Last Updated
December 20, 2019
The process of grieving in the workplace goes often undiscussed. This episode connects with people who have experienced the death of loved ones while working, and explores how we might improve this journey that most of us will confront during our careers.
Guests: Sophia Park, Melissa Haber, Jim Rosenberg
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guests
SOPHIA PARK is part of the External Relations team at Fractured Atlas. She studied neuroscience at Oberlin College, and conducted research in neurotoxicology and neurodegenerative disorders before pivoting into the arts. Before joining Fractured Atlas, she worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She loves the arts, and runs a small exhibition project called Jip Gallery based in New York City. She is also a writer - you can find her writing in StrataMag and Womanly. In her spare time, she likes to run longer than normal distances, find a good spot to go salsa dancing, or sit in front of art work she enjoys.
MELISSA HABER is the Assistant Director of Volunteer & Student Services at Montefiore Medical Center. Previously, she was a Project Manager for Community Workforce Programs at Montefiore. Melissa was born and raised in southern Brazil and moved to the United States as a teenager. She has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Boston University, and master’s degrees from Sarah Lawrence College (Health Advocacy) and New York University (Arts Administration). She is passionate about increasing equity in the health care workforce, eliminating disparities in outcomes, and improving patient experience. In her previous career in Development, Melissa raised funds, wrote grants and planned events for organizations such as the Joyce Theater, Parsons Dance, and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. Melissa lives in Westchester with her husband, daughters (ages 10 and 13) and dog. She enjoys reading, writing, taking pictures and yoga.
JIM ROSENBERG is Lecturer and Director, Corporate Engagement, Healthcare Division at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee where he works with healthcare leaders who are transforming access, affordability, equity, and excellence in healthcare. Jim designs and delivers degree and non-degree executive education programs, and supports leaders through personalized consulting, teaching, facilitation, and coaching. Jim also works with a diverse mix of mission-driven leaders on strategy, innovation, and growth projects through Workbench, his consulting business. His background includes experience in both nonprofit and commercial organizations, including venture-backed startups, mission-driven nonprofits, and Fortune 500 corporations. Jim holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. You can learn more about Jim's work at www.workbenchdc.com and his career at www.linkedin.com/in/jimrosenberg.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck., a podcast about, well, that. I'm Tim Cynova, and in this episode, we're spending time with a topic we seldom talk about in life, let alone in the workplace, death and grief. We're joined by three colleagues, Melissa Haber, Jim Rosenberg, and Sophia Park, who have all experienced the loss of people close to them during their careers. They'll offer different and similar thoughts on what it's like to go through the grieving process while working and what coworkers and organizations might consider to help the process be just a little bit easier. They will be joined by podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin, who will help us close out the episode.
Tim Cynova:
One of the things I often have to clarify when I say that work shouldn't suck is that it's not that work won't suck or can't suck sometimes, but that it shouldn't. One of those times when work shouldn't suck is around grieving the loss of a loved one. While it can be tough to make things better, workplaces can certainly make things worst. We'll hear from our guests that sometimes it's the seemingly littlest of things said or not said that can make a big difference. A workplace is a collection of people who come together for a common goal.
Tim Cynova:
It also can be a place where people show caring and concern and support not just during the company softball game or the 5K fun run or when your team scores above 70% completion rate on their objectives and key results. We're human beings working with other humans and we sometimes forget that at the very moments that matters the most. This episode isn't meant to be a downer. It's a risky move launching a podcast and then including an episode about grief so soon in the queue. In our recent episode, we talked about augmented reality and virtual reality, how many bikes would be too many bikes to own, and mail flow in virtual workplaces. This episode focused on grieving while working might feel like we're taking a pretty hard right turn.
Tim Cynova:
But it's a deeply personal topic for many of us and a topic that often goes undiscussed in the workplace, so we want to give it some space. Because when it goes undiscussed, that makes it even more challenging for us to know what to do or how to respond when death and grief show up in our workplace. While these things are near universal, their impact and how they're felt is deeply individual and personal. My guests and I aren't speaking for all those who had grieved while working, but as people whose individual journeys might be useful to hear. Without further ado, let's get going.
Tim Cynova:
My first guest is Sophia Park. Sophia has a degree in neuroscience, which led to several years of conducting research in neurotoxicology. She was a teaching artist with RoboFun, creating stem curriculum for little engineers, PreRobotics, and maker technology courses among others. She's worked with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She's currently an external relations associate at Fractured Atlas, where I have the pleasure of being a coworker with her. She's the co-founder of Jip Gallery, a small arts exhibition space in Harlem, and she recently completed the New York City Marathon. The idea for this podcast episode came from an exchange that Sophia and I had on Slack. We both experienced the death of someone close to us in the past year, and we both have been trying to write separate pieces about this topic.
Tim Cynova:
We both haven't been making much progress, so we thought, let's just try and record a podcast episode instead. The topic for today is working while grieving. Something that we often don't talk about a lot, that doesn't get a lot of space in the workplace to discuss. How do you come to the topic?
Sophia Park:
This past summer, I lost one of my close friends that I met in college, and we were close because of my tie to neuroscience. He kept on pursuing science, but we met initially because we were both setting science and science is really hard. It was really sudden. He was very young, and I also happen to be at a conference when I found out. It was also a marketing conference that started every day at I think 8:00 AM and they had a DJ and lots of loud music and lots of people talking about marketing and selling things. It was just really tough. It was tough because internally I was hurting, but externally I was like, "Wow. There's a lot of stimulation and there's no space." Then I kept on working.
Sophia Park:
Obviously I finished out the conference in somewhat one piece and then thought a lot about what I was doing. I don't know. Many thoughts that go through your head when something like that happens also out of nowhere. Yeah, the next I think probably around a month was pretty tough. I think what really helped was actually working from home because I could just turn off Zoom and just be kind of sad for a bit and then get back to it. Other people might want the company of others in the office kind of doing things around them. but for me personally, it worked best that I was at home and I could be comfortable. I can have some tea or text a friend who knew my friend as well.
Sophia Park:
I think my hesitancy talking about this in a blog post or in any kind of public setting is that I don't want it to seem like I'm just doing this because I want attention. I just think that so many people go through this. I think that's where my kind of block personally came from was how do I talk about this in a genuine way especially when I don't have many answers of how to navigate it, and then just coming kind of to the informal conclusion that maybe the best thing is to just talk about it and be okay that it's not going to be perfect.
Tim Cynova:
It's like uniquely individual, yet also universal experience to go through. Being at a conference and all of a sudden having a different lens to view things through. I mean, you see things differently. You weigh differently. What's really important when we get caught up in life, we would just keep moving and then all of a sudden something happens and you're like, "Oh."
