Child Loss and Grief in the Workplace with Suzanne Jabour

Suzanne Jabour joins us for an emotional episode talking about the sudden loss of her son Ben. She describes child loss "as horrifying as you imagine". In an open discussion of her grief process, what worked for her and what didn't, she discusses the work she does now as a grief educator, workshop leader, and transformational coach. We talk about the inequities and inconsistencies when it comes to grief in the workplace and Suzanne shares how she is trying to change that.

You can find Suzanne and all of her links at www.suzannejabour.com

Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome back to the grief trails podcast. Season two. I am your host, Amanda. Kernaghan from remember grams. A small business dedicated to helping you support those in your life. Experiencing grief. I hope you'll consider sending someone a personalized card or a grief support box shipping within the us is always free and we treat each order with special care paying attention to every detail. Every episode here is special because each one highlights a personal story of grief. But today's episode is one. I think our society in general would benefit from. I'm joined today by Suzanne For a grieving mom, who's gone on to become a grief educator, transformational coach and workshop leader. We talk about the devastating loss of our son, Ben. And then we find ourselves in an important conversation about grief in the workplace and how businesses can do better. Not to spoil the episode. But stay tuned until the end to hear about how you can connect your company with Suzanne to help make a difference on the macro level. I started my interview, as I often do. By asking suzanne about her life before her loss take alyssa

Suzanne: 1:05

It's so interesting to try and start with life before because that feels so, I don't know, it still feels almost like it's on the other side of a veil. It's like the before and the after are very delineated for me. Our life before You know, really felt kind of typical, even though I know people say to me, no, there was nothing typical about your life. Which is fine. My son, Ben was 22 and he still lived with me, which is very normal where we are. And we had a really great relationship. We had a lot of fun together. We were doing, you know, that interesting navigation of, you know, now you're an adult in theory and I'm an adult. And so, you know, how do I kind of step away from. Trying to parent you all the time because you don't really need that. And that's an ongoing dance that you do, really, like, from toddlerhood, right? It's just another step of it when you're parenting adult children. And he died in September of 2020. So that was really in the midst of all of that swirl of COVID. And, you know, that summer had been particularly challenging globally. I mean, we've kind of stayed in that has kind of become our new normal, right? We had historic wildfires. Oh, kind of like this last summer, but it was that kind of summer where, you know, there were wildfires across the globe. There were terrible ones in Australia that year. I remember, and I remember we were all obsessed with the koalas and what was going to happen with all the koalas and the kangaroos. Like I remember all of those conversations. While we're watching Tiger King, like all this stuff that we spent our time on, right? I forgot about that. You're right. Right? Someone mentioned that the other day. I was like, oh my gosh, we were all watching that ridiculous show. You know, and there was a lot of social unrest. We'd all watched George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and all of those kinds of things were happening. It was a really, really. You know, complicated time to be a human as I kind of feel like it has remained. And all of those things hit Ben really hard. He was really impacted by suffering of others. And I think that that's normal for people who've experienced trauma and suffering themselves to be really attuned to you know, what, you know, what did it mean to be You know, he obviously, I'm a white person, he was a white person, but, you know, he would think about things like, you know, what did it mean to be a black person in this time? What did it mean to be, you know, that was really the beginning that we started to see of, you know, the changes in laws in the states, particularly at this point that we've seen around, trans lives and, and folks on the LGBT community. QIA spectrum. And, you know, how, how was, what did all of that mean? And, and why were we in such a mess? Like it really was, we were in a mess and we still are. And that all really impacted him heavily. And. It just was a really hard time to be a human. And at the same time, you know, life was pretty good. We'd had a summer of lessened restrictions and, you know, been able to get out and about a little bit and done some fun things. He'd been away with a group of friends up to one of their, you know, family's summer cabins and had a great week away. Just kind of as we could see like the restrictions were going to start coming because the numbers were starting to go back up as we all moved in the northern hemisphere anyway back inside. So he'd had this, you know, last week away with friends, my daughter and I were away for the weekend because we were like, okay, we need to get out for us for my daughter and I, you know, we realized that very soon again home was going to be, you know, as it was for most of us, right, our workplace, our restaurant, our gym, our theater, like it became everything. For us, we knew we wanted one last, like, let's just get away and, be out and about. Ben opted not to come that weekend, which was very normal for him because he'd just been away with friends. And for him, like, being, being stuck at home was, like, ideal. It was perfect.

