Navigating Grief in the Workplace: Mourning, Resilience, and Workplace Empathy Explored

The sudden loss of my brother cast a long shadow, one that followed me into meeting rooms and coffee breaks, reminding me that grief doesn't punch a time clock. 

Grief isn't an illness or mistake. It is a natural and sacred response to life’s inevitable losses, and in this episode, we peel back the layers of discomfort that shroud death and grief in the workplace. I offer up my story as a lesson in vulnerability and as a beacon for those who are adrift in the same stormy waters. 

There's no suffering Olympics. Your loss could be a parent, partner, pregnancy, pet, or a job. It's still grief. 

In this episode, we discuss: 

• How to offer support to colleagues experiencing loss
• Why we need to reconsider bereavement and expand into compassionate leave
• What we need from Human Resources and Executive Leadership  

Show notes:
You can listen to the 7-minute eulogy for my brother Bill Griffin, Jr.
Honoring Wisdom: My Grandmother Turns 100 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

Hey friends, this is the Career Refresh and I'm your host, jill Griffin. This week I want to talk to you about death and loss. I'm going to put a slight trigger warning on here because we are going to talk about death and if that doesn't feel right for you at this time, take a moment pause and I'll see you next week. I've been really curious about why we don't talk about the impact of losing a loved one, a pregnancy, a parent, a pet, a partner I don't know if I have any more Ps, but why a project right? Why we don't talk about it? It seems like we're all maybe afraid or uncomfortable and we don't know how to sit in our discomfort and look. I'm not talking about disclosing intimate experiences or sharing your personal feelings about the loss of a loved one in an everyday circumstance. I'm simply talking about creating space and compassion for the colleague who's gone through that loss. A few of you have reached out.

Speaker 1: 1:48

My brother died a few months ago and it was very sudden and tragic and it was just gut-wrenching for our family. He had an undiagnosed medical condition and it resulted in his death and I did a eulogy for him and if you would like to honor, help me honor his life. I'm going to put that link in the show notes. It's only seven minutes but please give it a listen because it really helps know that I'm honoring his life. The way the circumstances played out, I had to show up quickly, big time, and my grief was definitely slow and somewhat delayed to process. And in the weeks after his death, showing up for my family, showing up is definitely a big part of my personal brand. I always joke if I'm late. You should check the hospital. And in the weeks following his death I feel like there was a constant hum in my chest like a rrrrrrr right. There was just a level of anxiety and I remember thinking like, oh, is this my life now? Is this what happens now when you go through trauma, grief, bereavement. Is this what everybody else who's unfortunately been in this club, is this what they go through? And I will say for me that the physical pressure in my chest and grief took. It started to shift a little bit where I felt like I could inhale for the first time. It took about a month. That doesn't mean I was anywhere through it, it just meant that the physical sensation in my body, the waking up every morning with a thousand pound like rock on my chest, started to shift a little bit. So anyone that's going through that, I share that as my experience and I would love to hear yours.

Speaker 1: 3:38

In the weeks after his death I kept waiting for that pause to catch my breath and the grief man, oh, that mofo shows up in the most inconvenient times. You're in target, you're walking around, you see something and the next thing you know you're in. You're in like waves of grief. And the other thing which is actually horrifying and like really hilarious is we rolled him into the crematorium to Ozzy Osbourne's crazy train and freaking Applebee's has that as their commercial right now. So while I don't have a television and I don't have like cable, I do have Hulu and every time I see that dang Applebee's commercial and I hear that, that riff if any of you know the riff of the start of Ozzy's crazy train it's like turn it right. I'm like, oh man. And you know, the first time it happened I had almost had a heart attack. My heart seized up and now I kind of just laugh and I'm like, oh, there's brother, because I called him brother. You know, grief, it really gets your attention and if you try to avoid it, my friends, whoop, it is impossible. And trying to resist it's like it's that beach ball underwater it's gonna come back up and smack you in the face.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Grief isn't an illness or a mistake. It's the natural and sacred response to life's inevitable losses. Grief is a force of energy and it can't be controlled or predictive. It comes and goes on its own schedule and it certainly does not obey your plans or wishes. It is a basic bitch that does what it wants. We grieve because we love, and just like love, grief will do whatever it wants to you whenever it wants.

Speaker 1: 5:34

And I want to tell you that I did find a bit of the pause five months later when I took a trip with some friends that was planned for a very long time to Vietnam and Thailand. I've had this goal that my brother would always laugh at me for but also would tell me that he was really impressed by that. I wanted to hit 60 countries by the time I was 60. And Vietnam and Thailand would get me to number 56 and 57. So I'm not there. I have many years left, but I'm at 57 countries and I think it was. I think the slow pace of a lot of aspects of Vietnam was also high energy at times, but it really helped my central nervous system start to like reset and ratchet down.