Sophia Park:
Breaks.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, something breaks. You have a different perspective especially for people who might not have gone through it, or even if they do, again, it's an individual thing. Sitting in meetings, I was at a conference a couple of months ago and someone was talking about how they loss their mom. I think she was 95, 98. They knew it was coming. They said still they found themselves for months just sitting in meetings probably being about 25% there. There's this disconnect in work I think when you see like companies have a bereavement policy that's three days. That's just for logistics, for maybe going to a funeral, but that doesn't cover grief.
Sophia Park:
There are I guess tangible things that a company can give, things like time, and there are also intangible things that a company can give, especially your colleagues, right? I was very fortunate that my manager was just very understanding. But even getting there, for me, I was so surprised because I was so sad and I knew I needed the time to travel, but I just didn't know how to say it. I realized that's partially because I've always been uncomfortable with asking for time off in any regards, whether it's for a vacation or anything like that. I think that comes from this belief that you shouldn't ask for time off even in cases like this. I was just very grateful for the understanding, not the...
Sophia Park:
I don't know how to describe it, but I think it depends on how someone says like, "Are you okay? Yeah, do whatever you need," instead of kind of creating roadblocks, right, for you to grieve. It's emotionally difficult and then if it's also logistically difficult, then it's just bad, right?
Tim Cynova:
It's one of those times where I think if you've gone through something personally or know people who have gone through it, just talk about it. I think this is one of the reasons why it's important for companies to talk about it so you know when this happens, part of that is supervisor is being very opinionated about, "You need to go now. You need to take the time. We'll be here when you get back." Because you have a rush of how do I get there, maybe how do I pay for... I need to get there. There might be financial concerns. There's certainly logistical concerns. Where do I stay when I get wherever I might need to go if you're traveling?
Tim Cynova:
Having to get up the courage to ask for time when you might not even know that that's something you need. I have former colleagues who is like, "Well, no, it's fine. We're in the season. It's busy. We have shows going up. I can't take this time," and then they realize several months when they're at Walmart and they have to sit down on the floor because that's the first time that they've had a chance to process.
Sophia Park:
I think you bring up a good point. I think it taught me in the future if I'm in a position where I need to be supportive, I think I learned a lot of how to's and how to be supportive and just be generally understanding. Well, I would think that I would already be like that, but I think in a work environment it's very different, right? In a personal case, if it's a friend who's grieving, it's a slightly different attitude that you would take towards that person. I think that's also part of navigating being a professional is how do you say things and how do you do it in a kind manner. I think that's also something that I definitely learned.
Tim Cynova:
You mentioned this upfront when you talked about writing the piece and realized, "I just need to start talking about it." It might be not perfect or right the first time, often feels like that when we're providing condolences to someone. I truly mean this. It might not be the right way. Hopefully it came across as I'm caring, but you sort of learn better ways to provide condolences and caring. You're right. It's complicated because it's also a workplace where a lot of times people check a lot of themselves at the door.
Sophia Park:
It's just so interesting to see how different people bring different parts of themselves to the workplace in general. But something that I also thought about was in terms of that, as a colleague and a co-worker, I can't expect someone to fully understand what I just went through, and I don't think it's fair to expect that they'll understand it. I think navigating how different people react to you grieving is also part of the workplace kind of grieving situation as well, knowing that there are certain colleagues who will understand it a little better and some that may want to just have the time to not really engage in it because maybe they went through something similar and it kind of triggers them.
Sophia Park:
Navigating that field is also something interesting as well. Just being mindful. I think learning how to be mindful also helped me grieve in a way in the workplace because it just kept on reminding me I'm not alone. You never know what's happening on someone else's end, but everyone's okay. Ultimately they're okay. They show up to work and kind of reminded me like, yeah, it kind of sucks right now, but ultimately it'll be okay. You show up for work every day and it's kind of a reminder that maybe you're only like 75% there or 75% present that day for work, but at least you're 75% present for work versus just not showing up.
Tim Cynova:
Was there anything particular that people said or did that really resonated with you that maybe you even thought, "I totally need to remember that thing that someone said because they said it so well or whatever they did was really caring and I appreciated that."
Sophia Park:
It was actually in my first day meeting one of our new colleagues who flew in. I just felt really bad because I was engaged, but also not engaged. It was my first time seeing her. They're talking about data and data's kind of dry. Then it just happened that she found out and then she told me grief comes in waves I think not just within the workplace, but outside. That has been really true. Whenever I'm really engaged in a work project... When I went to New Orleans recently and we were just kind of running around, shooting video content, I felt really alive. In that moment, I really thought about my friend because it's an experience that he won't have anymore.
Sophia Park:
Then even just like what you said with the marathon, I remember running it and everything was fine up until mile, whatever, 15, and then I was just so... It just hurt everywhere and then kind of just living in that kind of pain that my legs were going through, I was like, oh. I thought about my friend again. It really does kind of hit you in random moments. There are other instances where I feel very much alive and that's when I feel it the most. Sometimes, like I said, that's either during work or outside of work. But yeah, I think that stayed with me and actually helped me cope really well with it.
Sophia Park:
Because something else that was really helpful was all of my friends were grieving as well, so it was really hard to ask for advice or for words of care. In a way, it's an outside voice, right? Someone from work. If they've gone through something like that, then it's kind of a good reminder that your support comes from all sorts of places. I tell my friends, "Oh yeah, a colleague at work told me this and it really helps," and it actually has helped other people. Yeah, that's something that stayed with me.
Tim Cynova:
That's great. When I lost my mom, one of our coworkers at Fractured Atlas just put a card on my desk. When I came back, we never even talked about it. I assume she knows I got the card. It was very simple. I think she had like two lines in. She had lost a parent. It was one of those thinking of you cards, let me know if you want to talk. There's just different ways of showing.
Sophia Park:
Any little reminder that you're not alone I think really helps. It's interesting because I think I'm fairly young and in kind of like the beginning stages of figuring out what I'm doing for work and what I like doing. I always think about what skills do I need, so professional, do I need to know how to use Airtable, et cetera, and then you forget about all of these I guess they're called soft skills, right? I think resiliency is one of them and resiliency can be developed from anything. But this in particular I think is a moment when I felt myself kind of building that skill.
Sophia Park:
Because it's easier to say it now, "I know how to do this thing on Excel," but it's really hard to say, "Now I know how to grieve better at work," right? You can't just quantify that.
Tim Cynova:
One of the other skills is ability to be vulnerable. Certainly Dr. Brené Brown has talked about this in plenty of TED Talk and Netflix specials about people who are able to be vulnerable, especially in positions of leadership. It makes it easier. Because if you can't, then you wouldn't say something.
