Hello, my career bestie. And welcome back to my channel.
Today's video is going to be a very different kind of video because
I'm going to be talking about grief at work. This video is going to go live on
my channel on September 11th. And I know a lot of people feel a lot of grief,
not just for the people that were lost in this day,
but that were lost from their lives. In general.
I also am aware that some of you are just going to be searching
for this and come across my video because you have lost someone.
Grief is something that I've unfortunately been faced with multiple times over
the last several years.
And so today I wanted to make this video to talk to you about grief,
about going back to work after loss and what that looks like.
And hopefully I can give you some tips
that I learned that worked for me that will hopefully help you.
And I know some of you who are subscribed to this channel,
like we're friends on LinkedIn and on Instagram.
And so you're already gonna know this, but in 2013,
I lost one of my grandmothers, in 2015 I lost my grandfather,
in 2016 I lost my mom,
and earlier this year I lost an old friend who
was a very dear friend of mine as well. So this is something,
this is a path that I have, unfortunately walked down multiple times.
So I'm not making this video for you as a grief counselor or as a grief expert.
There's lots of those. And I will drop some resources in the description bar
down below that I found to be very helpful.
I just really wanted to talk to you as someone
who can share their experience and what I learned and what actually worked
for me, especially returning back to work after loss. If that makes sense.
I guess the first thing that I wanted is to talk
about when it comes to grief and grief at work is that you don't really know
what your grief journey is going to be until you're in it. I think,
especially if you haven't experienced a close loss before you
don't really know how you're going to react,
and there's kind of this vision in your head of what
you think your reaction and your experience is supposed to be like,
and in like virtually every case, it's not gonna look anything like that.
And each loss that you experience, if you do face multiple losses,
which you quite honestly probably will over the course of your life,
each one is totally different and totally unique.
And just because you reacted one way before, it doesn't mean that it's going
to be the same way again. And when you're going through it,
what I really learned through m
journey is to really listen to what your body needs and really like,
I know this is going to sound like so hippy,
but listen to what your soul really needs.
No one I can tell you from my usual experience,
that my journey has been anything from just wanting the distraction of carrying
on at work.
Like nothing ever happened to being like an emotional puddle on the floor,
unable to work or function or think or do anything.
And obviously for those, I needed to do different things in order
to experience that grief, the way that it honestly needed to be experienced.
The next thing that I've learned about grief and work is to take the leave that
you can. So as much it, as you can take, whatever you're actually entitled to,
unless of course you feel like you need the distraction of going back to work.
In which case this obviously doesn't apply to you.
The thing is when you go back to work, there's a lot of, kind of strange things,
that come up. And I'm going to come back to that one in just a minute.
And if you do go back too early,
it's quite honestly like it could be psychologically harmful.
Like it can really set you back in terms of your grief.
If you shove yourself back into work, because you feel like you have to,
I know that there is different levels of breathing relief depending on your
company and where you live and stuff like that. So,
so I know it is a tremendous privilege to say, take the leave that you can,
if you have it, if you have more and you need it, then you know,
of course do, but do the best
with what you can and then brings us to telling people what you need when you do
return to work after the death of a loved one.
And I know that people say incredibly dumb stuff in the face of death. Like, Oh,
now they're in a better place. And it's like, well, no, they're not.
That's like a terrible thing to say to someone.
I know that there's a lot of things that can really like,
just quite honestly piss you off.
And I know that people are going to say something that will
make you wonder if they actually have a brain in their head at all. Like,
it's a valid question for some of the things that people say as much as you can.
And it's this again, it's not about making them comfortable,
but do remember that when someone does say something,
it is because they have good intentions, they are trying to comfort you.
They are trying to support you, even if it's not coming out that way,
if it's coming up the entirely wrong way,
try to pay more attention to the motivation behind it.
In my experience,
I also have people ask me questions that range from inappropriate to
just really.
Messed up, that they would even ask that question to me. And I think some of it,
yeah, again comes from the care.
And some of it is just human curiosity where they're really obliging themselves.
Instead of you, when someone asks you a question that you don't want to answer,
you don't have to answer it just simply say,
I don't want to talk about it and they should be dropping it.
If they don't drop it, you have my permission to just walk away.
Like you can say, "My career bestie
told me to walk away from you when you did this." Okay?
Like this is really important because those things can be very triggering.
And especially when you're bringing your grief to work
and you're trying to get through the day.