Mandy: 4:47

And he got the house to himself,

Suzanne: 4:48

right? Right. And we were going to go away. He was going to have the house to himself. Yeah, because my daughter didn't live with us normally. She's of their generation. So many kids came home when COVID happened. She had lived before that in Toronto. So pretty much the other side of the country from us in Vancouver. And so I had brought her home at the beginning of COVID because I thought we don't know what's happening. Like just come. So yeah, I'm sure for him, it was like, Ooh, the house to myself. And yeah, the, that. Saturday, I guess, night, I went to bed and my phone rang at three in the morning, three ish in the morning, and I, of course, didn't answer it because why would you? And it, so I, you know, ignored the call and it rang again a few minutes later and I picked it up and said something so rude. I said something like, you know, do you have any idea what time it is where I am? It's three in the morning and how dare you be calling me with your stupid robocall or your dumb promotion or whatever it was. Because I just thought, who the hell is phoning me at three in the morning? Like, this is ridiculous. And it was, of course, was the police phoning to tell me that Ben had died. And that really was, you know, as earth shattering and life shattering as you would imagine it to be. You know, it's that conversation that parents have, secretly in their, you know, dark imaginings of, what would that be like to get that middle of the night phone call? And, I'll tell you, it's exactly as bad as you imagine. So yeah, we packed up our stuff. I remember phoning the front desk and saying like, can you just let housekeeping know what because we were at our at a timeshare. So there's a routine that you have to follow as you check out, you're supposed to, you know, put on the dishwasher and take out the garbage, all that kind of stuff. And I said, you know, we're leaving right now. And can you just warn housekeeping, we've done nothing, but we have a family emergency, we have to go right now. And of course, they know if you're phoning at, three in the morning to say you're checking out immediately, something's gone catastrophically wrong. And we drove home. And yeah, I think I'm in some ways grateful that we were doing that drive at three in the morning or four in the morning by that point. Because there weren't a lot of other cars on the road and it was a road I'd driven often enough that I could kind of do it in muscle memory. But we just knew we had to get home and then figure out what on earth do you do next becomes the path, right? What on earth do you do next? Right. So this was

Mandy: 6:56

completely out of the blue for you, unexpected, sudden. Can I ask what happened?

Suzanne: 7:03

Yeah, Ben had struggled for years and years and years with poor mental health and I choose to say that he died of depression and anxiety, because that's what he died of. And in every other situation, we name the disease that cost the person their life, except when it's a mental health issue. And I, I, I don't think that's appropriate. And I think if we're gonna, if we're talking about decreasing those stigmas, then we have to name things for what they really are. And so, yeah,

Mandy: 7:29

yeah, I really admire that my brother passed away, you know, it's funny we went away that weekend. Also the weekend my brother died and my whole family was there except him and he said he had to work and, you know, it was not out of the ordinary at all. And so he died of an overdose, but it was really so much more, you know, I was like. There's a lot of history there and people hear like one word of, you know, how someone passed away and like make a lot of assumptions or judgments about how that came to be. But I think that's a really important perspective that you have. So was that just you and your daughter who were away together? And you

Suzanne: 8:06

found out together. Yeah, so I had to phone the kid's dad. I phoned him from where we were away. So I had to phone him. And then, yeah, home we came. How old was your daughter at the time? She was 25. So Ben was 22. She was 25. So

Mandy: 8:22

what happens next? I mean, I think that initial period of grief is almost indescribable how painful it can be. And I know that it can last quite a long time. What sorts of things helped you and your daughter to move through some of that really