Sophia Park:
Yeah, I think that's also very hard because I think vulnerability at the workplace is tied to how comfortable you are, right, also in the workplace. Something that I really talk to a lot of my friend about is how they don't feel comfortable in the workplace. I'm very fortunate that I can bring that sense of vulnerability, but I wonder what it would look like if you could bring at least a little bit of that. Because I think if you're able to be vulnerable with someone, no matter whether it's in the workplace or not, it kind of expands your relationship with that person.
Sophia Park:
I talk about this all the time with my manager where I kind of had some difficult workplaces in the past and kind of building that trust and opening up and being vulnerable has been something that I've been working on. I know I'm very privileged in that way, but I just hope that... Or I don't know if there's a way to grow that culture in a place where it doesn't exist.
Tim Cynova:
That's a big challenge. A lot of people ask, if leadership isn't onboard with it, is it still possible to do in an organization? Yeah, it could be a team-based or it could be a group of people inside the organization. But if there's not a lot of psychological safety there, then people aren't going to be as vulnerable or won't put themselves out there in the same way.
Sophia Park:
Yeah, that's very tough I think to navigate. I think it's easier in a smaller group, like you say, maybe in a team. But once you start adding a bunch of people, then I think it gets a lot more difficult.
Tim Cynova:
Probably some recipe for life in general.
Sophia Park:
Yeah, that's true.
Tim Cynova:
Once you add more people, it just gets really difficult.
Sophia Park:
Yeah, too many cooks.
Tim Cynova:
What is it? The research that more than seven people in a meeting have declining or diminishing returns for each additional person you add to that meeting.
Sophia Park:
That sounds like a lot. Can you imagine just seven people in this room and just going at it and trying to make decisions?
Tim Cynova:
Well, the irony there is that a lot of organizations have seven or fewer people, but act like they have hundreds of people. You're just seven people. You could easily come together and make that decision with just seven people. But it's like, "Well, we have all these committees and all these ways of doing things." I think about a lot of nonprofits and arts organizations.
Sophia Park:
Yeah, that's the difficult part of I think just being in a nonprofit arts organization in general.
Tim Cynova:
Or a group of people trying to organize to do something.
Sophia Park:
Yeah, literally anything.
Tim Cynova:
That's right.
Sophia Park:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Is there anything else you'd like to say on the topic? Things that resonate with you, or when you do get around to writing the blog post that you want to make sure you include?
Sophia Park:
I was actually able to finish draft and I tend to always have more questions than answers. That's kind of how it ends is there are just so many more questions than answers when it comes to this. Also, you can't just differentiate it, right? Grieving versus any other stress that you encounter in your life. When someone gets sick who's close to you or someone loses a job who's close to you, those are all things in some way I think require the same skills as grieving does to be able to deal with in the workplace. I think it's okay if you don't know what you're doing when it comes to dealing with any of those stresses as long as you're satisfied that you're navigating things well for yourself in that moment.
Sophia Park:
While that might sound very spiritual for a workplace topic, I think just gauging whether you're okay, right, and being okay with having something that could be a challenging conversation with either your colleagues or someone else, all of those little pieces is how you "deal with it." I feel like I'm being very vague about it all, but I likened it to when someone asks how do you know you want to marry someone. The answers are always like something like that. I think it's the same way like how do you grieve, how do you deal with stresses in your life, and you say, "Well, I'm me and this is how I dealt with it, but that doesn't mean that you have to do anything that I did."
Sophia Park:
Especially during the holiday times, I know it can be very tough whether you're grieving for someone or not. Especially for younger professionals, I hope that you're okay with asking for help, you're okay with asking for time off because you deserve it in order to be your whole self no matter what the situation is. I think the more you keep hearing that, the more it'll hopefully stick to others, trying to be a gentle person navigating the world and the workplace when it's hard to be that way especially now.
Tim Cynova:
Thank you for spending time and for your openness to chat. I really appreciate the time today.
Sophia Park:
Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
My next guest is Melissa Haber. She currently is the Assistant Director of Volunteer and Student Services for the Montefiore Medical Center. She has a master's of arts in health advocacy, also degrees and background in arts administration and journalism. She's a certified translation professional. Fun fact, Melissa and I worked together in my first job in New York City nearly 20 years ago. It was my first stint as an executive director where she witnessed me making a myriad of mistakes. To her credit, she still agrees to be my friend after all of these years. Can you talk about your intersection with the topic?
Melissa Haber:
My very first intersection was actually when we worked together and my father died. He was in his fifties. Certainly not expected, but awkward because I had to leave the country very quickly and wasn't really sure how long it would be, and then flew back. I was new I think at the job, so it's not like I had all this time to take off, which was really excruciating. But I came back and sort of jumped back in very quickly. Then like five years later, I lost a baby while her surviving twin sister was very, very sick in the NICU. She was in the NICU for five months. But in any case, I went back to work without having really processed the lost of one of them and the fact that the other one could go at any minute.
Melissa Haber:
It was interesting going back to work and jumping into gala planning.
Tim Cynova:
Certainly changes prioritization and just view on life and importance.
Melissa Haber:
It does and then it doesn't because the stuff still has to happen. Whether you're sad or happy, it still has to happen.
Tim Cynova:
Well, in that context, coming back into work, what was helpful? What did people in your workplace do that were helpful, and what wasn't so helpful?
Melissa Haber:
It's hard because not every day is the same. There's days when you really want to talk about it and there's days when you really don't. You can't expect to read your mind and know today is the day when I want to talk about it. But I think that in very small close workplaces, people give you the freedom and the space to just jump in and out if needed. When it's a tight knit group, it's a little easier. You can say, "I'm having a hard day today." When it's a bigger situation, you kind of just go with the flow and do what you have to do. I think what's not helpful is when people avoid you because they're uncomfortable. I mean, death is a part of life, right?
Melissa Haber:
It's worst when it's a child, obviously, or a young parent, but you have to deal with it. Avoiding the person, turning around when you see them walking down the hall is probably not the most helpful way to deal with it. People will say stupid things, but it's better that you're trying I guess. I was just saying to one of my colleagues that one of the least helpful things that people can say is like, "I can't even imagine. I just can't even imagine." You're like, "No, you can because you're putting yourself there, but you don't want to go there. You're saying you can't imagine. I'm living it, so there you go." But even that's better than avoiding.
Tim Cynova:
When your dad passed away, I remember that. That might have been the first time that I worked with someone where they experienced loss.
Melissa Haber:
Oh, really?
