Working Through Grief Without Pretending It Isn’t There
I lost someone close while running a business that depended on me showing up. There was no option to disappear for three months. I’m not going to pretend I handled it well. I handled it the way a lot of people do: by working harder, telling everyone I was fine, and quietly falling apart in the car between appointments.
If I could go back, here’s what I’d tell myself.
Lower the bar, out loud
You will not be at full capacity. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it true; it just adds the strain of the performance to the weight of the loss. Tell the people who depend on you, plainly: “I’ve had a death in the family. I’ll keep things running but I’m going to be slower for a while.” Almost everyone responds with more grace than you expect. The ones who don’t were going to be a problem anyway.
Work can be a shelter, briefly
There’s nothing wrong with using work as a place to stand when the rest of the ground has gone. A task with a clear shape, that doesn’t ask how you’re feeling, can be a mercy for a few hours a day. The danger is making it the whole day, every day, so that the grief never gets a turn. It’ll take one anyway, usually at a worse time.
Schedule the falling apart
This sounds cold. It saved me. If the grief is going to come regardless, give it a time. For me it was the first hour of the morning, alone, before anything else. I let it be as bad as it needed to be, and then I washed my face and went to work. Having a place for it meant it ambushed me less in the middle of a meeting. Not never. Less.
Do the minimum well
This is the season for the minimum viable day, at work and at home. The essential things, done properly. Everything optional, dropped without guilt. The project that can wait, waits. The new initiative is not happening this quarter. You’re not failing by doing less; you’re doing the one thing a season like this allows, which is keeping the core alive.
Let people do things
When someone asks what they can do, give them a real answer. Pick the kids up Thursday. Cover that meeting. Bring food Sunday. People want to help and don’t know how; being specific is a gift to them as much as to you. The lone-wolf version of grief, where you accept nothing, isn’t strength. It’s just lonelier.
Watch for the delayed bill
Grief that’s been held off with work tends to arrive months later, when things have calmed and the mind finally has room. Mine came about four months on, out of nowhere, and was worse for having waited. If you’ve been strong for everyone, expect this, and don’t read it as going backwards. It’s the part that was always going to happen, arriving.
What stays
The loss doesn’t close; it changes shape. The work went on, and in time I was glad it had, because it kept a structure standing that I could move back into when I was ready. But the thing I’d change is the pretending. Nobody needed me to be fine. They needed me to be honest and present, at whatever capacity I had.
If you’re there now
Tell the people who need to know. Drop the optional. Give the grief a time. Accept the specific help. Be slower, on purpose, for as long as it takes.
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