chance to hand a piece of their own childhood directly to their children, and I don't take that experience lightly.

The Grief I Didn't Expect

What surprises me most is that my grief isn't really about the past; it's about the future.

As parents, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we'll pass down to our children. Sometimes it's values. Sometimes it's traditions. Sometimes it's stories. And sometimes, if we're lucky, it's a community. I always assumed that Price would be one of the things I could pass down. Not necessarily because my daughters needed to attend the same school, but because I believed it would always be there.

Now I'm facing the reality that it won't be.

There's a sadness in knowing that Eden will never experience the place that shaped so much of my life. There's sadness in knowing future families won't benefit from the same community that benefited mine. And there's sadness in watching the end of a legacy that has impacted generations of students. Thats all because Price is irreplaceable and inimitable.

More Than a School

If I could say one thing to Price, it would be thank you.

Thank you for the foundation. Thank you for the memories. Thank you for the friendships, the faith, the education, and the sense of identity you helped cultivate. Thank you for being a place where Black children were known, challenged, celebrated, and encouraged to become their fullest selves.

Most of all, thank you for reminding me that the most meaningful institutions aren't defined by buildings. They're defined by the people they shape.

Price may be closing its doors, but its influence will continue through thousands of students, families, educators, and alumni who carry pieces of it wherever they go. And while I'm still grieving the loss, I'm increasingly aware of this.