Tim Cynova:
Other than grandparents, which... Loss is a deeply individual thing, also a universal thing. People feel it in different ways. I certainly grew up... My dad, he was a pastor, so went to funerals as a kid.
Melissa Haber:
Death was definitely part of your life.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, I certainly knew what that was like, but it was the first time that someone who I knew as a co-worker and friend was going through it. I remember I didn't know what to say at times because it was a different... Because you don't about like grief in the workplace and we were earlier in our careers.
Melissa Haber:
No, because you're supposed to come back ready.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, you're supposed to take your three days and then be just like you were before you took your time.
Melissa Haber:
Right.
Tim Cynova:
I think it was also like because we don't talk about it a lot, I think partly because we're... Certainly I was earlier in my career and I hadn't seen examples of how should a workplace-
Melissa Haber:
Deal with it?
Tim Cynova:
...deal with it and be supportive and understanding.
Melissa Haber:
There's the paid bereavement, which is nice. But then when you come back, you may not necessarily be ready to take on everything you were dealing with before. I always thought both times, both when my dad died and then later, the fact that the world continues turning as it did before in much the same way is offensive when it's raw. It's just very offensive. It's like, do I have to sit here and do a mail merge and do I have to book the whatever for the gala? But I mean, the world doesn't stop because you lost somebody, but the mundane is just really hurtful. But what are you going to do? Somebody still has to do it. If it's a small staff, there's nobody there to back you up.
Melissa Haber:
I mean, here in a major medical center, we hire temps, but it's certainly not the case when we worked together.
Tim Cynova:
Well, I wonder what it looks like in smaller organizations to say... What might it look like. Why don't we hire temps?
Melissa Haber:
Because there's no money.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, right. 20 years ago that's the knee-jerk response that I would have given as well. Resource scarcity is...
Melissa Haber:
There's a learning curve, right? You're going to train somebody to do what the person does. Yeah, it's clunky. It's awkward. But I think having somebody come back full-time and full force when their brain is just honestly not there is also not great for productivity. Not that that should be the main concern, but it's business.
Tim Cynova:
I often wonder if there's bereavement tempting. I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here. This is clearly going to be the part of the podcast that gets cut, but I'm going to pocket this one as an idea like what might it look like for there to be assistance around this, recognizing people don't come back maybe even 50% for a long time. It could be 25% for months.
Melissa Haber:
We had somebody here who passed away a few months ago and it was an associate. It was an employee, not a family member. But he was young, was super young, like in his thirties I want to say. Died in his sleep. It was very unexpected, but they have this employee assistance program and they swooped in and they were available. Any colleagues who wanted to talk, they were set up in a conference room. They rented a van so people could go to the funeral. There was a lot of support for colleagues and the family. We have 40,000 employees. Yeah, there should be. If there weren't, it would be terrible. I don't know.
Tim Cynova:
The conversations that I've been having with people about working while grieving, there are themes around just be human.
Melissa Haber:
Try. I think we're expected at work to be professionals and to get our work done and be on all the time. It's very hard to be on when you're sad. There's sad and then there's grief. When you're in grief... I mean, there's like movies when people were in grief and they say horrible things and they say what they also thought and never wanted to say. It's impossible to be on when you're that vulnerable. That just totally goes against work because you're supposed to not be that way. Vulnerability at work is a no-no, particularly in certain industries. Yeah, it's hard.
Tim Cynova:
Vulnerability in the workplace makes better teams and stronger organizations.
Melissa Haber:
Absolutely. If we acknowledge each other as human beings before anything, before we're colleagues or reporting structure or whatever, we're all people. Ultimately we love our parents and our siblings and our children and we try to do our best, and then there's all the other stuff that comes on top. But that's our common denominator, right? We're all people, whether they report to us or we report to them or we share a cubicle. I think that's what makes death awkward because people... First of all, death is taboo, right, even though we all die. But you know exactly how that feels. If you don't, you can imagine it. Then that makes it uncomfortable because you don't want to touch it.
Melissa Haber:
We all do. That's kind of the one certainty is that we're all going to lose somebody someday, whether we work or not.
Tim Cynova:
I think Christopher Walken has a quote, "None of us is getting out of here alive."
Melissa Haber:
No, we're not. We're all very good about somebody who's 99 passes away. We're all very good at that. It's like, "Oh, they lived a great life. So nice that the family could be together. Whatever you need." We're good at that I think. What we're not so great at is like, "Oh, your father was 55 or you lost a baby," that we suck at because it's, first of all, less common, thankfully. Second of all, just so painful. The flavor of pain that people don't want to imagine. That's why they say the stupid things or they don't say anything at all. When the person who I reported to at the time when my baby died and her sister was in the NICU wanted me to jump into a conference call from the hospital bed.
Melissa Haber:
I was like, "You know, I'm not going to do that." I'm usually one to like sort of not say no, but I was like, "I can't. No. I just can't." The fact that he followed his condolences with, "Oh, so we have this call tomorrow. Do you want to get on?" It's like now I laugh about it. At the time, it was like, "What?" Maybe he thought he was being helpful and distracting me from the pain. Maybe. This wasn't like a bad person.
Tim Cynova:
It's seldom people who are like, "I'm going to wait until that moment, and then I'm going to deliver this piece to inflict harm."
Melissa Haber:
Right. Yeah. I don't think the intention is ever to inflict harm. It's just cluelessness or just... I don't know, a lack of humanity I guess.
Tim Cynova:
What do we make of it? What do we about it besides talking more about it?
Melissa Haber:
Like I said, there's the official policy. HR has a policy. There's bereavement. There's how many days paid, but there has to be like a structure for that person to come back. I mean, whether they're somebody... I don't know. I mean, we have tons of social workers and psychologists here, so it's easy, but somebody who's sort of like checking in on the person. I don't know who that would be necessarily, but just... Or maybe come back part-time or maybe take a personal day a month. I don't know. There's a combination of policy and like flexibility I guess. I recognize that bigger organizations are less flexible.
Tim Cynova:
Interesting though because the bigger organizations are less flexible, but have more resources to do some of the things that small organizations couldn't.
Melissa Haber:
Right. It depends who you report to. I mean, I work with people now who, if God forbid, something happened, they would... I'm 100% certain that it would be fine and I would be allowed the space that I need. But what if I'm hourly and have a union job? You get what you get and that's it. I don't know. I think open honest conversation is a start. When there's trauma involved, if it's something unexpected or a young person who died, there needs to be some healing because you can't just... Once the person's six feet under, you're not better and ready to go, right? Most religions have some kind of mourning process that you're supposed to observe and I think there's a reason for that. But like a week is certainly not enough.
Tim Cynova:
Really even getting through that mourning process, you're usually on adrenaline.
