How To Return To Work With Grief

“How Are You?”

These are three simple words that used to be easy to ask one another, almost as if we assumed the answer carried no weight at all. But, with each passing month of Covid-19, these words have become all the more challenging to both ask and answer. 

With more than 720,000 people having died since the start of the pandemic, grief has touched so many lives. In fact, according to an estimate published recently in the journal Pediatrics, at least 140,000 American children had lost a parent or caregiver because of the coronavirus by the end of June. Or, put more poignantly, one of roughly every 500 children, had a lost primary support in their life. Additionally, according to recent estimates by the World Health Organization(WHO), more than 115,000 healthcare workers died from Covid-19. The grief from the pandemic is vast and still emerging, and is not only measured in lives lost, but in loss of plans, milestones, education, and more.

Yet, even with such a heavy burden of loss, the world still is opening up and having a semblance of moving on. As a society, we try to look forward and be optimistic. But, finding hope and happiness day to day is not as easy for everyone.

David Kessler, grief expert and Chief Empathy Officer at Empathy, explains, “I think we're a little wired to avoid pain. There is a tendency to look ahead and it's a wonderful thing to look ahead…[But,] for those people who have had a loved one die, there's a moment when optimism becomes denial, like your loved one has died, it doesn't feel optimistic that you can now go to your favorite restaurant.” He says a sense of normalcy might be reemerging, or people might be feeling like “Yay! We are back,” but for people grieving, “Well, their world has changed forever.”

Krista L. Harrison, PhD, Assistant Professor, UCSF Division of Geriatrics and Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, who wrote a poignant piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) about her own losses of her father and stepfather during the past year, explains how for her, initially she felt fatigued, and wanted to sleep. She felt irritable or angry. Her concentration at work was variable, but she says, she compartmentalized as much as she could. Of course, that was not easy as she researches geriatrics, hospice, and palliative care for older adults and dementia and there were triggers everywhere. She learned to navigate those meetings and still, a lot of her life did feel normal. She says, “The best analogy I had from my own life was postpartum. In the early days after giving birth I thought I was doing fine, but the more time passed, the more functional I got, and the more I looked back and realized how much less functional I had been than I thought I had been in the prior moments.”

Her experience is just one person’s experience, however, as grief is unique, with different past histories and compounding factors and evolves over time. Dr. Harrison notes, “Everyone who loved my father or stepfather grieved differently; each person I lost, I grieved differently. There is no right or wrong way to feel, and if you can’t (or won’t) face it, grief waits to be heard, even in tiny increments over time.” 

In fact, Kessler and Dr. Harrison both agree that the answer is not avoiding grief, but feeling it. Kessler notes that as a society we tend to want to look for a silver lining or a lesson, or, as Dr. Harrison experienced, we want to avoid others’ discomfort or sadness by shifting it towards a positive outlook they aren’t yet ready for. We do, what Kessler calls, bright siding and, while lessons are good, he does not see a loved one dying as a lesson or a test.  He says, “It's brutal and we have to recognize that pain for what it is...The only way through the pain is through the pain, you can't go around it, and you can't heal what you don't feel. So there's no shortcut, there's no, find the silver lining, get the lessons and quickly move on, when your loved one has died.” 

Instead, we all need to talk about grief out loud for the thousands of people who are grieving. In the workplace, for example, how do we even begin to acknowledge and appreciate the grief elephant in the room?

Kessler suggests changing up our casual work conversation and adding more empathy. He says, “I think it'd be a really good idea in the workplace to not start with boring, ‘I hated wearing masks. Wasn't that pandemic awful?’ but rather to start with the question, ‘How did the pandemic affect you? [or has the pandemic been affecting you]’ Because I want to know who I'm talking to. So am I talking to someone who hated wearing a mask? Or, am I talking to someone whose brother died?”  Starting out with this sort of unassuming open-ended question allows you not to make any assumptions that we all experienced the pandemic the same and, instead, approach each other with kindness and compassion. 

As a friend or colleague, we also have to avoid the gut reaction to just fix it. There is no fixing it, as Kessler emphasizes, someone grieving is not broken. The second thing he says to avoid is saying something like “at least they are not suffering anymore.” Instead, he suggests saying, "I don’t have the right words, but I am here for you,” and other tips that he includes on his website. Dr. Harrison also has suggestions of what she found worked for her and others. A few of those include:

• Asking permission to bring the topic up, to help notify people, to rally support, or if they know what they need. And, revisiting it every few months to see how that has changed.
• Offering tangible support, like food or help with work, recommendations for counselors or grief groups (offer to set up the first visit!), or babysitting
• Be careful sharing your own stories and your own sadness. Ask permission before sharing your own examples, as some might feel helpful to the person. 
• Sending something on the anniversary- like a note or flowers.

Employers can also strive to be particularly grief aware and supportive. As Kessler emphasizes with the companies that he advises, loss and grief are some of the biggest opportunities they have to engage with their employees. He notes that you want to be the boss that makes accommodations in the workplace, who asks what the employee needs and sends flowers to the funeral, not the boss that doesn’t allow you to miss work and says “Really, you have to go to a funeral, now?” Dr. Harrison explains that for her, her bosses often said things like “take all of the time you need,” but she did not know what that meant. She needed more specific language with ways that people have managed their losses, what actually was supported and expected, and clear times to check in. This would have helped her interpret the boundaries, as well as helped her to understand how she could change her expectations for productivity over time. No matter what, Kessler adds, “[Employees] will never forget their whole life, that you were sensitive to their loss, if you're their manager, if you're their boss.” 

As a colleague, friend, or employer, it is key that, above all, you are aware and acknowledge that grief does not have a timeline. Kessler points out that grief itself is by no means a new process, but the way we approach it in our society is, and that is actually the problem. He describes grief as organic, with our body designed to lose loved ones in our lifetime. He says, “I joke with people, I say, you come from a long line of dead people, like every ancestor you've had, has died and grieving is not a modern phenomenon. But, what is the modern phenomenon is that you've got three days to grieve, that you've got to be over grief in a month. All of those things are the artificial constraints that our productive society has put on grief. That isn't true. To me, grief is a very organic experience and if we allow ourselves to grieve, our grief knows how to heal us. It's when we think, you know, there's a right way to do grief that I think we get in trouble.” 

There is no one way or right way to grieve. Grieving is normal, especially in the workplace, and especially now. The sheer numbers of people impacted serves as not just an opportunity, but an obligation for organizations to create a system that works better for everyone. 

As Dr. Harrison adds, “Too often we require that individuals attempt to deal with or counteract problems that are caused or exacerbated by social or systemic forces. This sets people up for failure.” 

To succeed, we have to be willing to be flexible and open to change. We need to redefine what it means to have a healthy workforce. And, by doing so, acknowledge that grief is inseparable from work, and requires real tangible support, for as long as it takes.