Suzanne: 8:40

difficult period? There's a number of different things. You know, part of what I realized very early, I had this idea that as a point of survival, I needed to be conscious and curious. And so that kind of became my mantra and conscious meant that I couldn't turn away from any of it. I had to face it all full on and allow every emotion that was going to come to just be, I had to be okay with it, even though it was horrifying. And I You know, because I just knew that our sort of collective skill level at stuffing and, you know, not acknowledging emotions was not going to work. That was not going to work this time. I was going to have to just face it all and allow it all to be what it was and allow myself to be overwhelmed by it because it is overwhelming at the beginning. And so I just had to be okay with that. And. And I don't say that to imply that I welcomed it or I was happy about it or any of that. It was exactly as horrifying as you might imagine. And if you're a parent who's lost a child, you know that it's as horrifying as you imagine. And I also knew I couldn't pretend it away. I couldn't ignore it or stuff it or anything. I just had to be fully conscious of the whole thing. And I had to stay curious because I knew that the person who had gone to bed that night no longer existed. So Ben had died. The person I was no longer existed. I also had to help my daughter navigate all of this and the only way that was going to be possible was to be able to be curious and to just, in the early days, you know, now my curiosity is really broad about grief. In the early days, it literally was about how to breathe. Like when you're curled up in the ball on the sofa doing the ugly cry and your face is all squinched in like we all know what that feels like and you're just curled up in as tight a ball as you can and you can't gasp a breath. How do you breathe? Like it literally was that. How? I don't even understand how I'm supposed to do this. And then, you know, it's amazing how we have so many more tools in our toolbox and so many more resources than we give ourselves credit for. I remembered hearing these two sisters who wrote a brilliant book called Burnout, which is all about releasing the stress cycle. And I'd heard them interviewed on Brene Brown's podcast not that long before Ben died. And they had talked about that exact thing, like when you're crying so hard that you can't breathe, like how Because you need to complete the stress cycle. And I was also really aware that, I think part of my idea of staying conscious was based on my understanding of how so much of that repression literally makes us ill. Like it literally turns into physical sickness and I didn't want that. So it was like, okay, how do I complete this? Oh, okay. I remember what I heard these two women say. And so it really was, okay, let's try that. Sounded kind of weird at the time because it was very theoretical to me, but now I need it. And does it really work? And it did, it was like, okay. So I do have tools in my toolbox that I can pull on to just survive. Because at the beginning, that was the curiosity. How do I survive? How do I... Keep breathing. How do I just get through this day? Like my daughter and I would look at each other and be like, okay, like, is it socially acceptable for us to go back to bed now? Cause have we been awake long enough? Like, can we just go back to bed as if anybody's looking as if anybody cares? Or right. But we were like, no, I think we need to stay up like another hour or whatever we were thinking. And so that was the curiosity part really was how do I do this? How do I rebuild my life? How do I. You know, I was also really clear that that story that we're told about parents who lose a child and how, you know, they're never the same. They never recover, whatever all of that means. It kind of has that implication that, you know, their life is over also. And I knew that was not going to be my story. Like that was just not going to be my story. That didn't respect Ben didn't respect me. There was no need for that to be my story and I didn't want it to be my story. So that was the curiosity to like, who am I? How do I rebuild myself? Into whoever I'm supposed to be next because that person that level of as I was thinking about it the other day we just had the third anniversary of Ben's passing last week and it was that sense of like the loss of like a level of innocence almost if that makes sense that I knew just was never gonna be the same not that I don't still have immense understanding and kind of belief that there's always choices to make. Like, I don't think things happen for a reason. I struggle with that paradigm, but things happen. And then you have to choose what to do next. And so, this thing had happened. And so now, what do I do next? Like, who am I now? Who am I next? What's, how do you do the impossible, unspeakably difficult things that you have to do when someone has died? Like, the administrative stuff that's just so awful. How do you tell people? Like, the telling was just like a knife to the heart every time you have to say it. And you have to say it, like, over the phone to strangers. It's the most awful setup, really. So how could we do all of those things? And I remember saying to my daughter very early on, you know, we're going to become masters of holding paradox because grief is all about the both. And it's like, yo, we could be so happy that people are coming to visit us. And so devastated about why, because they're only coming in this time of, you know, COVID and at that point we were allowed to have, I think, two people at a time could visit and you could have visits outside and we have a really big outside space at our apartment. So we can have people come over and we could sit outside with blankets and, you know, scarves and stuff because it was cooling down in the fall, but it was like, okay, it's the both and of it all like yes this is unspeakably horrible. And. We still have to live our life. We have to create a life from this place.