Melissa Haber:
And surrounded by people.
Tim Cynova:
And surrounded by people and everyone leaves and adrenaline stops and then you're hit with this wave at the same point that you're going back to work and trying to reestablish a routine.
Melissa Haber:
Right. The people on your commute are still going to be jerks. They don't know what happened to you. I just remember like wanting to cry when people in the subway were rude. That's something you encounter every day because people are always rude. But when you're so raw and sensitive, it's just like everything gets to you. Like I said before, it's offensive because how dare the world continue to turn when I'm in so much pain?
Tim Cynova:
I was walking down the street after my mom died. I was back in New York. I think about something and walking home and someone walked past me and were like, "Man, why don't you smile? Come on, man."
Melissa Haber:
Oh no.
Tim Cynova:
It's like I'm not going to engage here.
Melissa Haber:
That's another thing is that grief is not linear. It's very cyclical. You could be like totally fine and "getting better" and then something will just hit you and you're back at that beginning. You're very upset, but then immediately self-judgment jumps in and you're like, "Why am I this upset? I shouldn't be this upset. It's been however many months. I have no business being this upset." It sneaks back. I think that's hard too because yes, everybody expects you to be upset in the beginning, but there's like a statute of limitations on your being upset and showing it, God forbid. But it is kind of cyclical. It comes and goes. Yes, the holidays are hard and milestones are hard and that first anniversary and the firsts.
Tim Cynova:
What else do you want people to know?
Melissa Haber:
What is that saying? It's like silly. Everybody's fighting a battle and you don't ever know what people are dealing with. Yeah, you just don't know what people are bringing with them. Yes, your immediate colleagues and your supervisors and the people you work with directly may know what's going on, but other people don't. They maybe super insensitive without knowing or without knowing enough, but it's important I think that we all do it and we all face it. You could be dealing with somebody tomorrow who had just had great loss and not know it. The cashier helping you at the grocery store maybe lost somebody and it's their first day back.
Melissa Haber:
Clearly you're not going to think that at every interaction, but I think if we go back to just we're all human and if we treat each other with humanity and kindness, then it'll be okay. But you just don't know if the person you're dealing with had a great year, a horrible year, and anything in between.
Tim Cynova:
Melissa, thank you for taking time out of your day to chat.
Melissa Haber:
Of course. Yeah, no, thank you for making me think about these things.
Tim Cynova:
Lastly, we're joined by Jim Rosenberg. Jim and I have known each other for many years, dating back to the time when he was vice president at National Art Strategies. He's currently a lecturer and director of corporate engagement at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee. He's the founder of Workbench Consulting and also recently complete The Coaches Training Institute. He's worked with and for a myriad of organizations around entrepreneurship and organizational change, and he created and led a project several years ago called I Know Something that created a network of individuals sharing their experience of dealing with chronic and advanced illness.
Tim Cynova:
Our topic today is working while grieving, as much as you're comfortable discussing sort of how you intersect with the topic.
Jim Rosenberg:
Thanks for having me on the talk about the topic. I've had the experience of losing a parent and working while losing a parent. But really for me, the more intense experience was my wife Amy had cancer. She died not long after diagnosis. She was diagnosed end stage. About four months later, she was no longer with us. When I think about grief and my experience with grief, I think about that period before Amy died, which is caregiving. But the reality is that you're also emotionally... You know that the person you love is going to die and you've got that preparatory grieving happening.
Jim Rosenberg:
I think about that intense period after she died, really that first year or so, and I think about now further removed where grief means a really different thing, really different part of who I am, but it's around that experience with my wife and my experience of grief at work comes from.
Tim Cynova:
Let me read part of the mission for people. I hadn't gone back to the site for a while to look at the material. As I was prepping for this episode, I was reading back through some of your back. You wrote, "I've met a lot of people who are living with complex illness, caring for an elderly parent, or have lost someone close, and everyone says the same thing. When it happens to you, it's like you're the first one. Suddenly you need to find your way through a new world and make constant decisions where there is never a "right choice." Millions of us have been in those situations before. What if we could unlock all that knowledge to help families in need today?"
Tim Cynova:
As you worked on that project, as you talked to other people, what resonated for you in people's stories and going through grief and terminal illness?
Jim Rosenberg:
It's a great question. I find myself stopping to think. What resonated was just how common it was, how unavoidable the experience really is, how much it touches all of us, how close we all are to it, how many of the challenges are the same, whether you're dealing with a situation where you've known for a long time that somebody is sick and you're caring for them for a long time, whether it's much shorter and more sudden, whether it's an instant experience, come home and the person you love has had an illness or heart attack and is no longer with you. Given how common it is and how close we all are and how much we share in it, how little we talk about it.
Jim Rosenberg:
How much people appreciated the opportunity to have an intimate conversation about their experience because we don't talk about it? We keep death as far as away from us as we can in the U.S., at least, in American culture.
Tim Cynova:
In a work context, that's even more heightened or exacerbated, right? We rarely talk about this to begin with. Then when you add work to it, you might not bring your whole self to begin with. Then something like this happens or you don't know what to say and people don't know what say. You get your bereavement leave, come back, and then you're supposed to just keep going like nothing happened. I think part of that stems from because we don't talk about it. We go through the process. It's personal. Maybe we have some friends outside of work who we talk with about it, but it's not a conversation about like what's the place of grief in the workplace.
Jim Rosenberg:
We always bring our whole selves everywhere we go. We don't share our whole selves at work. We're not invited to. It's uncomfortable. We have a façade we're keeping. Grief's a really big hole in that façade.
Tim Cynova:
What were some of the things that people said really were helpful, specifically around work, but what do you appreciate hearing? When you're grieving, what's the better thing to say and what's the thing you probably shouldn't say? From a workplace, there's oftentimes where we can be harmful and make things worst, but what are ways that we can approach things to make things better?
Jim Rosenberg:
Part of it is that even now or having gone through this experience or having been in this several month intense experience of the person I love most in the world being sick and knowing that she's dying and then losing her, I talk to people who say, "Oh, my daughter just got this diagnosis," and I still don't know what to say. I think we all want... I hear from people, we want to have the words. I'm going to say this and you're going to know everything I feel. You're going to feel cared for, and it's going to be perfect, right? My experience is that there really aren't right or wrong words. I guess there are wrong words, but like most conversations, I just always found that it came down to intent.
Jim Rosenberg:
If you're coming from a place where you're concerned about me, you want to know I'm okay. You want me to know you care. Whatever words come out, we see intent. We're really good at intent. One of the funny things in that trying to hide stuff in the workplace is nobody's very good at it. We, as humans, are just so wired, we're so tuned to understanding the words not said between the words. But if your intent is from a positive and caring place, for me at least, that connected. I could tell that and I appreciated it.
