Am I the only one who has endured grief and loss?

Sadly, all humans experience grief—it's a difficult reality for all of us.

Grief is best experienced in 'doses'. Be patient with yourself and others. This is a journey that can not be rushed, although it can be honoured, befriended and integrated over time.

Over time, I hope your grief softens and transforms into something that allows your natural compassion to shine even brighter, bringing comfort and kindness to yourself and to those around you. Although the journey is yours, you need not traverse this journey alone.

Reach out to trusted others around you. Ask them to listen. Tell them what you want and what you need. Find people who hear you, who see you.

And if you feel like a grief and loss support group is a meaningful fit for you right now, reach out to join (or receive more info) on the grief and loss support group starting on October 8th. (10 weeks).

Lead yourself well.

Grief and loss are messy.
Messy at work.
Messy at home.
Messy internally.
Messy externally.
All of it is messy.

"Sometimes the obsessives among us try to clean it up. We try to make everything neat and tidy and orderly. We make up rules and we try to enforce them. We create boundaries and timelines and schedules.

It doesn't work though.

The natural chaos of our grief is more powerful than any container we try to put it in. So we might as well let it be messy and trust there's meaning in the messiness."
(writings by Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt)

Normalize the messy leadership path of attending to your mourning and your grief journey.

Lead as well as you can, when you can, without judgement or blame or shame or hurry.

You have my best.

Part of what makes grief difficult, is that it's often invisible. Inside we are torn apart, but outside we look basically the same.

Being in the liminal space of what we had hoped for - and what is not to be - is like being in two places at once; looking backward and looking forward. This liminal space is not comfortable (or even welcome) and yet here it is, and here we are.

Here's the thing; it is only in the doorway of liminal space that we can slowly reconstruct our shattered world and re-emerge as transformed, whole people who are ready to live again.

10 Touchstones by Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt (text for coaching group)
1. open to the presence of your loss
2. dispel a dozen misconceptions about grief
3. embrace the uniqueness of your grief
4. explore your feelings of loss
5. understand the six needs of mourning
6. recognize you are not crazy
7. nurture yourself
8. reach out for help
9. seek reconciliation, not resolution
10. appreciate your transformation

Lead yourself through the liminal space.

Where does the heartache go if you don't let it out?

"It doesn't disappear. It simply bides its time, patiently at first then urgently, like a caged animal pacing behind bars." (Quote by Dr. Alan D. Wolfert)

One of the many reasons that I am passionate about normalizing grief and loss is that I have coached waaayyyy too many people who have attempted to bypass loss and grief (of various kinds, not necessarily death, but including death) - and the non-acknowledgement, suppression or ignoring of grief, pain and loss has truly harmed their leadership capacity in really sad ways.

Grief and loss is common to ALL humans.
May we please normalize this experience in our work and life culture?
May we please normalize grief and loss conversation?
May we please bravely walk the journey of befriending grief rather than choosing to bypass it? (It's painful, I know. Believe me, I..