Mandy: 14:28

And those are the messages that I think people don't hear enough about grief is I think you hear about the devastation and you imagine that part, but you also don't hear about the spectrum and you're not told that that's normal. You're not. Yes, you're not. Looking at it in that way necessarily. And I think that sometimes can make it even more difficult to move through. So I love that you had this insight early on to know that there is all of this paradox. There is this spectrum and that you can be curious and your story doesn't have to be what you learned. It would be based on society and what, what you've heard about other people. And I just, I also think it's great that you were able to model that for your daughter or have those conversations with your daughter. Because I don't think that's the natural perspective that many people take when they have a big,

Suzanne: 15:19

big loss in their life. Yeah, I, I think you're exactly right. And I think, what's become so, you know, where my curiosity has taken me now is to wondering about why that is. Like, why are we not having these conversations? Why are, you know, as a collective, I'm speaking about us as a collective, we're not good at grief. We don't talk about it, we don't share our experiences, we don't... know how to show up for each other. And we have so much fear and so little understanding that it creates this perfect storm of isolation when what everybody really wants is to create connection. So it's about like, how, how do I play a role in breaking that down? What can I do to disrupt that norm? Cause it's not healthy for any of us, right? It's not healthy for the griever to feel as I did, like I didn't understand what was happening to me at all. I didn't understand the symptoms that were, of course, very normal. Everything I experienced, someone had experienced before me. I didn't make any of it up. None of it was new, but people don't talk about it. So you don't have that same understanding that we do about all kinds of other things in our lives, where we talk about it and we learn from each other. And that's how we gain skills, but we don't do that around grief, which is so odd to me because it's a pervasive everyday part of our lives, if we're being honest about it.

Mandy: 16:37

And it's an inevitable thing for every single human.

Suzanne: 16:42

Yeah, at the biggest level, right? Our deepest griefs are for loved ones, of course, and we have a tiny ability to talk about those in a very limited way for a very short amount of time, right? As you said, much shorter than the griever actually needs us to be able to talk about it and allow it to be present. But we don't talk about All of the other griefs that we face from every other loss, like grief comes with every loss. And if we talked about it on the lesser ones, if we can, you know, I, I really struggle with that kind of hierarchical sense we have of grief because I also think that doesn't serve anybody very well. Mm-hmm. And the reality is there are some grief that rock us more than others. regardless of what they are or what they're called or anything. It doesn't matter. It's how it impacts us. But if we could have the conversations around the ones that rock us less, then when we get to the ones that rock us really deeply, we have some comfort. We have a little bit of confidence. Like I was not a good first assignment. I'm a grieving mom grieving out loud. I'm sure I was terrifying. I'm not a good first assignment, but for people who had had conversations about grief, who had experienced their own big losses, or who could say, I mean, I have a really small stalwart support system that really showed up for me in ways that were astonishing. And some of them started by saying like, I, I don't even know what to say. I don't know how to have this conversation. I don't know how to support you and I'm going to do it anyway. And we're going to figure it out together. That's brilliant, and it's really brave, and it's really vulnerable, and most of us don't want to be that brave and that vulnerable all the time, but we could practice. With other losses, like the loss of a job, or the loss of relationships, the loss of our health, the loss of a business, the loss of a home, like, we have big and small losses all the time, as a regular everyday, the loss of a parking space, I mean, if we want to get really to like the ones where you kind of go, and then you carry on with your day, happened to me the other day, I was just about to, I was like, had gone around the block, and there was the spot, and the guy in front of me took it, I