So it's normal when it is completely not normal at all,
those questions can really bring you into a place that you don't want to be with
your grief when you're in the office or when you're at work.
And I guess that also like brings me to my
next tip or thing that I learned about grief at work.
And that is just to be prepared for different emotions that might come up.
It might be sudden grief strike, where you just feel really,
really sad,
or you might feel normal and then feel an enormous amount of guilt.
You might feel really angry. Like I know for me,
I went back to work after a loss and we were
having a banal conversation about an email and just wanted to scream because how
dare we have this asinine conversation when this person that I love so much
had just died.
Like this can be really,
really hard and it's not going to be like that across the board.
But do know that these things can come up and that they can come up out of
nowhere. And this is where I think having someone that can support you.
So if you have a team member who can just, you know, explain things,
if you need an immediate exit from a meeting or something like that,
I'm being open about what you experienced. If that's something that you're
comfortable with,
it's going to give people the context that they need should something like
that actually arise.
I personally found it very helpful to have a script of something that I would
say so that I had a reflex that I didn't have to think about. I can just say,
I'm kind of overwhelmed right now. I just need a few minutes to myself.
And another thing that I found to be very helpful was to have
a friend in work that I did talk to about my grief journey,
who was basically like my grief point person at work.
And they would really be my resource when I needed to talk to someone
in the office when, you know, back in the day when we went into offices.
But they were still like, even now,
if you think about being on a zoom meeting with your team, if you need to make
an immediate exit, because something just overwhelming happened,
then this is a person who
can give context to everyone so that they know what's going on.
And they don't think that you're just being like a weirdo.
Who's randomly logging off of meetings. If you are someone
who has recently experienced a loss and you're going back to work,
I want you to know that this is not linear.
There's this really great analogy that I came across about
grief and it's a ball in a box. So it's a ball that is the same size as the box.
And there is a button in the box and every time that box moves because the ball
is so big, it has the button and that's basically your grief trigger.
So grief is like, it's a lot, it's heavy, it's intense as soon as it happens.
But over time, that ball starts to shrink. So when the box moves, it's still,
you know, bouncing around and stuff like that,
but it's going to hit walls and it's not always going to hit the button,
but every so often it's going to strike that button.
And you're right back there. And along your journey with grief,
it is going to be the things like the special days, the birthdays,
the anniversaries, or just coming across a picture or a memory.
And sometimes that hits the button, and that's totally okay.
I personally found when those things happened,
if it was something I can anticipate,
they open with my colleagues really gave them what they needed.
And I also learned about myself,
how I would typically react when it comes to going back to work with grief.
What I recommend in addition to just preparing for the things that will people
will say is also just being open about what you actually need.
So if you need quiet, if you need to pretend like everything is normal,
if you need to talk about things, tell the people around you,
especially the people around you who know what happened,
tell them exactly what they,
because that's going to give them the tools that they need to be
the best support to you that they can be. And people truly,
when you are experiencing grief, do want to be there for you.
So like keep that in mind. But my last suggestion for you is
something that I actually didn't do. And now, in retrospect,
I'm not sure why I didn't, because it would have made my life so much easier,
but consider going to grief counseling.
What I would describe grief counseling is,
is getting onto the express lane in the journey.
So it's not going to get you off the freeway. You're on it. Like, I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry, but there is no escape from it.
What it is going to do is it's going to help you have the tools
and resources to navigate that highway as effectively as
possible. Can you feel around and figure your own way out through it?
Yes. I did. But I also know that
it wouldn't have been such a big and long process as it actually
was. Now, just to closing to saying,
it's not like you actually reached the destination and it's done,
this is a lifelong thing,
especially when there is a big gaping hole in your life.
And that brings me to the last thing that I want to say in this video.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I know it sucks so bad,
but the one thing
that I really learned going through this is that
the most important thing that I have learned
to going through this is while the person may not be there anymore,
the love doesn't die.
Trying to get through this without crying on my channel [nervous laughter].
The relationship that you have has changed form, but
you still have the memories and you still have everything that they contributed
to your life
and really everything that you took from them that you can move forward with.
Some resources that I personally think are very helpful down below in case you
need them.
If you want to share anything about your experience with grief,
if you have tips for other people that are going through grief,
and we're going back to work, feel free to leave those down below.
And if you do just, you know, meet a person that you feel less alone,
feel free to drop a comment because I'll be there. I really hope that you found
this video helpful and that you take care of yourself.
Thank you so much for watching
and for just having this conversation with me today.