Jim Rosenberg:
If the intent was more for better or worse like, "Wow, I want to keep away. I want to say something so I can move on. This is scary. I don't like it. I'm uncomfortable. I don't know what to do," I would just feel that discomfort and in some ways I just want to help you move along as quickly as you could, right?I want to get you out of your discomfort so I can be out of your discomfort. I talk about Amy having died. I don't tend to talk about her having passed or left or moved on or not being with us. People wince when you say the word died. It's unvarnished, right? Something that I always appreciated just for me was I say that because it fits my spiritual beliefs.
Jim Rosenberg:
It doesn't mean that I don't have a belief about where she is spiritually, but it fits my real feeling of things. I've just appreciated when people can accept that, not be scared of the word, not be scared of the sort of unvarnished description of yes, the person I love died. Let's think about this question. I think back, there's this moment that had nothing to do with words. I used to study martial arts and my sensei heard that Amy had died. She came over to my house. I hadn't seen her in a couple of years.
Jim Rosenberg:
She just hugged me. It was just like this hug, this holding you, this intense hug, that was just this physical way of saying, "I am here." It's been several years, and I remember that moment because in all the different people coming by and saying and the sort of gentle hugs that you get, it's like, "No and I'm not letting you go. I'm here," was probably the most powerful... That's the most powerful communication I remember from somebody just wanting me to know something about how they felt for me. Maybe the work equivalent is just inside the hectic busy running around day, that intentional sit down, be present, I'm really here with you right now.
Jim Rosenberg:
I'm not getting up to runaway in 30 seconds. Maybe that's the work equivalent of that hug.
Tim Cynova:
A hug like that, you're distracted by other things. You're entirely present in the moment. Yeah, I think you're right. That's other ways of being entirely present in the moment with someone else to share that with them. My dad passed away in the spring. As I was getting condolences from people, I was making a note like, "Wow. They said that in a really great way. I should write this down some place." It's sort of like when you look at someone else's resume and be like, "I totally need to copy that format because the way they say that is perfect."
Jim Rosenberg:
A friend of Amy's from college, one of her best friends, Emily McDowell, has this amazing collection of greeting cards that were started for cancer and then sort of expanded from there, but they were just funny and they're incredibly frank. They're complete irreverent and they just blew up. She was on the Good Morning America and The Today Show and all over the place because people were so hungry for this honest way of communicating around illness and loss. Her cards have just been amazing just for that.
Tim Cynova:
Wow. Do you know where you can find them?
Jim Rosenberg:
Emily McDowell Studio. EmilyMcDowell.com. Yeah, her cards are great.
Tim Cynova:
Usually I go to Papyrus because it's the only place I can find sympathy cards that don't have long poems or flowers on them or something.
Jim Rosenberg:
I'm sitting here looking at the site and I remember this being one of the... I think one of the first cards. The cover of is beautifully hand-lettered and there's flowers and it says, "Please let me be the first to punch the next person who tells you everything happens for a reason." It's in that vein at all of her cards. They're true. They're honest. That's what you want when you're going through these experiences. There's not a lot of room left for that veneer of bullshit that we deal with day to day. You just want honesty.
Tim Cynova:
I know grieving is individual. Certainly in my own grief, laughter is a part of it. I guess like in life, there are a lot of feelings, a lot of things going on, but that laughter and joy can also be a part of that in a weird way I think, at least for my experience.
Jim Rosenberg:
I agree. I think again it's part of that... For me, it's just part of that honesty and honest experience of things. That even when things are going to hell, there's still funny stuff that happens. Your nine month old still tries to pull the IV stand down, right? You're just like ah and you're jumping around to get the baby, right? That's just normal human life. Normally that would be pulling the table cloth off the table, but you're still living, right? You're still going through these experiences.
Tim Cynova:
Is there anything else on the topic that you like to say or you like for people to know or think about?
Jim Rosenberg:
Just coming back to the workplace specifically and some things that I experienced that were helpful and not helpful. I think the helpful ones stick out more for me. Things that organizations do to be supportive. Even in the middle of Amy's illness, we used to talk about how in so many ways we were rather blessed, right? In that I had a job where if I took a day off or I took a week off to be at the hospital with Amy, I wasn't going to lose my job. I wasn't on a, oh, you're 10 minutes late for your shift, kind of a situation. We had really good health insurance. We had the wherewithal to make sense out of how you get through the health system, right?
Jim Rosenberg:
We had people around us to help us try to make sense out of that. A couple of specific things, Amy was at the State Department. She had spent her career. State Department has a policy where anyone at state can contribute leave to somebody who is sick and absent from work. Through the generosity of all the people in her organization, Amy was sick for four months, but had a salary the whole time. That's directly off a policy that allowed people to contribute. From my organization where I worked, we always talked about being family-centric, but we truly were family-centric. There were things that the team did. One was I had lots of responsibilities, right, like anyone doing a job.
Jim Rosenberg:
Some of those were things that it was essential I did and some were just things I did. The team really let me focus on those contributions that I was the only one in the organization who could make that contribution, that particular way of solving a problem or that particular process I knew how to do. Everyone picked up the rest of the work so that my workload could go down a bunch and I could continue to be a useful part of the team even as I wasn't there 50% of the time. That allowed me not only to continue to be effective with less time that I was working, it allowed me to feel effective.
Jim Rosenberg:
It allowed me to feel that I wasn't letting down my colleagues, I wasn't letting down my friends at work, or needing to make this choice between failing at my job or failing my wife.I wasn't put in that situation. The other thing is that my organization is incredibly flexible about the time off. I was treated as a professional. I knew what I had to do. No one was checking about, did you let us know that you weren't going to be here on Monday? Did you let us know how many days you were going to out to stay with your wife at the hospital? I just took care of the things I had to take care of. I made sure that I didn't leave anyone waiting for a phone call because I was just treated as a professional.
Jim Rosenberg:
Yes, you have important things to do in your life. You know what you need to do. Go ahead and do it. I think also after Amy died, the group was great in sort of allowing me to kind of stair-step my responsibilities back to my normal job.Those first few months were overwhelming and a bit surreal if you will. I remember there were days where I'd go to the office and I'll be working and I realized that no matter what I did, there was no way I could get any work done right now. I just couldn't take this overwhelming experience and put it over the shelf for a minute. I would just go home because there wasn't anything else to do at that point.
Jim Rosenberg:
Overtime, as I was adjusting, then our CEO would sort of ratchet up like, "Hey, I need you to do this now too. I need you to do this." Those were just some really practical things that happened while Amy was sick and after Amy died that were a big help to me that honestly any organization can do. it's a matter of the will and the intent to support each other in that way.
