Honoring Grief In The Workplace With R. Glenn Kelly

Ron,

Thank you so much for joining us on the show today to talk about so many things but grief at work as well.

We'll start where we start all of our conversations and I'll ask you to share your last story with us.

Sure,

I became a father in 1997 on a wonderful day January 31st of that year.

Jonathan Taylor Kelly came into my life but unexpectedly he was born with an undiagnosed congenital heart defect known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

Basically at the left side of his womb had failed to the,

Excuse me,

Left side of his heart had failed to develop in the womb and unfortunately when they handed him to his mother and I they said he probably wasn't gonna make it through the night but he did through the miraculous arrival of a phenomenal pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon who rebuilt Jonathan's heart over a three year period a series of four excruciating open-heart surgeries finally gave Jonathan a prognosis for a full life albeit with some known medical interventions that would come along the way.

Unbeknown to us I took him in for a and I'm gonna give you the air quotes now the relatively routine heart catheterization that he'd been through a couple times before in his life is just sort of an exploratory measure to see how he was doing and the heart cath went fine but in recovery as his fragile little heart failed and they were unable to bring him back and I took great solace in the fact that I was able to actually be there and hold him as he took his final breath before he wait he went to wait for me on the other side.

After he was gone I was your typical mess for quite some time and wandered around without an identity him being my only child I I didn't know if I was still a parent anymore if I was still a father and one day and and you know whether you believe in me that was an actual visit by John or whether it was a series of let's just say chemical hormones imbalanced in my head at the time he came to me and the first thing he said to me was how dare you not grieve my loss and how dare you think that you're not still my father and that changed my world around from that day forward I went back into a life of service and living out his legacy is what I do today that's what I call it I wrote a book probably about six months after that called sometimes I cry in the shower and then I started getting invitations to speak publicly as one of the rare males who would stand on a stage in front of others and express the fact that I felt pain and it's been wonderful since then I'd rather not have this life of peace and purpose but if I can say this without offending anybody it was his passing that sent a humility and a compassion in me that just changed my life forever it's his legacy and it's his gift and it's where I stand today I think that was so incredibly touching and that's the case for so many of us who are in this line of work is that we would never have asked to be here in a million bajillion years and never I don't think that anybody sets out to do grief work no but it breaks our hearts so badly that it calls to us to show up for it and I the first thing that I wrote down is is that you had a son his heart was rebuilt four times over the course of his life through four surgeries and it just strikes me so incredibly that you would sign up and that he would sign up for this life of knowing that kind of pain and I think that we all have lessons that we're supposed to learn when we come down and I truly do and you know I I've told people many times if I could do it again even knowing the last day I would do it knowing that he had his plan you know unfortunately we don't know our player or fortunately I should say we don't know our plans when we come down but that was his plan and I can only just take a great deal of humility in the fact that he and in our maker chose his 16 years to spend with me on this earth does that make sense yes that does make sense and I'm curious now to know how you you were there I wrote down the phrase typical mess getting to that place from wow there was a plan here because the first things that people like to tell us when loss has happened is oh it's a part of the plan you know heaven gained an angel you'll see them again like all of these these platitudes and usually that doesn't help but we need to get there ourselves if we ever choose to get there at all and so I'm wondering what that kind of heart exploration has been like for you or if that's something you did believe from the very beginning no of course I did not I mean there's so many things that we come into a realization afterwards that if somebody else would have told me that before I came into the just wonder of realizing it myself that we do have a plan and that I was part of John's plan in that I can't say that to anybody else in their loss to give them comfort there are so many things in our realization after a loss that we have to come to ourselves it gives me comfort to know that I believe that others may not believe that we're all so unique as snowflakes and fingerprints and and I give great credence to anybody's beliefs we have so many people that don't believe in a higher power that do believe in universal powers that believe in this and believe in that and we all have to grieve in our own way but we all have to come to an acceptance and understanding in our own way and we have to give each other at least the ability to do that for me I'm a believer in the fact that we've been here before and we'll be here again until we learn the lesson of what I consider unconditional love if we come down for I hope to be down here for 90 years before I learned this phase of it if part of John's plan was to be here for only 16 then that was his plan I think that's so well said and so inclusive as well because we don't all get to the same place this would be the first time that I'm actually considering like oh what if