Make grief work to keep up good work
In my second year of college, my roommate and dear friend Sandy suddenly died. The year was already challenging enough – turning 20, still so young and new to the surreal Southern California setting, navigating big life changes. But Sandy's death drastically altered the social and emotional landscape of my community and my college experience. I was so absorbed in the shock, so deep in logistics mode, caring for our friend healing from the same car accident, and trying to make the best of a terrible year, that I hardly noticed at the time how the university we attended was responding to our crisis.
Yet in hindsight, the messages delivered to my peers and I were loud and clear: try to stay focused, keep up the good work, and make it to graduation. My professors that semester were merely sent a notification of the loss I had faced, and no one the following semester was told anything. I was mandated to attend their counseling center, but the counselor cried during our session and I felt responsible to console them (woof). The housing staff offered to bring us food once, but then smelled weed on premise and issued us a citation instead. They were willing to host a memorial service (as long as I'd help organize it), but provided no help in packing up Sandy's belongings or navigating the future of my living situation. The list goes on.
I imagine if I had better advocated for myself (or if someone had on my behalf), the university would have likely responded better. But this put all the responsibility on me and my peers – grieving 20-year-olds in a state of reevaluating the meaning of life – to champion our dire needs for flexibility, space, and nurturing support.
The loss of Sandy has had a lasting impact on my life, and alongside it, so has my experience of how little was offered in proactive outreach, consensual support, or space for grief. This was my first experience with how ill-equipped most institutions are for genuinely supporting their staff, students, and constituents through experiences of grief and loss, and the myriad of assumptions made around who's grieving, for how long, what success looks like, etc. I began to recognize how without proper institutional training and practices, those impacted by loss are left to do double the work: attend to their grief AND push against the system that's preventing them from healthily grieving.
In professional roles over the next decade, I've continued to notice how in the face of any kind of loss – not just deaths, but also in the more everyday ones like a project going badly or relationship woes – there can be such aversion to pausing, reflecting, and integrating insights gleaned from the experience. It’s part of what led me towards a career of grief and loss-focused facilitation and coaching: wanting to hold space for others to welcome what’s really happening, offer nurturing care and support, and spark transformation.
The more I do this work, the clearer it has become that workplaces are a critical battleground in the fight for treating all people with humanity, empathy, and dignity. Learning how we as individuals and as part of institutions support each other in our most challenging moments is a critical step in creating cultures that are equitable, inclusive, and resilient.