Tim Cynova:
I've been writing a blog post for months now and it's about working while grieving. This podcast actually came out of a conversation with another colleague who's similarly writing a post. It was like, let's just record something because we've got these blog post that are not done. The reason that I got stuck in my blog post is we're doing a lot of work at Fractured Atlas personally around racism and oppression and white privilege. I realized while I was writing that post the privilege that I had in grief, and yet another thing that I had not even considered, the ability to drop things at a moment's notice and the means to fly back and forth to be there with my family, to work remotely, and all of these things.
Tim Cynova:
I guess that where I'm stuck because I'm still wrestling with that. I think, as you pointed out, there's really great things, simple things that make a big difference. I'm forever thankful to Fractured Atlas where I work when both of my parents passed away because I've had great teams that I've worked with and the flexibility. That's not the case for a lot of people.
Jim Rosenberg:
The thing that really struck me and I remember Amy and I talking about while she was sick is I said that we would talk about how fortunate we were even inside of this situation where we knew Amy had a prognosis that she wasn't going to live three or four more months. But recognizing that there's bad things that happen, right? Like getting cancer, right? There's suffering that happens in the world that we can't do anything about. They're sort of parts of the universe, if you will. What struck us is that there are these layers of additional suffering that we create, that we as a community, as a society, as an organization, we create those.
Jim Rosenberg:
The pain you're feeling because the person you love is dying, that just is. But the pain you're feeling because you're stressed about whether you're going to lose your job or not, you're stressed about whether you're going to go bankrupt or not, you're stressed because you can't figure out how you're going to take care of your young child during this illness and afterward, you're stressed and suffering because you can't get access to the medical care and specialist that you need, these are all layers of suffering that we just create those. Because we create them, we can change them. It's a matter of will.
Jim Rosenberg:
It's a matter of recognizing how we as people and as a community experience grief and loss has only partly to do with those bad things that happen. They have a lot to do with how we want to commit to each other to alleviate that suffering.
Tim Cynova:
Work shouldn't suck is the phrase that our friend, Russell Willis Taylor, sort of picked up from a presentation that I did. I often have to clarify that it's not that it can't or it won't, it's that it shouldn't. As leaders, it's our responsibility to continually be working to make sure that it doesn't. We're shirking a core responsibility of our duties if we're not constantly trying to make things suck less. When it comes to grieving like working, why does it have to be so hard?
Jim Rosenberg:
Recognizing as leaders that grief is out there, right? It's happening. No one is far removed. When I would talk about the I Know Something project, this project to lift out the stories and the lessons from people who'd gone through end of life experiences, when I would tell people that, they'd be like, "Oh my gosh, I wish I'd had that when." There wasn't anybody I talked to who said, "What would that be for?" Right? Because everyone's been there. As leaders, to recognize that grief is out there, the fact that we have a culture that pushes death away, means that we don't... I'm trying to think if I've ever had a conversation where we talked about policies around how to support people dealing with grief.
Jim Rosenberg:
I don't remember ever having that conversation. We talked about other kinds of events, both positive and negative ones. When we stop pushing it away, we bring it closer to ourselves, we can make choices, as you say. Work shouldn't suck. We can make it suck less. I recognize there are trade-offs. When I was working less, other people were choosing to carry the weight for me. Yeah, there's financial cost to it, but it's a choice to say, "Yeah, we're not getting the same output from Jim that we were last year, but he's a part of this community. He's a valuable part of our organization. We will down the road. We're not going to ask for part of his salary back. It just is."
Jim Rosenberg:
But those are choices that as leaders it's one of the privileges of being in a leadership position. You get to actually make those choices. You get to create that environment for other people.
Tim Cynova:
Jim, thank you so much for taking time today to chat about this, your openness, for your honesty, for the laughter we've shared. Really appreciate it.
Jim Rosenberg:
Yeah, no. Glad I could take some time and chat. Hopefully some of that wasn't just stuff that make sense to me because I lived through it. Hopefully there's some ideas in there that will be useful and interesting to other folks who are listening.
Tim Cynova:
Most definitely. It's my pleasure to welcome back podcasting's favorite cohost Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm good. You're really silly. Favorite. I like it though. Keep stoking my ego.
Tim Cynova:
We just need to claim it.
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay. You're right. I got to get a shirt made. Christmas is around the corner.
Tim Cynova:
Who knows what'll arrive on your doorstep in the next week? In this episode, we talked about working with grieving. I had the opportunity to speak with three people who have each experienced the death of someone close to them while working a full-time job. Many expressed some of their thoughts and sentiments about what's the right thing to say, something that's sincere, and what can workplaces do. Don't forget humanity at a moment when it matters a lot. I want to get your thoughts on the topic.
Lauren Ruffin:
Before I started working at Fractured Atlas, my very first job managing a decent size team, we started off being known as the D Team for development, and quickly over like six months we moved into the D Team for death, which is really messed up. Everybody on this team that I managed as a new manager lost someone close to them in the first six months I managed the team. I hadn't thought about that until this very moment, even though I knew that we were going to be talking about grief for this episode. It is one of those times when regardless of what someone's vacation policy says, two or three days for bereavement is not enough.
Lauren Ruffin:
Also, when you start looking at the science of it, we know that grief hits everyone differently and it often can last for years. It can be legitimate when someone says two years or three years after someone dies. I'm actually grieving right now. As a manager, one, I think it's important that you let the space exist in your team for that conversation. My mother died 31 years ago this year in November, and I still like every year take November 14th to myself, but it never stops, right? I don't think your standard HR policy ever really takes that into account.
Tim Cynova:
You're right. It covers those couple of days, but because it is such a deeply individual thing. One of the things I came up was anniversaries, firsts, all of those things resurface or can resurface. I was recounting the holidays are particular a tough time for me as I think about the loss of my parents. You're walking down the New York City street corner. You turn the corner, it's like there's a brass quartet that's playing holiday music. You're like, "Damn you for playing the holiday music." Tears in my eyes. I'm going to have to edit that curse word out or I'll have to put explicit on this episode, which is going to be a really weird-
Lauren Ruffin:
Hold on. Get you... That gets an explicit?
Tim Cynova:
I don't know. I don't know.
Lauren Ruffin:
Is that explicit? I thought it was just the f bomb or like a nipple.
Tim Cynova:
I'll review the rules.
Lauren Ruffin:
I felt like we were... Yeah, please do.
Tim Cynova:
We need to know what kind of curse words we can use on the show.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, because we're going to be editing out a lot with me. Yeah, I do hold the title of the only person who's ever been edited out in ESPN Magazine.
