Grief is a natural response to death and non-death losses. Everyone experiences the impact, acknowledged or not. I didn’t acknowledge it but felt its presence in my body. Influences on thoughts and feelings are subtle yet strong enough to activate older losses. As a grief therapist, I recognize grief symptoms in others, but not myself. Even with a series of losses, I couldn’t accept its impact. I mastered how to ignore grief, but it couldn’t ignore me. Responses to traumatic stories lead to compassion fatigue. I spent years learning this and how to maintain professional boundaries. And so, “a professionals grief box” was created. Its purpose: to compartmentalize my responses to grief. Routines continued with no overt signs of grief’s influence. I had succeeded. Grief was in the box, closed, and on a hypothetical shelf.
One day, I noticed an increasing sadness, tears, irritability, fatigue, brain fog. What was happening to me? I no longer felt like me. Was it because death had come to the workplace? Workplace losses may not happen frequently, but they happen, and are often non-death related: colleagues leaving, system-wide changes, and the occasional death. What made me think I didn’t need to respond to losses in a natural way?
This recent workplace death made me explore losses that had already occurred. One loss can reactivate past losses and cause an outpouring of old emotions and other grief reactions. The day had come to set aside the survival skill that allows me to professionally move through my workday and examine the contents of my self-made box. It was time to dig through and face years of emotions. Boxed up grief symptoms, rejection from a first after college job attempt, death of a co-worker just before my wedding, death of a client by suicide, all neatly packed away. Time flies. I didn’t realize how skilled I had become at packing those losses away. I needed to care for my patients, not focus on my own grief.
Two losses made the most impact personally and professionally. First, the death of a 3-year-old boy from leukemia, a year older than my son. I was with him when the oncologist explained, “It’s back, I’m sorry.” I held him until his caregiver arrived to resume his care. The workplace offered limited support, yet my grief continued to permeate work demands. Solace came from a colleague, who has since died. Where did those grief responses go? In the box.
Second, the death of my favorite manager. She hired me and so began my professional journey. Her belief in how dying, death, and bereavement influence a person both on a personal and professional level was validating. Remember, I mastered boxing up my grief prior to her death with no regard of its impact. I knew that unattended grief could lead to burnout, mental and physical health problems. Her death caused me to experience grief in all aspects of my life. The job continued. Coping skills kicked in, yet I needed something else: to be in her space, a sacred space. I sat in her office once more. Remembering, I took one last piece of candy from her dish and said goodbye.
I will not forget them or the intense grief responses. It all went into the box, and it reached capacity.
And here I am, forced to open the over-flooded box because my patient recently died. I am saddened by her absence, her name missing from my patient list. She can’t visit my office, nor take candy from my dish. The shared aspects of her life, both pain and joy – is gone. I am robbed of providing a safe space for her to express her feelings through music. I miss her. I am a grief therapist, a professional and forgot that I too respond to grief. I am human. The professional’s grief can often be disenfranchised. The skill of boxing up my emotions is a quick fix. It worked through the years, but now I’m older, seasoned, and have less energy to delay unpacking the box.
I won’t forget her and will remember her as the quirky, fun, yet troubled human who trusted me with her story. On a recent drive home, I took the box with me. I thought about its contents which included our last session. I played her favorite song, “Highway Man.” I cried and allowed myself to grieve.
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