Endings Literacy Assessment
ILID Endings Literacy Assessment
A sensemaking tool for leaders, teams, and communities moving through change.
When something changes inside a team, organization, community, or leadership structure, people often want to move quickly into the next plan.
But if something mattered, and it no longer lives in the same way, grief may be present. That grief may show up as resistance, silence, over-functioning, confusion, conflict, fatigue, nostalgia, urgency, loss of trust, or the quiet but very-present sense that something important is not being named.
The ILID Endings Literacy Assessment helps leaders, teams, and convening spaces notice what has changed, look for the losses inside that change, and begin identifying what kind of tending may be needed before the next form can be carried well.
ILID stands for I Let It Die
A four-part grief literacy practice for tending endings — a shared structure for noticing what changed and choosing how to carry it well.
Investigate the inspiration
The moment that made people pause, ache, resist, react, avoid, or recognize that something changed.
Look for the losses
The visible and hidden losses inside the change, including shifts in identity, role, trust, access, ease, belonging, rhythm, leadership, or future expectation.
Intimacy with what the loss is asking
The closer listening required to understand what the ending may be asking people to acknowledge, release, repair, honor, or carry differently.
Decide on the Death Care
The act of tending chosen because something mattered and changed. It may look like facilitated conversation, repair, remembrance, closure of an old form, a new boundary, a leadership practice, a shared naming, or another response that is good enough for now and safe enough to try.
A structured way to listen for what is moving under the surface
The ILID Endings Literacy Assessment gives a group a structured way to listen for grief, loss, and transition without forcing people into performance, disclosure, or premature resolution.
It can help reveal what people already know but may not have had language for yet — and surface the places where leadership, organizers, facilitators, or conveners may be underestimating the emotional reality of a transition.
Especially useful when a group is moving through
- A founder, leader, or longtime staff member stepping away
- A succession or leadership transition
- A program, partnership, or project ending
- A community changing shape
- A retreat, summit, or gathering that opened something people still need help integrating
- A values-based organization navigating fatigue, conflict, or uncertainty
- A team carrying grief that has been treated as a logistics problem
- A learning space where liberation-centered material is changing how people understand themselves, their relationships, and the systems they are inside
A pilot, designed around your context
A pilot version can be designed for a specific team, cohort, organization, or convening space. The process may include:
An anonymous assessment shaped around the ILID framework
A review of responses to identify patterns, losses, tensions, and care needs
A written synthesis from Akilah naming what is present in the material
A live briefing or conversation with the people guiding the work
Recommended next steps for tending what has changed
The goal is to help the group understand what is already moving under the surface — and what kind of tending could support a more honest transition.
The assessment may be enough on its own
In some cases, it may point toward a deeper engagement — shaped around the group's capacity, context, and readiness:
A facilitated group conversation or town hall
A leadership reflection session using the ILID framework
A communal eulogy for a role, season, project, or structure that is ending
A retreat or gathering integration session
A facilitated Joy Assessment or joy-and-grief reflection process
A custom ILID learning container for leaders, facilitators, educators, or community stewards
Many transitions are planned at the level of logistics while grief is left unnamed. People may understand what is changing on paper and still need help tending what the change means in their bodies, relationships, histories, roles, hopes, and sense of belonging.
What changed? What mattered? What losses are visible? What losses are hidden? What is this ending asking for? What kind of Death Care could help people move from grief-struck to grieftending?
Akilah S. Richards
Akilah is a grief literacy educator, Savorist, writer, speaker, and facilitator whose work explores the endings we live through without funerals — and what becomes possible when we learn to tend them. She is the creator of ILID, I Let It Die, a four-part grief literacy practice for tending endings, and co-director of Bringing Flowers, a multi-year body of work exploring the interlocks of joy and grief.
Her work draws from unschooling, deschooling, liberation practice, ritual, storytelling, body grief, and decades of public teaching, podcasting, facilitation, and community-based learning.
Learn more about Akilah →Moving through a meaningful transition?
If your team, organization, community, or convening space would benefit from an ILID-based assessment, reach out to begin a conversation.
Text Akilah · 1-678-825-4569