Tim Cynova:
Let's take a tangent here. Did you appear in ESPN Magazine?
Lauren Ruffin:
I was quoted in the ESPN Magazine, and I can't remember if I said... I don't think I dropped the F bomb. I think I said like and they edited me out. I'm like, "You have rappers and athletes and these things and I know they curse more than I do, but you give me the little star dollar sign in the middle of my word? What the heck!"
Tim Cynova:
What were you being interviewed for?
Lauren Ruffin:
Homophobia in sports. I used to do a lot of work because I was like the first black female athlete in college sports to come out publicly. My friends used to call me Lauren Ruffin... For whatever reason, there were several articles that had like Lauren Ruffin, openly gay basketball player. That was my life description. They'd be like, "Oh, OGBP is here."
Tim Cynova:
I did not think that our working while grieving episode would pick up this anecdote.
Lauren Ruffin:
Brent used to segment on like how did Dick Vitale get to this particular sentence. It'd be so winding. In any case, I feel like you could probably do that with me because I go off on so many tangents.
Tim Cynova:
One of the things that came out in a conversation was that grieving takes a lot of different forms, but there's also laughter during the process. That's natural and human and also can be really confusing. I see Tim laughing. It must be fine now. Really you can laugh even in the darkest times of being faced with the death of a loved one.
Lauren Ruffin:
Grieving is so cultural and like so familial. My family has a tradition of we tell jokes about the person at their funeral. The first time my wife met my family was at my great-great-aunt's funeral. She just did not understand why we were all essentially telling snarky jokes about this woman at her funeral. That's my family's tradition. We laugh a lot. She's Irish and she's like where the pub and where's the alcohol?
Tim Cynova:
I don't know if I told you this. When my dad died, it was at his home and I was able to be with him. The electricity went out in the subdivision 20 minutes before he died. Did I ever tell you that?
Lauren Ruffin:
No.
Tim Cynova:
You don't know when the end is going to come, but you sort of sense that something has changed over the past couple of days. All of a sudden like all of the power goes out. I'm calling my sister who had just run to go get coffee and be like, "Does this happen all the time?" She's like, "Oh, just call the power company." I'm at hold for the power company waiting to see what's happening.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh my goodness.
Tim Cynova:
Then I think wait, he was a pain pump. I'm like, "Wait, is that plugged in? Is that not working?" Thankfully, the engineers foresaw this so there's a battery power thing. Yeah, the power went out 20 minutes before he died. About 10 minutes after he died, the power came back on. Immediately I thought, dad would love this story. How absurd is this? You're at sort of the depths of grief and at the same time you're like, "What's going on with the power grid here?"
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I mean, there are always moments like that. No, you didn't share that story, but you were just such a shell of yourself because we have a shared leadership team. The three of us, Shawn, Pallavi, and me, were just sort of trying to figure out how do we support Tim. One day it's okay and one day it's not okay. Again, how do you just help someone if someone's in grace? It's really hard and I can't imagine working in like a big corporate with really structured rules or like in government. I feel so grateful as a manager to have worked places where I had the flexibility to sort of say, "Just take the time. Be a shell of yourself for the next three months."
Lauren Ruffin:
It's just really, really hard in a workplace, but people have to work. Work has to accommodate that. It has to accommodate like the grieving process.
Tim Cynova:
It's interesting. You go through the process and it's not the same. I lost my mom and I lost my dad and it was different things. It hits you in different ways. I can remember sitting in meetings as soon as I came back from leave when my mom passed away. I just sat through meetings and I sort of just floated through a meeting and I'm not sure what people were saying. It was similar, but different when I lost my dad. One moment I'm like with you and the next moment someone has said something and my mind's spiraling off. Some of it's time. You just need to just get back into a rhythm. Other times it's hard enough knowing personally what to do, let alone I don't know what you're thinking and what's going to be best.
Tim Cynova:
Just being human and being flexible and understanding. If this person was able to do the job beforehand, let's give them the space and time and support.
Lauren Ruffin:
I've lost so many people close to me, close family members, close friends. I'm very comfortable talking about death. I've been through it a lot. When I was eight years old, my mother died. I've had subsequent people die since then. As I sort of approached my forties, it's a totally different experience when you are close to someone or approximate to someone who's our age and never lost anyone. I can't imagine being 40 and losing someone close to me for the first time. I think that is just in terms of life experience has got to be so difficult because you don't have the tools to really cope with it. It's such a new feeling, whereas I feel like death is very close to me, has been close to me for most of my life.
Lauren Ruffin:
I also as a manager and colleague realize that the first time somebody losses someone, they're just going to be need a lot of time. It's going to be really, really hard for them to navigate the world for a while.
Tim Cynova:
That's partly why I wanted to do this episode because it's not something we talk about in the workplace much if at all, which makes it even harder when something does happen to know what to do. Do you just not say anything? Do you just act like it's fine? As managers, how do you approach it if you've not lost anyone and gone through that experience?
Lauren Ruffin:
You want to talk about the themes that sort of came up?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. I remember the themes were just to be sincere. There's a conversation that started with Jim Rosenberg who lost his wife from late stage cancer right after their daughter was one year old. He was remarking that one of the things that stood out to him was someone gave him a really sincere hug after his wife passed away. What that led to was this conversation to realize what happens with a really sincere hug is your entirely present with someone. You're not thinking about what's next. You're just right there. What's the equivalent of being entirely present with someone in the workplace to show I care, I'm here, I'm not thinking about other things right now. In this moment, you're just present.
Tim Cynova:
There are a number of conversations that came out of this episode, but that was one that really stood out to me. I think also because my mom used to give really great hugs. My friends still remark, "Man, your mom gave really good hugs." You're going for like the quick hug and there she's like, "No, we're going to do this for like at least 10 seconds." You get pass it like, "This is a weird long hug." She'll be like, "This is a really good hug." I mean, that's probably why that resonated with me. My mind started to go like, what's the equivalent in the workplace of a hug like that? There are other things, sort of practical things like the ability for people to trade days off so they could give them to people who needed paid time off.
Tim Cynova:
Also, coworkers who had come walking toward you, see you, turn around and walk the other way. Those were some of the things that came out of it. You just don't know when thoughts of a lost loved one and grieve will hit you. It becomes part of your life.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yup. That's so true. That is so true.
Tim Cynova:
Well, Lauren, thanks for starting the day talking about grief and working while grieving. Pleasure and highlight of my day getting to chat with you. Thanks again to our guests, Melissa Haber, Jim Rosenberg, and Sophia Park. Thank you so much for sharing your personal stories. If you've enjoyed the conversation or you're just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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