18:50

was

Mandy: 18:50

like, Right? But

Suzanne: 18:53

there's a loss there. And yes, I'm not trying to equate the two, but if we can practice with the smaller ones, I believe when the bigger ones come, we will have more ability to navigate them. Because really, for me, I had, you know, my child had died. I knew I had lost myself. And I had brain fog, what I now know is very normal in grief, grief brain, brain fog, to the degree that honestly I didn't know what was wrong with me. I thought something was seriously wrong with me. So my child has died. I've lost myself. And all of a sudden I have instant onset Alzheimer's. Like my brain just doesn't function anymore, which of course is not the case, but because no one, I had no idea that was coming for me. And this was not my first big loss, right? I had lost my dad, actually, he died 25 years ago this year, so I'd lost him 25 years before. My mom 10 years before, it'll be 10 years for her this year, so my mom 7 years before. This was not my first go around with this, but it was next level, and I don't think we can predict which ones are going to be next level. It's not based on what that relationship is called, right? It's based on all kinds of other things, though I do think there's... You know, there's a different loss when it's out of order, which is what happens with the loss of a child. You know, my dad died when I was 32. That was obviously much earlier in my life than I wished. But my vision of my life always was that my parents were going to die before me, right? It's not supposed to be that your child dies before you. So there is something about that out of order piece that I think does boost it next level. And that didn't really help me any. Like to have won that hierarchy lottery wasn't helpful. You know?

Mandy: 20:30

No, no, I think you make so many good points. I think the, the way that we don't talk about the other kinds of losses. I agree with you. It's weird to say smaller losses, but like things that are not as impactful in our lives, but are there not only do we not talk about it, but most people don't even recognize that. Yeah. Maybe the reaction they're having to something that. Just occurred is because they're having a little bit of grief over that, but there's not the language attached to it. So, you know, you bring up losing a job and I remember actually when my husband was laid off and I had already been through the loss of my mom, the loss of my brother and. I remember going through all of these rollercoaster emotions and at one point I just said to myself like, Oh my God, this feels, this feels like

Suzanne: 21:15

grief.

Mandy: 21:16

Like I feel like I'm grieving and that just, it almost feels odd to say that because in our society, like that's just not the language used around anything like that. But yeah,

Suzanne: 21:27

there's a long way to go. But if we can't name it, we can't do anything with it. We can't move it. We can't process it. We can't talk about it. We're just all talking about stress. Mm hmm. Well, but stress is not, it's almost become a word that doesn't even mean anything anymore.

Mandy: 21:45

Like self care to I think that, you know, we get these like bucket terms that, you know, we apply to everything and you don't really hone down what that means for you, you know, what are the steps that you take in those moments that actually do have an impact on you and do help you and what are the things you do in those moments that are. Unhealthy for you. And they're individualized. So we can't generalize that, you know, taking a bubble bath is going to be helpful to everyone.

Suzanne: 22:12

You know what I mean? In my, in my early grief, I remember because I of course started to like, look on social media and try and find people who were talking about grief. Cause I needed to understand what the heck was happening to me. That was that early curiosity, right? Like what is happening to me? Is this normal? Do I need to go see a doctor? And so many are put, you know, have those lists of like, Here's how to do self care when you're grieving. And it just always made me want to scream, because the chance that I could actually get it together to like have a self care moment in the ways that they were talking about self care is because it's the kind of things you say, go have a bubble bath, read a book. I'm like, okay, first of all, where's the bathroom? Like I was at that level. Like this was not helpful

Mandy: 22:49

at all. Yes. I remember. Oh my gosh. So just because you said this, the read a book thing, someone sent me. A book, when I was grieving and it was Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life, so it's about like her promiscuity, and I

Suzanne: 23:07

was like, what? I have no desire to read, I mean, I

Mandy: 23:15

couldn't even like imagine reading a novel at that point, like a fiction book, anything but yeah, it was just so out of left field. So I know people are well intentioned, but not. All strategies work.