I was a part of my mom's plan or that she would have was a part of mine when my mom died in 2013 and I believe I mean I'm six years out I believe in some ways that that was true because her death would not have launched me down this path of doing grief work but for so many other larger things I'm like oh that's interesting I wonder that is the case for me and so for for people listening who are wondering oh maybe my person's death was a part of some plan it can be a thing that like lights a spark of interest or curiosity like oh that's new I've never heard that phrase that way before it doesn't we all try to find comfort in our pain and in our loss and again it doesn't readily come when somebody else suggests that I probably would have been highly offended if somebody would have said hey it's part of a higher plan I had to come to that realization myself and that understanding does that make sense it does absolutely and it kind of it does something that that I really appreciated as a greever and that's give give me my autonomy back give me my ability to decide because I think people treat grievers almost like infants sometimes where it's like I'm gonna tell you exactly what just happened and how I'm making sense of it in the hopes that it will help you forgetting that I still have a brain I'm just grieving yes I'm going to turmoil right now but I'm strong enough to figure out my path as I go there are times that I'm going to need help and many times you know this as well as I do that help comes best when somebody is just there and not telling me how to walk down my path it also comes very well when we get together with other grievers somebody that's been through the fire that we're going through and they generally know there's not a whole lot you can say other than I'm here right I think this is a perfect opportunity to bring up these I get chills as you said this these ideas of identity of he was my only child am I still a father yeah and I wonder who showed up in your life or if you sought out fellow childless fathers in your life to to gain wisdom form or where you found this circle of people who had also experienced loss like this I was blessed when I wrote that first book I started getting a number of contacts from a number of nonprofit organizations out there that did have the national conferences every year where there were 12 and 13 and 15 hundred people in attendance and I started doing workshops with parents that lost a child and I would like to say that that I hope that I left behind some content for them but I greedily took as much as I could from everyone that I talked to because everyone that I talked to basically laid a stone down on my path as I walked and it's not so much that I was looking for someone to give me guidance is I was listening to how everybody else felt because one of my biggest transitions and I speak about this in that first book is I had to come to the determination that I was okay because I wasn't grieving the way that my spouse was I wasn't grieving the way that my in-laws were I I was grieving the way that I was and my revelation was that it was my grief and I was okay and and the reason why that was such a an epiphany for me is because there were those periods where she was crying and I was not so I would look at her and I think of myself my god did I not love my child that much because I'm not debilitated in my tears and there actually came that time when she said to me did you not love our child as much as you say you do because you're not crying like I am but then I had realization it's who I am it's how I process my grief internally grief is an internal process mourning is external grief is internal and it only becomes external when it becomes overwhelming and more than we can handle inside so the revelation was guess what this is a way I grieve and I'm okay right I'm fascinated by this idea of mourning is external grieving is internal and I literally just wrote down crying is not evidence that you're grieving crying is crying oh do you know and this is a part where yes I get into the diversities in between the way men and women process emotions and express emotions but men actually experience more emotions on a daily basis than women do but we are internalizers we internalize our mood or I was gonna say mood because we internalize our emotions but you know us is moody little so-and-so's don't you that's that's how we express our moods as we just bear our emotions we just become moody right but we do experience a great deal of emotions and we internalize them we don't put them on the outside and grief is an internal process that the emotions you feel you feel them inside they only become outward when they become overwhelming so how did all of this this research this exploration into grief change and shape your idea of yourself as a father but also your role within the context of this marriage to your wife it and I'll be honest with you that marriage has ended and that marriage ended not too long after Jonathan passed away and if you think it's hypocritical for me to go and discuss a lasting marriage with couples who have lost a child it's not because one of the great evidences that I bring up in the fact that child loss does not end in marital separation is that it's usually a marriage that has an underlying condition that will end in separation after a child loss I have met so many amazing amazing couples who have actually become stronger after a child loss because they did not have underlying situations in a marriage before it happened they were able to turn to each other as they always have and become stronger in the crisis that's a really well phrased answer and that's something that I hear quite a bit both from guests on the show and from listeners of the show as a fear is that I lost my child and now my marriage isn't going well and I'm afraid actually a very sad knee-jerk response from I hate to say clinicians clergy people that do counseling support will have