Kenworthy, Amy LHurd, FionaDyer, Suzette2026-05-272026-05-272026-05-04Journal of Management Inquiry, ISSN: 1056-4926 (Print); 1552-6542 (Online), SAGE Publications. doi: 10.1177/105649262614453431056-49261552-6542http://hdl.handle.net/10292/21255In this essay, we vulnerably reflect upon an exploration of love and loss in academic life grounded in nine months of shared reflective musings following one of us receiving a terminal brain cancer diagnosis. Together, we harness the powerful metaphor of the Möbius strip to conceptualize love and loss as inseparable, co—constitutive forces shaping identity, relationality, and meaning—making. We offer four interwoven themes and the tensions we felt within them—emotional (grief/gratitude), social (isolation/connection), ethical (extraction/generativity), and temporal (very little time/lots of time)—as an invitation to reflect upon how we each engage within our roles, with our ‘academic work’, and with those around us. We view these tensions as both an illustration of the profound intertwining between personal and professional and love and loss and an affirmation that being an academic is not merely a cognitive pursuit, but a deeply human one.© The Author(s) 2026. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).3507 Strategy, Management and Organisational BehaviourBrain DisordersCancerMental Health1503 Business and Managementlovelossautoethnographywork-life balancetensionspoetryhumanityrelationshipsJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1177/10564926261445343