Futurist(Mom)

Every parent holds a vision of the future their children will inherit—but what happens when that future is no longer possible? Juli Rush is both a futurist and a death doula, uniquely positioned to help us navigate what she calls "futures' death"—the grief that comes when the world we expected for our kids fundamentally changes. 

Juli teaches foresight thinking to both graduate students and middle schoolers, helping them learn to think—and feel—about multiple possible futures. Today, she guides us through the emotional work of letting go, the importance of honoring our grief, and how to help our children build hope and agency even as they inherit unprecedented uncertainty.

Why This Matters:

→ Parents are grieving a future that will never exist—and we're not talking about it. We imagined a certain world for our children: stable careers, predictable milestones, maybe a better version of what we had. That future is dying or already dead. Until we acknowledge and process this loss, we can't help our kids navigate what's actually ahead.

→ Our kids can feel our unprocessed grief—and it shapes how they see their own future. When parents carry unexpressed disappointment, anxiety, or sadness about the future, children absorb it. If we don't do our own emotional work around letting go, we risk projecting our fears onto them or clinging to expectations that no longer serve them.

→ Foresight isn't just about thinking—it's about feeling. Teaching kids (and ourselves) to engage with the future means holding both grief and joy, loss and possibility. Juli's work shows that we can honor what's ending while building the capacity to imagine and create what comes next. This isn't toxic positivity—it's the necessary emotional literacy for navigating uncertainty.