Maybe you had to share the news of an unexpected death, or fire someone, or divorce someone, or come out to your parents - any number of things. So: what was the news, who did you have to tell, what was your method, and how did it go?
That would be telling my Mom that her current husband had molested me. Didn’t go over so well. I was 17.
My method was via telephone because I didn’t live with them at the time and she was so angry with me over other stuff that she refused to come and speak to me in person.
I didn’t feel I had a choice in telling, because my therapist had reported it to social services and there was a pending investigation of his children.
The worst news is probably telling my kids that their mom and I were separating and getting divorced. The hardest news for me to spit out was to tell someone (not my kids’ mom) that I had been unfaithful.
In comparison, telling my kids that their Grandpa just died was a piece of cake.
Other tough news to deliver is telling a client that they have lost their case. That usually happens when they’re in the courtroom and the jury comes in, but sometimes it’s an appeal and I have to make a phone call.
The hardest news I ever had to tell was when I had to call my mother and tell her my brother (her son) had committed suicide.
It went about as well as you’d imagine.
Telling my then 58-year-old mother that she has Alzheimer’s disease.
Even the thought of that makes me feel sick to my stomach. Sorry you had to experience it.
For me, it was telling my mother when I was 16 that I was pregnant. It especially galled me because I knew she wouldn’t be surprised. I always managed to live down to her expectations.
My dad was not well for a while, so it was not a surprize. I called my uncle (his younger brother - who I had not spoken to in a few years) to let him know dad was in the hospital and it was serious. A couple days later I had to call him back and let him know dad was gone.
That same day I had to sit down with my 9 and 12 year old and let them know their grandad was gone.
In both cases I, being shocked by the experience myself, had to be strong - so I was very direct and told it straight. I dont know how else I could have done it.
I then had to call my dad’s girlfriend, and listen to her weep. I saw her a few days later. That was tough, too.
When I was 17, I had to tell my baby sister our grandmother had moved into our home not simply to make it easier to take care of, but to die among family. I’ve always been faintly resentful that our parents wouldn’t tell her that Grandma’s situation had been judged hopeless by the doctors; she kept thinking that Grandma was going to get better.
Last year, I had to tell my boss, who really liked me, that I was going to quit my job effective immediately because the job was quite literally killing me. 
My co-workers kinda sorta saw it coming (among other things, I’d already been in the ER with a panic attack and I never ate any solid food at work from that moment until I left the job) but I knew I was going to torpedo my career by doing this too. However, I simply had no choice.
I phoned my brother, when Mom was in intensive care.
She told me to tell him not to come up to visit.
She died that night.
I was the one to phone my brother, & tell him the news.
He thinks I did it deliberately, to hurt him.
He hates me.
Fetal demise in utero, minutes before I had to deliver the baby. Ugh.
She’d come into the OB department in hard labor, but when we hooked her up to the monitors, there was no fetal heartbeat.
I was a resident at the time, and while her attending, who she’d been seeing during the pregnancy, stopped by, he left it to me to tell her, and also was conspicuously absent at the delivery, leaving only me to do everything (along with our excellent OB RNs, fortunately.) Asshole attending. I’m still pissed, nearly 3 decades later.
Since then I’ve delivered a lot of death sentences to patients, including one just last week. But those have not been so hard as that fetal demise.
I had to call my dad who was on day one of a much anticipated fishing trip and tell him that his wife of 40 years (my mom) had had a heart attack and died that night. Dad was several hours away, and I’m so so glad that he had his best friend and brother in law with him, along with my brothers, for the drive home.
My aunt sent me over to my grandmothers house because she wasn’t answering the phone, and I had to let everyone know she had passed away. Thankfully, the key wasn’t where she usually hid it, so I had to have the cops break the door, and I never saw the body myself.
Was hard telling my two kids their mom and I were divorcing…was harder to see their immediate reaction, that was rough.
Damn. The worst news I’ve had to give someone was that he was fired. I was the department manager and had just decided on the timeframe of leaving the company prior to my marriage and move overseas. One of my people was new and just not working out; I didn’t want to leave a mess for my successor to deal with. It took me the better part of the morning to talk things over with the head of Personnel and rehearse what I wanted to say with her and with another department manager. I felt that I handled it cleanly and professionally, and it was definitely the right decision, so there’s that.
It was hard, but that experience doesn’t hold a candle to the others in this thread, for which I’m grateful, actually.
I’ve had to call and tell family members that the baby we had worked so hard to adopt had to be surrendered to his birth father. Then, some time later, that the next baby we got (and have gotten to keep) has a progressive incurable (so far; fingers crossed) illness. Later, it fell to me to translate doctor-speak for my aging mother and tell her bluntly - because subtlety didn’t work anymore - that even if they were able to continue to revive her son (my brother) he was almost certainly suffering massive brain damage to the point of never waking up again. And several hours later, to call each of my siblings and tell them that he was gone.
When another brother’s son was diagnosed with a very scary childhood disease (he’s doing well now) my brother called me and asked me to tell everyone else in the family. He told me it was because I had practice at delivering bad news and was able somehow to ease the distress of others at the initial news.
I was horrified at his news and upset for his family, but an inappropriate part of me wanted to laugh. What an odd and unfortunate thing to be really good at.
More recently, I’ve had to fire people. Phew. Hate that, even when it clearly needs to be done. Difficult in a different way - there’s the reality and/or perception (depending on the situation) that I could choose to give a reprieve. With the other situations, I clearly had no choice but to deliver bad news.
I had to lay my brother off from my my small business. He in no way could afford the financial hit but we in no way could afford to give him one more paycheck.
He and I are very close and I was very hurt at how badly he took it. I mean, I totally understand being upset that you’re losing your job but I was also not getting paid, I don’t have a spouse to pick up the bills, and I couldn’t get another job (because I needed to stay to fix the company).
I actually feel better about the situation now, reading everyone else’s stories. Yeesh
I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor after all when I realized that I would have to do things like this. You know this now, but your attending’s absence was deliberate, so you would know how to do this kind of thing.
I ended up not having the GPA for med school anyway.
Telling my (then 10 year old) son his father was dead.
That was the hardest and it took me hours to tell him.
I’ve had to call a few clients to tell them their pets had died while they were away. In all the cases the pets were old/sick and it wasn’t unexpected but it is still a hard call to make. I always end up crying on the phone with them.
Hardest was telling my mother I had been severely injured in a violent incident abroad. I hated that phone call.
She was very calm and optimistic about it, and surprisingly I healed quickly with no lasting damage.