a knee-jerk reaction that is going to maybe end in the end of the relationship now it's going to present some difficulties because and I'll just say you and I if we were married we're going to grieve differently probably because we are two different people whether we're different because we're male and female or different because we're male and male or female and female we're still unique and individual you were as unique as fingerprints and snowflakes what we need to have and need to maintain is that awareness and understanding that we are not each other and we're going to emote in different ways we're going to process our grief in different ways and just be there for that other person when it happens but also be there to support the other person the the male and female are the typical models in this because 80% of women will respond in a feminine way 80% of men will respond in a male way but let's just say that you know I'm looking at you and you're always crying because you are more external with your emotions and I'm a male I'm I'm a systemizer and an organizer I'm action oriented so I'm doing things to help me through my grief by taking action but I can't get them done because I have to sit there with you while you cry and that creates a little bit of animosity that makes sense oh sure yeah so it has to be a give and take where she has to realize and again I'm talking about the the great majority of both men and women but she has to realize sometimes he needs to go to a cave and he needs to realize sometimes I need to sit there and let her cry on my shoulder right yeah and I think what happens to I was literally having this conversation with somebody the other day of like do you remember the first time as a kid you realize that other people's families don't live like yours or that when you get older and into the workforce like oh people don't have the same workflow or processing around priorities that I do and then in your first relationships you're like oh you don't show romance the same way I do and so it's this continual discovery over our lifetimes of that people are not the same as us but what sucks is that when grief rolls through or when we're dealing with a really heartbreaking loss we're so inside of ourselves and processing grief internally that we forget to look for the fact that that person is going to be grieving really differently than we are the wonderful beautiful thing about it is when you're with somebody that you do really care for and and there are no issues and you've been together it's usually because you have these differences that brought you together it's those differences that you have that support me and the differences that I have that support you right and that comes across when we're in a personal crisis especially something as horrific as grief is the fact that I know that there are things that you are going to do that I can't do and I'm going to do that you can't do and we're going to support each other but it's in that crisis where again it's a situation where number one we're feeling emotions that we've probably either never felt before or if we have we're feeling them now at intensities that we've never felt before in our life so we're trying to deal with our own who am I and then we're looking across the aisle at our spouse going who are you never seen this out of you before so it's it takes that understanding yeah I'm wondering if you have any tips for people listening on discovering or remembering a partner's gifts in the midst of loss as opposed to focusing on holy crap this is really different yeah just there there are no hints there's nothing other than I hate to say it basic communication even in crisis nobody's gonna prepare for a loss it we don't do that okay but we can prepare for personal crisis and we've all been through as couples we've been through personal crisis is together and I think we know how we're gonna handle them those couples that are strong will remain strong and those supporting each other or at least understand what the other one is going through if nothing else they will tolerate the other one we've seen an awful lot of toleration going on and I see it with a couples that I speak to and in my grief work you know he goes to a cave and I don't understand why he wants to be quiet and I don't get it but I'm going to let him well by golly that's probably the best thing you can do do it don't try to stop him and he's she's always crying or she always she always wants to go to a meeting and meet with other people and talk about this grief and my gosh I can't understand how a woman could do that well she's a social animal let her do it I want to go back to this this visitation of John coming to you and saying how dare you how dare you because I've had this in my own way actually a story I've never shared here on the podcast where I'm a Reiki practitioner and as I was being attuned to level two you go through this practice with a bunch of other people who are also being attuned to Reiki level two and you essentially sit in silence in a room and channel the energy that is Reiki and some of you may believe in this and some may not but I got this this image of like a widening channel that was this amethyst purple color and literally the universe showed up and said who are you to feel shame who are you to feel like a victim in this lifetime look at all the gifts you have in the world and how dare you and it was just the fact that your experience was the same language that came through for mine although the voice behind it was different was just fascinating and he he pointed to these identities that you felt like you lost right and I think he used he used me throughout the whole thing because I had gone through it was it was approximately six months after his loss and during that period I had done a number of things that were typical and trying to avoid or repress my grief because you know quite frankly I was a I was a guy in a world where I had 1,

