My Learnings 2020 - Part 1

2020 was a difficult year for most but instead of focusing on the challenges I have tried to summarise what I have taken away and the knowledge I will take forward.

The next three days I will share my thoughts on three different topics

Grief

This is something that, prior to this year, luckily I didn’t know much about. My grandparents passed away when I was quite young so didn’t really reflect on the effect afterwards. However, since my dad passed away a year ago I have had to really look into it and myself a lot more.

Being from a HR background and the “clear on paper” policies we give employees on bereavement leave, it states that people can take time off for a few days or a week after the passing of a close family member?! 

However life doesn’t follow these guidelines, in my case the grief process didn’t really start until months after my dad had died.

At first I didn’t know what I was feeling and I struggled to understand it in my own head let alone talk about it but it became more and more apparent I was grieving. It made me realise through my own frustration of people not asking how I was anymore and moving on that sometimes we do forget to check in with people when they might need it. 

So I am taking away that even though an event or situation may happen to someone don’t forget them check in on them as they might need you days, weeks, months after.

The process isn’t a straight forward as a policy we all deal with things in different ways so as a friend, colleague and employee please talk :)

Resources:

https://amzn.to/38ZRVEV - Reasons to Stay Alive

https://amzn.to/391e9q3 - The Greatest Secret

I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on this or if you have any resources to share.