Speaker 1: 6:14

And then I'll tell you God bless the man who was sitting next to me wearing the exact same Metallica t-shirt and cargo shorts and goofy camp hat that we laid my brother to rest in. My brother spent a lot of time in campgrounds and really loved the camping lifestyle, so he was often in one of his Metallica sweatshirts, cargo shorts and that goofy hat. And I swear I see this man and I just burst into tears. My brother had been on my mind a lot. I kept thinking like I think it was the sadness of my brother is not going to have new experiences like this, and I was feeling that grief. And then where now I burst into tears in front of some stranger. He froze and then his wife had tissues and overflow with kindness and compassion for me.

Speaker 1: 7:07

It's funny that as a culture we don't make the process of death easy. I mean, try Googling what to do with a family member that dies while traveling and what questions should I ask a medical examiner or a coroner or what authority should be notified when someone dies. I'm going to save you all the time and effort because your search returns are basically going to come up with lawyers. They're not going to necessarily tell you and I'd love to give you advice, but I don't know where you live and if you're in the US, I certainly don't know what state you're in and every state has a different way, a different level of insanity, red tape and bureaucracy to get through. So there's that. But whether it's a job, a loved one, a diminished hope, the loss of an opportunity, the state of the world, the state of your community, there's no suffering Olympics and in this conversation I am not going to stack rank losses, because no one's challenges or sufferings are more legit or more pure or more real than anyone else.

Speaker 1: 8:12

You know, I've spoken to former colleagues who I know experienced death of parents, spouses and one even a child in the time that we work together, since my brother's death, and everyone shared that they needed different support. We need compassionate release and we need compassion at leave from work. We need executives and HR leaders, bosses and colleagues to make space for compassionate leave. Three to five days isn't enough time. That also assumes that you need all the days off all at once, and most people I've spoken with needed the days sprinkled out over time. We needed to meet medical examiners and funeral directors and to manage estates and wills and go to courts and notarize and call banks and cry in bed and process the trauma. And I'm going to tell you from talking to people that these are the things that I hear consistently that we need One. We need clear bereavement and compassionate leave policies. One is for the immediate need and the other is for the needs over time. I recently heard of a large startup that is giving 20 days of compassionate leave off for the death of an immediate family member.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Organizations, I beg you to review your policies and potentially update them. We need it to be easily accessible and updated in the employee handbook. Most of us need both grace and space. Two, don't assume which kind of piles on the first one that we need all the time off at the same time. I recently had a client tell me that they wanted to work and it was better for them to compartmentalize. They didn't want to sit home in the immediate aftermath to process. They wanted to be busy. They wanted to move and think their grief out physically and it was a value for them that they were able to switch it on and off, go to work, come home grief that's what they needed.

Speaker 1: 10:16

Three holding space. We can't take away their pain or know what they've been through, but we can be human. Holding space is a very coachy term, but it's the practice of making space for someone else's experience and centering on them. To hold space, one must be fully present and create a safe environment and, once the circumstances are created, holding space fosters listening and empathizing. And, please, people acknowledge the death. I get it. There's a lot of swirl. You might feel uncomfortable. You don't want to trigger someone. Maybe they're not thinking about it right now and you don't want to bring it up. I assure you they're thinking about it. So, by simply letting someone know, you don't need to go into major detail, offering them the words that feel right for you. If you're saying the words I'm sorry or you're expressing condolences, you are letting the bereaved know that you acknowledge their loss, because the bereaved who lost someone. When you ignore it, it's like you're making the loss be invisible. And my God, if we're going through life and people are dying and it is invisible, that's not the place in the community that I want to be around.