500 employees who worked for me and you know I went back to work quickly so that I could be in some area where I could control things because I couldn't control the death of my child so I had to have control and in that control I was also able to continue to avoid my grief by saying hey I've got work to do I've got this to do but you know when you come home in the evening and your child is not there and you sit around and you realize you know I I don't have a child anymore I I don't have a son with me anymore I I'm not a father what is my identity who am I and I had spent the early part of my adulthood as a US Marine and then came out and became a cop and moved on to federal law enforcement until John was born in 97 when I stopped that so I could help with his home care and I went to work for a private company as an executive and did that throughout his life but you know when he came to me in the shower it was just a typical morning where I'd gotten up to get ready for work and I was in the shower and like every other morning I had completely repressed my grief I'd avoided his room I didn't stare at pictures on the wall of him when I walked by them and I got in the shower and I wasn't really thinking about it but I knew that the forecast that day was for snow and I thought to myself I wonder if John's gonna be in school today because it's going to snow and then I thought oh my god I thought I was able to block out all the thoughts of that and in that very second I felt him inside of me and all around me in that shower and it's it's a feeling I've never had before and quite frankly it's not one that he's come to me in that presence again although he visits me often in other ways but I heard him and when I heard his first words were how dare you it wasn't audible it was I heard it in my head but it was like it came from every bone or every fiber in my body and at that point I just dropped down to my knees and he continued on he said how dare you not grieve me how dare you not stink or not think you're still my father and I I had nothing to say I mean I wasn't even in tears yet but they were welling up in my mind and he said to me are you still a marine and I said yeah once a marine always a marine he goes are you still a cop and I said yeah I'll always be a cop too is something that's it's in my past it's in my body it's who I am he goes how do you think you're not still my father and at that point I got it I understood exactly what he was trying to say to me and that changed my life around and he left at that point and never said another word that I could feel in my body like that again although we talked frequently just in other ways and he visits often in my dreams and gosh he's with me all the time but those were the only times I think he felt it was a strong enough need to make that strong of a presence in my life and it changed things around instantly for me that is so incredible and it points to I'm like all of my revelations have also happened in the shower so I'm like I don't know what goes on in there but it's a very magical place it's where we got a clear thinking I mean moments you know and it's so funny there's something about the clothes being off we're totally vulnerable we're like doing you know self-care activities of shampooing our hair and all this stuff and your mind doesn't really have anywhere else to go because you're you're busy being in the shower yeah I think it's one place that we allow our minds much like meditation we allow our minds to roam freely at that point it's so that is so striking and so funny to me at the same time and yet I love that he used this framework that you can understand are you still in the military are you still a cop then why would this identity ever go away just because my physicality is not here that's wild like I I got chills saying that and he showed up with you know some sergeant force that you would understand how dare you it wasn't pleasant it wasn't pleasant at first but you know he said and then you know I thought later my own revelations were you know my mother and father are both past both way too young but very dear and loving people and I miss them dearly but you know what I'm still their son and they're still my parents I would never for a moment stop to think that I was not still the child of gone and Barb Kelly you know so how could I think that I wasn't still a father yeah yeah and now I carry him with me everywhere I go he inspires me in every way so he's he's just as much here although I can't touch him he's just as much here and a part of me every day so beautiful and something that resonates with me too and I think you know it might be trickier for parents of who lose children because I've I've never considered that I was not the daughter of my mother even though my mother is dead but considering having children I was like well I'm not doing the actions of being a parent am I still a parent right the thing because there's really no there's really no actions of being a child or being a son or a daughter or a child of a parent it's like you just are down the lineage but somehow being a parent seems to come with this this list of qualifiers they're not doing them then you must not be one and and and that's not the case that's not true and this comes up to in instances of miscarriage and stillbirth where parents never really get the opportunity to to parent through action outside of the womb right and because you can you're a parent mentally of course in the way that you take care of a child before it even reaches your arms but but in terms of you know being able to nurse it and diaper and watch you grow up and help walk and all these other things like are you still parents and that identity crisis comes up over and over and over again even though these parents themselves would never question whether or not they were still the sons daughters children of the parents that that birth raised them so it's interesting how when a child dies a parent will question their identity but it's not true always in the reverse no no no and there's so many things that you know I held on to a very poor ego for a long time and that poor ego lasted around some of the things that I used to be in my life and you know if I'm able to do that to bolster my own ego why wasn't I able to do that to bolster my fatherhood even though my son was gone and those are some of the same things that hit me and like I said he's he's with me now I would not want to tell anybody that I wouldn't rather have him back I'm not saying it's equal in any way but I am blessed to have him with me every day I'm glad he's there like that's the thought that's coming to me is like I'm glad he's there with you he is sometimes I think that I might have some problems with him I joke about this I'm saying this jokingly but I talk with him more than I talked with God I asked him if I'm wearing the right color tie or well sometimes it feels like then this happens in my world too where I don't talk to the universe on a regular basis but I will speak to my mother and it's sometimes it feels like we can come to them with more human problems so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and go hey why don't you speak to me anymore the universe or to God I'm still doing the same thing I'm just doing it through John so but it's my little way of laughing that I do I stand in front of the mirror and if I'm getting ready and getting ready to do something I haven't done before or something that's questionable I'll go hey John it is this the right thing to do so there's there's our maker up there going you used to ask me those questions I still am just through a different channel maybe somebody a little bit better well not smite me for the wrong time it's sort of religious joke in there yeah but uh I want to shift into this place because you were going through your your resume a little bit of being a police officer and then being in the military as well and then being an executive with 1,

