The Grieving Coworker

Tomorrow, January 25th, marks the one year anniversary of my foster mom's passing. In the year since her death, I have spent countless hours exploring what it means to be grieving while in the workplace.

As Sharon's health started to rapidly decline, I explored what options I had in terms of vacation and sick time so that I could get back to Kansas to be with her. Fortunately, I had stockpiled nearly 600 hours in sick/vacation time to use for FMLA, ensuring that I was able to be away for an extended time and still be able to pay my bills.

I am keenly aware of how privileged I was to be able to take several weeks away from work to process my grief. I know that is an option not everyone has.

In my process of deciding what it looked like to return to work, I had to come to terms with how I was going to be able to control my emotions. You see, the wild thing about grief is how it manifests itself in your body. You have no control over it. Out of nowhere there's a deep heaviness on your chest. Your eyes fill with sorrow. Your body feels fatigued, and your focus fades. One of my grief triggers was that for the longest time I would simply just start crying out of nowhere and with no rhyme or reason to it. What was I going to do when this happened during a meeting and how would my colleagues respond? So, before I knew it, on top of figuring out my grief, I had to figure out the stressors of what it meant to be at work.

Now that I'm a year into this, the biggest lesson that I've learned in dealing with grief - and especially in context of the workplace - is that those who have not had to experience it firsthand are uncomfortable and unaware. This, of course, is at no fault of their own. For those of us who live with grief, we know how nuanced it can be. We know that as milestones approach, our attention fades. Our eyes suddenly fill with water after something reminds you of a precious memory. How incredibly hard it is to get out of bed in the morning knowing that your day will be full of grief triggers while working.

I don't claim to be an expert on grief, but I do want to share out into my network some meaningful ways in which my coworkers, supervisors, and teams have helped me through my grief. My hope is that at minimum you can take these thoughts and apply them to your own workplace when you find yourself alongside your grieving coworker.

Acknowledge Their Grief

I had a lot of anxiety in returning to work. I didn't know how I'd be received, because hearing about someone's grief is different than experiencing someone's grief. Fortunately, upon my return I was mostly met with moments from my students, staff, and colleagues that were full of acknowledgements. And when I started my new role at CBIZ, there were these moments, too. These are the conversations where I'd receive a variety of "I'm so sorry that happened," and "that's got to be really hard to go through." All of these moments shared the common theme of leaving out the silver-lining. Why? Because there's no possible way to silver-line someone losing a loved one. It's these simple acknowledgements that ended up meaning the most to me. A simple statement of acknowledgement goes a lot way. It's empathy in action.

"Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn't mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining." - David Kessler

Allow Those Grieving To Step Out

One of the hardest components of going back to work was feeling as if I was returning to normal. When Sharon died, my world stopped, and returning to work meant that it started to spin again. For weeks I'd find myself on the verge of crying and had to step out from meetings, skip out on team lunches, and push meetings when needed. To be able to have the support of my managers in these moments, allowing me space to step out and take time, was critical in being able to be productive at work. By being allowed to feel my way through those moments, instead of stifling them, I could return my focus to work rather than hyper-fixating the rest of the day on trying to not breakdown. Give your teammate the space and ability to self-manage and step out when these moments happen. The work will get done, meeting notes can be shared, and time can always be flexed.

Do Not Place A Timeline

Grief is not linear and there is no "completed by" date. Hard to understand when we exist in a society that likes to fit things neatly in the box, right? It was six months after Sharon passed that I joined the team at CBIZ and I had to, again, consider what it would be like to work while grieving. My switch in careers was coupled with moving back home to Kansas and buying a house - so there was a lot of life happening. These milestones triggered my grief, and I knew it would show up in my new place of work. But how do you do explain that you're still experiencing grief when it's been six months? Moments of shame and embarrassment started to find their way into my thoughts. I mean, should I still be grieving? After all, it's been half a year and I need to move on, right? False. There's no such thing. Grief is a life-long journey and there are going to be moments where it rises to the surface more than others. Don't ask, or force, your grieving teammate to "wrap it up," and "move on." Instead, consider asking about important milestones and triggers to be aware of and how you can best help them work through it. What is it that your teammate needs to set them up for success in these moments?

"We live in a culture where people need us to move through our grief for the sake of their own comfort and grief does not have a timeline. It takes as long as it takes." - Brene Brown

Allow Space To Talk

To know me is to know Sharon. My teammates have heard stories about her and the impact she's had on me. There have been weekly updates that have gone out to the team that literally said that I'm OOO and unreachable because I'll be an emotional wreck around milestone dates. I've shared during 1:1's with managers that I'm going through a hard grief moment and they've met me with compassion and space. When I bring up Sharon, my team understands what it means to me. They send messages of support if I share it's been a rough day. I have no shame, guilt, or embarrassment, about my grief anymore, and that's in part due to the way my team has allowed me to talk about my grief in the work place. When your teammate brings up their person, don't try and immediately switch the topic or offer a silver-lining. Those who have departed still remain a part of our own stories and being able to talk about them is an important part of the grieving process. Don't feel like every time they mention their name, you have to continually say, "sorry for your loss," or turn it into a weird moment. Sure, there are conversations where that feels like a natural thing to say, but when I'm talking with coworkers about times our moms drove us crazy, and I share my story about Sharon - I'm not seeking out condolences; I'm just having a normal conversation.

Advocate for Changes

This is specifically for those who are in positions of power and change: please work with your powers at be to create more flexible grievance policies. Three days (which seems to be the norm) for bereavement is simply not enough. Three days after a death doesn't even give enough time off for the celebration of life services in some cases. For me, it took weeks to not wake up and experience deep, debilitating, stomach pains. Grief and death isn't something most companies put much stock into, but I'm hoping that we can start to change that conversation. Obviously we can't give everyone months off of work, but what concessions are there that we could make? What employee resources can we tap into? Do you offer a pool for those who can, and are able, to donate PTO to a grieving teammate who is out of their own? Do you provide flexibility and space for the day to day operations upon return? If you're a manager, are there resources you can equip yourself with to help better lead, and support, your grieving employee? Think about it. Look into it. Advocate to fill in the gaps you find.

Putting It Together

Why does this matter? Shouldn't personal life stay out of the workplace? Isn't this something we need to handle on our owns? Sure, you might believe that, but the truth is that's not how this works. We can't simply turn off grief during the work day. We can't conveniently forget that someone who was a main character in our story is no longer with us. There's no magic cure or time table for grief. It just is. So, we - as teammates, managers, and colleagues - need to learn how to support our grieving colleagues. Teaching ourselves and embracing different ways to gently support our colleagues is just one of the ways we can continue to build strong teams and community. After all, we spend 40+ hours a week together; wouldn't you like to be able to live those hours as authentically as you can? Both the good and the grieving?

For the grieving coworkers reading this: I see you and I sit in those moments with you. Grief is hard work - and unfortunately not something we can opt out of doing. You showing up each day as authentically as you can is all we can ask of you - and for you to show up as such, you should be proud of yourself.

To those in my community over the last year: thank you for allowing me the space and time to grieve openly and without shame or embarrassment.