Grief at Work: Career Support While Mourning a Loved One

It can be tough to find the space to talk about grief at work. About 5 months ago, I lost a dear friend of mine. It was sudden, unexpected, and threw my entire world into chaos.

I told very few trusted members of my team. I felt embarrassed that I was falling behind and couldn’t figure out how to navigate my emotions. At first, I figured it would be safest to throw myself into my job. It felt like something I could control.

I saw the results and received positive feedback. Anyone who knew what I had been through kept telling me how well I was coping. But I was struggling to celebrate my wins.



While I grappled with this loss, I was doing secret work internally and constantly. My mind was always racing with memories of my friend. Or worrying about my other companions in grief: Those I knew were struggling like his partner and mother. I was a caregiver for some of these people. My focus was always split. It was like trying to run a zoom meeting with the radio on full blast in the background.

My work capacity was dwindling. I could only focus for an hour at a time without breaking down. I was exhausted and I had no hope or drive. My work was suffering for it.

Something had to change.

This is how I pulled myself out of it. Working through grief is such a vulnerable journey. It won’t be the same for you, but some things may resonate. So let me share what helped me work through my grief at work.

How does grief affect you at work?

Grief isn’t linear. Anyone who knows what it’s like to lose a loved one will tell you that the 5 stages happen randomly or sometimes all at once. If you haven’t experienced burnout, neglecting yourself during this time is a surefire way to get you there.

Funnily enough, a lot of the symptoms of burnout overlap with grief. It can be hard to tell which is which a lot of the time. In the throes of grief, you're more susceptible to burning out as well.

Here are some symptoms you might experience while grieving:

• Increased irritability
• Numbness and detachment
• Preoccupation with the loss
• Inability to show or experience joy
• Turning to substances to alleviate stress

Career Success means experiencing financial health and work you enjoy while feeling fulfilled in your peer community and life choices.

When you're dealing with grief at work, this definition can feel completely unattainable. At times when you aren’t able to focus, your job performance falters, putting your finances at risk. When you don’t enjoy anything, you will struggle to find fulfillment in your work.

My instinct — and this is true for many other grievers — is to recoil from my community entirely. I had stopped communicating with my teammates and my boss. I was the textbook opposite of Career Success.

Is it okay to work while grieving?

Grief affects everyone differently. You’ll hear this time and time again:

There is no timeline for grief.

While that’s true, it can feel like you need to rush your grief at work. I cannot stress how important it is to fight that impulse. And I know that that can be incredibly difficult when we’re expected to get up and meet quarterly goals from 9 to 5.

The short answer to the above question is — is it okay to work while grieving? — is that it depends on your capacity. If you have a boss that lets you take it one day at a time, you can operate as such. Otherwise, it’s okay to do the bare minimum for a while until you feel better.

Some people take an extended leave of absence for grief. Again, this is a personal journey and at risk of sounding repetitive: you need to do what’s best for YOU.

If you do choose to work during this time, here are some tips that have helped me throughout my healing.

Tips for coping with grief at work

1 - Take time off

Use your sick days first. Mental health is equivalent to physical health. You will be at a mental deficit and your sick days are there to use for that exact purpose. Before using your vacation days — trust me, you’ll need those down the line — you should speak to HR about what they may be able to do for you.

I felt so guilty when I booked time off and disconnected from work for 2 weeks. But when I returned, I was in a way better headspace and, in the end, more productive. You won’t be your best self if you’re juggling burnout and grief at once.

Think of grief as an additional job that your body and mind are consumed with. If you’re working 2 full-time jobs at the same time, you’re inevitably going to feel the effects.

Don’t force yourself to be normal. Take the space you need to be with loved ones. You should also use this time to get your support network in place.

Grief will come and go and some days are better than others. It can help to have people around you to lean on and take some tasks off your plate both at work and home.

And use your health benefits! See a counselor, book a massage and fill out your prescriptions. Your body needs you to slow down and take care of it. So use the resources at your disposal to do so.

2 - Communicate your needs

It can feel extremely vulnerable to admit that you are going through it. But it’s impossible to ask for career-saving accommodations without communicating your needs. Be honest with your work — and yourself — about what you’re going through.

When I finally was able to admit that I wasn’t doing great, I found that the team around me was willing to support me in every way they could think of. Between extended time off, and redelegation of peripheral tasks, my day-to-day became more manageable.

More than that, when I had particularly bad days — his birthday was specifically difficult — I had the language I needed to express why deadlines weren’t going to be met. As a manager, it can be hard to differentiate between a willingly bad” employee and someone who simply needs support during a difficult time.

Not only that, someone’s death can come with its own series of admin tasks. Those in themselves are huge amounts of work. When a friend of mine lost her mother, she was drowning in paperwork. From the death certificate to funeral planning, she had more than a full-time job’s worth of tasks on her plate. And that didn’t include her full-time job.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Good Mourning | Grief Community & Podcast (@goodmourningpodcast)

Delegate those dead-min tasks as best you can to those you trust. For work tasks, work with management and HR to offload and reprioritize. It’s okay to have some things fall off your plate. Things will be picked back up. Your health is more important right now.

3 - Find support in your community

Grief group, grief group, GRIEF GROUP! I’ll say it once, and I’ll say it again.

When my friend passed, all of his closest people — myself included — started meeting once a week in my basement apartment. We would watch movies together, swap stories, and grieve openly. This mid-week opportunity allowed us all to get all of those inside thoughts that had built up over the week out in one night.

Others in the group later joined a more official, mediated grief group. Even others have started more general group counseling sessions to keep an eye on their own mental health. I changed my therapy sessions from once a month to once a week.