500 employees and I know one of the greatest works that you do in relation to grief like parallel to grief is with great for the workplace huh can you speak more on taking grief to work with you because I think what you did jumping back into work and needing something to control needing something that okay I'm definitely in charge of this part of my life happens so often and it's a societal grief myth of if we just get busy enough the grief goes away so I'm wondering what you learned and are continuing to teach and learn about grief in the work place just that that you know once we go back to work and and I I'm not faulting anybody for saying this other than society at large but you know as well as I do bereavement leave is is not enough I mean the average across the United States is three days of bereavement leave paid bereavement and there's a lot of good companies out there that allow you to take unused vacation time or even unpaid time officer that you can you can go through a bereavement period yet there's not too many of us that are independently wealthy enough to miss that much work where we can afford unpaid time off regardless so we're gonna come back to work and when we come back to work it's going to be too soon I I don't care if it's three weeks I don't care if it's three days we've just come out of a transitional period where early in our grief the emotional waves that hit us are unending and they seem relentless and we're just transitioning from that time where we're learning to at least survive again before the next wave hits us and now we're going back into a work environment and at home we've almost learned if this makes sense we've almost learned or we're learning to deal with it because we're in a safe environment at home but now we go to work and so many workplaces if they're not hostile to it which there are a few places out there are many of them are still in different degrees and we don't want to go to someplace that's indifferent to our pain we don't want to show our pain we want to try to hide it so many people you know we talked about the grief mask that we put on we show people that we're okay when we're really not inside but at the same time the complete indifference to grief has just become something that I really want to go out there and begin teaching more of the corporate American bosses out there and there's not anything that you really have to do other than just recognize that your employee is your bereaved employee is grieving does that make sense it does and I think that the way that work and business and the structure especially here in the United States in corporate America how it's built the focus is on productivity and not always on humanity and this is something that Cheryl Sandberg the CEO of Facebook speaks to in her book option B and once she lost her husband unexpectedly she went back into Facebook and overhauled their bereavement policies with the help of a lot of people in HR there and she echoed that same sentiment that that bereavement leave like three days ain't enough to to do anything and I had the the blessing slash curse of losing my mom very young when I was in college and I was on winter break so I had about two weeks before I had to go back and face the world again and I wasn't going through exam season and I wasn't it wasn't like you know it wasn't finals or anything like that but going back to a college campus again even the Institute of College professors and classes anybody who's in a leadership role needs to know that at some point within their leadership capacity they're going to be dealing with somebody who's grieving or a lot of people who are grieving especially in the case where a workplace loses a co-worker and so there's there's a workplace grief have also if we go by the figures from the American Hospice Foundation every year in the United States over 4 million active US employees will lose a loved one which is quite a hefty role those same people will give you the figures that every year 10 to 15 percent of working-aged adults will lose a child now if we talk about let's go to the American Psychiatric Foundation who tells you that in grief for everyone who's grieving 10 to 20 percent will go through what we know to be complicated grief some form of complicated grief 10 to 20 percent well if we're having 4 million employees every year newly 4 million employees will lose a loved one every year that means that every year 400,