Speaker 1: 11:36

The next one, number four, is empathy. Empathy is the capacity to recognize others perspectives as their true experience and to recognize others emotions and articulate them and avoid judgment. Do not take away or invalidate their lived experience. Because you had yours, your experience is different. I remember coming back and it was Labor Day weekend and I was kind of sitting there in shock like what just happened over the last two weeks and what like, oh my God. And I remember a friend calling me whose parent had passed away a couple of years ago in their sleep at a ripe old age and there is grief there. Again, we're not stack ranking experiences, but in the moment of not letting me have the experience of the tragedy of the suddenness of someone dying in a state campground, in a park and having to go and figure out all the details with the body and they're in their early fifties, is a very different experience. My experience isn't better or worse. It's my lived experience and that's what I mean by having empathy and holding space. Don't center it on you. It's not what person needs in that moment.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Number five knowing that you are a safe harbor, letting them know that you will check in with them on time to time, is the perfect thing that someone needs to hear. They don't need to talk about it. You're just saying to them listen, I'm gonna check in with you time to time. I know what you're going through. Simple Number six don't compare. If you've had a death, you may choose to say something like listen, I know when my insert ex died insert person's name died I needed different things at different times and it was helpful for me that I could reach out to a colleague when they needed it. That's it. Don't center it more and go into details about what you went through, because I'm telling you they probably don't have the capacity to hear it and you offering to lend in, pitch a hand, help them with their deliverables. We can take a walk around outside. We can take a break at the office. If you're going into the office, letting them know that you're a safe harbor is huge.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Number seven know that someone may be fine in one minute and be okay and the next minute they're not. It's not explainable, it's grief. I could be crying and laughing over a memory in a matter of seconds and others can too, so just know that that's totally human and normal and typical and expected. Number eight don't inadvertently measure their progress. Don't say things like oh, are you doing better. Instead, say things like hey, I'm glad you're here, the experience is not one and done. Holding that space again, not measuring progress, is gonna make someone feel safe and be able to start to get back to whatever normal and typical is for them. And number nine is don't ignore them out of your own discomfort. In the situation right, it's like in the moment, asking them if someone does have an experience and is showing grief, asking them and sitting with them, maybe asking them what they need. Do you need to process this? Do you wanna walk If it feels right? And again, corporate, I'm not making it an HR violation perhaps you could offer someone you could say would you like a hug? They may say, no, it's all good Again. You're just letting them know that you're this safe harbor.

Speaker 1: 15:30

And this talk about grief, especially around death, made me think about my professional community and my many clients who are experiencing loss of an opportunity or a job. And to you, I also wanna talk to you and say don't listen to the voices that tell you to lighten up, it's just a job, or they fill you with some bullshit cliche that we could stitch on a pillow. That's not what we're doing. We're not doing that people. Find the pause in the nooks and crannies of your day to allow yourself to process what has happened to you. You get to process it however you need to and whenever you need to. Find the helpers, find the people that hold space for you, whether that's a friend, a mentor, a therapist, a religious person. Find a coach anybody who can help you hold space and help you process and processing those feelings. Maybe you wanna do it with someone else, maybe you wanna do it by yourself, in the privacy of your own home. You get to choose how to do it, quietly, on your own time and space. I'm telling you that you come first and we're choosing you and don't let anyone dismiss you or tell you to get over it.

Speaker 1: 16:43

If you've lost a job or an experience, it may take time to process this and in the weeks that my brother has died get this we've lost three more family members two cousins and one grandmother. Three people so four, all in the Griffins have had a rough go of it. It's sad. One of my cousins died tragically. One of my cousins died and it was expected. My grandmother was a month shy of her 101st birthday 101 years, a month shy and it's fascinating to me to see cause I do this work, this mindset work, to see how all of these deaths hit me differently. My cousin that died in a plane I mean, the processing, the grief and the trauma of that and what his husband went through is beyond, beyond right. And as I move through the grief I remember that I I remember that he always was a man known for entrances and exits, so it very much fits him. And as the rabbi said at his funeral, that it was a mixture of crocodile dundee meets a chorus line. That pretty much sums up all of it, which I think is a beautiful, you know, beautiful, beautiful way of honoring his memory.

Speaker 1: 18:02

And then, like my grandmother, right, completely different three children, 13 grandchildren, 13 great grandchildren, a life well lived. And also I recently talked about her 100th birthday in an episode and I'll drop that into the show notes if you wanna listen to that and learn a little bit more about a 100 year old woman. But again, four deaths, right, wtf, crazy. I didn't even tell many friends about deaths number three and four because I thought it would believe it, and that's where I feel like, you know, this is when I feel like, oh God, sometimes the universe is such a bitch. It's like a bad high school boyfriend. There's a sweetness, a longing, an anticipation, connection, inspiration, confusion, what is going on, what is happening, all of it. And then I giggle because I can hear my grandmother holler and at my brother forgettin' their first. And then I can see all of them, my cousins, my brother, my grandmother, sitting around, also with many other relatives. I feel like they're all sitting by the campfire because we were big campers and they're havin' a beer, except my grandmother's, probably having a wife Zinfandel with like an extra sugar cube, because the woman like literally like free-based sugar.

Speaker 1: 19:14

Look, most of us have to work for money, benefits and intellectual stimulation when we need our faculties to perform, and performing under life circumstances can sometimes be incredibly challenging, and I know that I'm here and I'm called to be a guide, a navigator, and all of these experiences have made me a frickin' fantastic and empathetic coach and I'd love to hear from you if you have any shared experiences about how you've gotten through a loss. Again, I'd love to hear it and you can email me at hello at jilgrefancochingcom. So many of you have already come forward and I thank you and we need to help each other. This work is a ministry for me, and if you're looking for support in any of these ways and figuring out what is next for you in your career, I'd love to be your coach. My information is in the show notes and I'm wishing you lots of grace and space this week. I'll see you next time.