These opportunities help you process your grief in unique ways. What they share in common is a sense of community support. Whether you find a 1:1 grief counselor or gather at the pub to honor your loved one, you will start to feel like you aren’t alone in this.

When it comes to your career, it can feel embarrassing to lean on others in a time of need. There’s an expectation that professionalism requires stoicism. That’s just not true.

If you’re working from home, online forums and communities can become a touchstone for you while processing your grief. It can be simple to post a missing my friend today” while on a five-minute break. You’ll find thousands of people are missing theirs too.

One resource that has been a huge source of help for many has been that of a Career Coach. Having worked for Uvaro for nearly a year now, I’ve heard the benefits of Career Coaching from every angle. Heck, I write about them every day.

These folks are here to help you navigate grief at work. They want to help you overcome professional hurdles. So when you’re ready to get back into it, they can be an incredible support to add to your professional network.

4 - Breathe

Seems simple doesn’t it? Take things moment by moment. Remember your priorities and don’t feel guilty if they’re all about you right now.

Don’t rush the grieving process for the sake of your job. The one surprising part of grief that I was confronted with was how boring it got. I was tired of feeling sad all the time. I was annoyed that I couldn’t pull myself out of it.

Grief never ends… but it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith… It is the price of love.

— Stephen Colbert, All There Is with Anderson Cooper

This growing resentment pushed me to take on more than I could handle much too quickly. I wish now that I had slowed down and honored those feelings of boredom. When eventually I did sit with them, I found that I wasn’t bored of grief at all. I was burning out, craving stability, and needed to rest and recharge. Ignoring that feeling and not giving myself time to process it ended up leading to a complete lack of motivation.

There are so many ways to bridge these 2 worlds: work and grief. You’re allowed to bring the memory of the person you lost to work with you.

I found it helpful to share stories about him with willing coworkers. I found team members whose experiences mirrored mine. Not only that, this grief fuelled my process. I’m writing this article right now aren’t, I?

Your focus doesn’t need to be on financial health or career growth right now. But if you keep striving for finding enjoyment in your work and fulfillment in your community, you’ll notice the rest will fall into place.

How do you tell your boss you're still grieving?

There will be times when people simply don’t understand. If you’re back at work and you find yourself overwhelmed by your workload, it can be time to have a 1:1 with your boss. If I thought asking for a raise was frightening, it was nothing compared to the I am floundering” conversation I needed to have.

When I was at my lowest, my boss and I came up with a system. Every morning I would shoot him a Slack message with my capacity out of 10. For 3 weeks in a row, my capacity was below 5/10.

As a manager, this can be incredibly disheartening. You have deadlines to meet, and you’re navigating team goals and company goals alike. You need consistency in the work coming in and deadlines being met.

We decided I needed to take some time off to recover and put in personal systems to help me get my feet back under me. When I returned, I had a better understanding of my needs and a greater capacity in which to execute daily tasks.

I wish I had been able to communicate a conversation in the following way and ask questions to come to a compromise much earlier in the process. It might have prevented burnout.

• I’ve noticed that my daily capacity is consistently below a 5. Is there any way to still meet the expectations of my role on an adjusted schedule?
• Are there any non-urgent tasks that can be offloaded to other team members until I am through this rough patch?
• I am struggling today. Are there any tasks that can be taken off my plate?
• I’m worried that my grief is affecting my quality of work. Is there someone available to take a second look or act as a support on important tasks?
• Some days are better than others. Can we establish a line of communication and minimum needed output for days when I may not be able to meet larger expectations?
• I don’t know when I will feel more like myself and I worry that poor job performance will jeopardize my position here. Can we discuss your expectations of me during this time?
• I am struggling with motivation these days. I’ve always been passionate about ________. Is there any way I can incorporate this into my work here?

How do you support a grieving coworker?

For those who haven’t been through it, it can be difficult to know where to start. There are a few things that you can do to help make someone’s transition back to work easier. This goes for managers, but for fellow teammates as well.

• Have grace and patience as they adjust to being back.
• Don’t pry into the death. They may share details if they want to, but that is a personal decision they will bring to you. You may never know what happened, no matter how close you feel to your coworker. And that’s okay.
• Don’t expect them to be back to normal” on any timeline. There will never be a time when they do not miss this person. The person you once knew has been changed by this death. Instead of trying to bring them back, move forward with them in this new world.
• Be clear and honest with what you can offer as support. When you’re grieving, it can be overwhelming to get a thousand messages of how can I help?” The truth is, in grief, you often don’t know what you need. That’s why Can I send you an Uber Eats gift card for your dinner tonight?” is way better than What foods can I send you?”
• If they decline your help, accept that graciously.

Need more help navigating grief at work?

Whether you’re grieving a loved one yourself or supporting someone else with their grief, approach with compassion and understanding. Have space for yourself. Grief is one of the most human experiences you can have.

And you’re not alone. I think you’ll find many people in your network who have experienced grief at one point. And if they haven’t, loss is an inevitable part of being human. Moving forward with empathy is the only way to heal.

If you need further help navigating your career while mourning a loss, I recommend reaching out to one of Uvaro’s Career Coaches. And I’m not just saying that because I work here. They are kind folks who can help you reach your goals and approach your career holistically. You can learn more about them in our Career Success Catalog.

And if you need someone to talk to, please reach out to any of these support lines:

• National Crisis Hotline - +1 (800) 273-8255
• SAMHSA - +1 (800) 662-4357
• United States Crisis Text Line - Text HOME to 741-741