000 to 600,

000 bereaved employees return to work with some condition of complicated grief is that not shocking all in itself but you know what I believe it and right now American businesses are losing over 100 billion dollars in annual revenue due to the hidden direct and indirect costs of grief in the workplace because they're indifferent to it they want to farm it out they don't want to have to deal with that in the workplace but they are they just don't realize it's adversely what does grief cost in the workplace what does that look like well some of the and I'll give you one example because I broached it just a minute ago but one of the biggest hidden costs and it's a direct cost of grief in the workplace is absenteeism because after the loss of a loved one the average bereaved employee will take an additional 30 days of unscheduled leave within the first year that's beyond bereavement Lee now that's a great cost in itself if you look at the Department of Labor they'll show you that unscheduled absenteeism in the workplace cost businesses over 400 billion dollars every year which is a lot but now we've got bereaved employees are going to take an average of 30 days of unscheduled leave due to their loss and why do they do that they do that because I as I touched on earlier the workplace is uncomfortable when you and I are in mental crisis for anything the only place that we want to deal with that mental crisis is in a place of safety and comfort true oh god absolutely so when the workplace is not that safe and comfortable environment and you work you wake up Tuesday morning in a wave of horrific grief you're gonna shelter in place you're gonna stay in a place where you feel safe and comfortable so that you can process that crisis in your mind and if we can get the workplace to just realize if you just make it safe and comfortable for your employees make an environment where if they come to work and they feel a wave of grief they're more than free to take a walk they're more than free to go to some place of solitude in the workplace if it's available they're more than free to take the rest of the day off yeah this was one of the very first blog pieces that I wrote on grief and it was called crafting an escape plan as I had I had sat down with a friend of mine who was getting ready to lose her grandmother and she was like what if it happened while I'm at work like what am I gonna do I said we're gonna craft you an escape plan very good to find all the stairwells that you can go cry in we're gonna see if there's an office without glass windows where you can shut a door and take a phone call like there's this process of so many people and I don't know the figures on this but so many people are anticipating a loss in the near future whether they're actively caretaking someone or they know they have a relative maybe even across the country that is ill or unwell and so so many people are suspended in this state of I'm anticipating a call at some point and I'm like we got to get you out of there and so whether you're in the grocery store and you're like here's my plan I'm gonna abandon the cart go to the car pack a bag and go to the hospital like that order it just helps you start to act out the process of what's about to happen but if your workplace isn't even safe for that then you have all of a sudden not only created a place that is not safe but almost a place that is hostile right and there are I mean you've got to figure our corporate America has done a wonderful job of moving forward in welfare and so many things that they're doing for the employee they become far more employee based but mortality is an uncomfortable topic it's not one that they openly discuss in business meetings and planning sessions and things like that but they figure it's a very very private moment and private issues should be kept outside of the workplace that's the wrong attitude to have because no matter what if I'm having a bad day at home I'm bringing it to work am I not oh yeah you are at work who you are at home and if you're having problems at home you're gonna have it at work now the the biggest way that it gets farmed out is to employ assistance programs right everybody's heard of those and they are and I'm not knocking EAPs they are wonderful they provide wonderful mental health counselors and assistance for mental health but guess what only three to seven percent of eligible employees ever take advantage of an offered EAP there's a stigma around the APS because it basically well the stigma lies and the fact that mostly it is taken advantage of by people who are alcoholic or drug addicted and even though there's confidentiality nobody wants to be found out you know going to an EAP counselor because then it might put a black mark on my employment right but they want to farm it out to an EAP and say that they've done everything that they could do the problem is that and you know this well you might not know the exact figure but guess what in the course of a lifetime the average person will spend over 90,

000 hours at work and we will spend more awake time with people at work than we do with our loved ones at home so you tell me where the greatest influence comes from because if you give me an appointment for a counselor say tomorrow I'm grieving right now at two o'clock on the job right yeah so they don't need to be mental health counselors I'm not saying any employer does but they need to recognize it they need to have awareness and understanding of it make sense it does and it speaks also to this idea that I think people are afraid that we need more qualifications in order to talk about grief I actually spoke about this with a fellow grief podcaster she's like do I need a degree or something and I'm like you lost your mom like that's enough to talk about your own experience again going very back to the beginning of our conversation we can't tell other people how to grieve or what their story or what their plan is or was but to share your own story and say hey I'm a safe place for this takes absolutely no degree and no level of experience and I'm a big advocate of peer support because I would much rather speak with someone else who's been through the fire although that fire is going to be different than mine but I would much rather speak with somebody who's been through the fire than somebody who has got in education but has never experienced it that makes sense yes and even educational fields like I mean I was a psychology minor in college and we spent one week on grief so even times a lot of our mental health and therapeutic practitioners aren't grief equipped I was actually astonished to find that I'd been invited honored actually a couple times to speak in a prominent psychiatrist class at the University of Memphis twice astonished to find out since he specialized in thanatology and grief that there was a large portion of his class that actually were practicing mental health professionals and they took his class because they said that the the context of grief was either glossed over so quickly or almost eliminated from their core studies yeah it's it it's like it's like we need to protect grief from being untaught yes in universities I was like this is nuts because it's something that all of us if we haven't experienced it already we're gonna we don't we don't condone it but we understand it because if I had a tag line it would be mortality is too uncomfortable for people to discuss unless they've been through it right mine when I went back to work I mean some of it you know I could tell many many stories about what I went through but you know there were other people there that worked with me that that had children that had a son and to look at me guess what went through their mind oh crap I'm gonna lose mine yeah that could be me that very thought makes you want to turn and walk the other way mortality is an uncomfortable topic for people how do we get to a place where we maybe not get comfortable with the idea of mortality but maybe where it doesn't scare us so much that we're silent well I'm gonna try it in the workplace I've been doing it for quite some time now and I hate to say it but I'm doing it by hitting them in the wallet I'm being compassionate about it and my take on this is a very unique one and that's the fact that I did spend 17 years as a very successful business executive I'm not going in the door saying that look you need to do this you need to do that you need to do this you need to spend all your money on this because I for one realized that businesses business owners they have a responsibility to other employees suppliers customers this is a two-way street and I'm the best thing we can do for any of us that are grieving is to always tell the truth and for me I had a choice I mean I really didn't I needed the money but I had a choice I wasn't locked into a contract with that employer I could have quit you gone somewhere else or not work I couldn't I couldn't afford it but you know I'm saying but I chose to go back to work I chose to take my grief to work so there's certain things that I have to understand when I do present myself back into that environment now I don't say that coldly but at the same time that employers got responsibilities that they have to take care of too does that make sense yeah yeah everybody shows up needing to bring something to the table and it's not grief even in the workplace doesn't happen in a bubble right very good but they have to be there has to be an awareness and understanding that that sometimes we come back to work we don't know if we're ready we think we are right what if I've got a hazardous job like a forklift driver or a tractor trailer driver or you know I said dynamite at the mochine just something like that you know I'm gonna come back to work and in my I might not be ready but I might think that I am yeah I'm like and the thought and the in the front of my head is like man grief is not the plague like it's not it's it's sympathetic but it's not contagious no and I get asked that by employers when I go speak with employers and they ask me what do we do when they come back to work and I said well treat them as normal make sure that you've prepped the staff before they get back so I don't watch somebody jump into a supply closet just to avoid coming into contact with me because they're uncomfortable with my grief that makes sense mm-hmm absolutely so we we try to prep them and one thing I always tell them because I get this question too is you know should we tell the the rest of the staff what's going on it's like absolutely be respectful of the bereft make sure that you maintain privacy and only put out what you're allowed to put out but it helps a bereaved employee when they come back in this manner that is when I come back to work and nobody knows what happened to me nobody knows about my loss and the details of it I'm going to get asked 20 times in a single day what happened am I not mm-hmm and that's exhausting for somebody who's already gotten very little to give it is so that sort of alleviates that problem by at least informing the staff of what happened so it's a very important thing to do I think let everybody know what's going on that way you also get away from conjecture and rumor and things that go around the copy machine you know I'm saying yes well and then you also get to this place of not necessarily normalizing it but hey it happens not it happens in a whispery fashion but in a in a in a company wide BCC to email that's like just a heads up here's the obituary for Paul's grandmother who passed away on Sunday sending our condolences and somebody in HR since flowers and the whole thing that used to be my job I've never told anybody that on the show before but I I was a front desk assistant for a marketing agency here in Chicago is my very first job and what one small hat that I wore among the like the 25 hats that I wore yeah was sending sending flowers for people's loved ones who had died and it was a neat place to be because I got that job probably ten months after my mom died and so to be the person who was sending flowers to people whose loved ones had died after losing somebody myself literally the messages that I put into these cards were not the crap that everybody tells you while you're grieving right we're so incredibly sorry for your loss holding space for you when you get back they were really heartfelt yes because I'm like oh I've been here before I have words for this even if I didn't really have words for this for their specific loss and like I knew what I wanted to hear and that even small gesture I like to think changed how people we're not gonna attract employees we're not gonna attract good candidates by putting out you know the better bereavement policies and by saying that we understand but what you're going to do is you're gonna retain the best yep and that's important when they feel that the smallest things that you can do is so much of a morale booster for anybody who's going through a crisis and I always like to remind people grief is not just about loss grief in a workplace doesn't come just from the loss of a loved one it comes from you know unwanted divorce or a major change in your health or could be you've become an empty nester now or you didn't get a promotion at work right there are so many different ways that grief can impact the workplace in so many different ways that the employer can do just the smallest of things to make a huge impact