Suzanne: 23:28

And not all strategies work in any given moment. Like, I think really the one we should all be hanging our hat on has to do with breath. And all of the rest of them, take or leave, you know, go, go for a walk, go get some exercise. I'm like, I can't even dress myself. How am I going to go out of the house? Like this is not helpful information, you know, breathe, slow down your breathing. Oh, okay. That, that made sense to me. I could like figure out, and that was, you know, this, the burnout book had so many of those great. Ideas in it. That's one of the first non fiction books I managed to read. Yeah, and breathing,

Mandy: 24:04

breathing you kind of have to do, so you can't avoid it. Well, and

Suzanne: 24:07

that's why I thought, okay, I can hang my hat on that. I know that I need to, and I'm not doing it very well. So let's figure out how this works. But yeah, it's so interesting. And it is, it's all well intentioned. It's all well meaning. Because we don't talk about it, nobody really understands what you really need or, and the griever doesn't know either, right? You know, people so well intentioned and well meaning would say things like, oh, you know, whatever you need, just phone me, you know, anything you need, I'm here for you. I'm like, I, okay. Like, I just had to stop listening to the words and listen to people's intention and listen to what was their heart saying? Like, I just needed to listen to love. I just needed to hear people loved us, and people cared about us. And the words were sometimes neutral, sometimes hurtful, sometimes just overwhelming. So it was like, okay, I have to stop listening to the words. I just have to listen and know that this person's mouth is moving, and that means they care about us. Yeah, that's very healthy. Because the words were just not, you know, we need to have, we need a redo of the things that we say, because they're all terrible. Yeah, and

Mandy: 25:08

that's a healthy perspective. Because I would very much. Like hold on to the wrong things that people would say and be like, I'll never forget that that person said that, but it's not a healthy perspective. So I think looking at it like, okay, they're saying something. And so that just means they care and that's good enough. Yeah.

Suzanne: 25:27

And it's imperfect for sure. Some of them have stuck. Absolutely. Some of them, it's like, I cannot believe you actually said that to me. Like, did you really say that? Like, did, what part of you thought that would be helpful? But it's because we don't know. We don't know. So we can't do any better than we're doing. And we need to. Right.

Mandy: 25:45

So were you working at the time? Or like, did you have to take a leave from work or anything

Suzanne: 25:51

like that? Yeah. So I worked at the time on a TV show and we were just starting prep for our new season. That was part of why Kathleen and I were away that weekend. Cause it was like, okay, work is going to start again on Monday or Tuesday or whatever day. So yeah, so I, oh my gosh, I got home and I was supposed to start work I think the next day or maybe the Tuesday. I think I had one day because we just had to breathe. So I had to phone my boss and say like, and he, I, I had worked with him for years, so he knew Ben really well, and of course they were devastated. I texted the, so I worked on a TV show where one of my jobs was to drive the director that was working on prepping the episode that we were gonna shoot. So I, I was supposed to pick him up at the airport the next day and I messaged him and it was a director. I knew well,'cause I, he'd worked with us before and I messaged him and said, by the way, it's not gonna be me at the airport tomorrow. It's gonna be this other person and this is why. And that really was the start of, the telling, which was just impossibly, unspeakably difficult. So, the bonus was, because of the COVID restrictions that were in place in the film industry, which were really intense, and still the quarantine restrictions for people traveling across the border he had to come two weeks before work started. So he was arriving, but then work wasn't really starting until two weeks after that. So I had a very low key requirement of my job duties for that two weeks. And then I was really fortunate because my immediate supervisor, we were, had become really good friends and, you know, we had socialized he and his wife and Bennett and I so they knew Ben really well and they understood what this was or as best they could write what this was going to mean for me and he was amazing. So I got a lot of grace from him and from, you know, people on our team who took some of my duties. And I was designated as someone who worked from home. So that was actually a huge gift as well. Cause I didn't have to hold it together at the office because film and TV is really, really long hours. So to be able to do that, like to have to hold it together for that amount of time. With other people around, I think would have been possible, but because I was mostly work from home, I would go and like take the director to the office and then go work the rest of my day at home and then go pick him up and take him back and then work, you know, but for most of the time I could be working from home. So that made it a lot easier too, cause it's easier to just take a break for five minutes and sob and then get back at it or whatever you need to do. Up from him, there wasn't a lot of understanding, like. And that's just, I say all of that, it's a no shame, no blame situation for me. Because as a collective, we're so terrible at it. We're just not good at supporting each other, or talking about it, or expressing our emotions, or saying how we feel. So no surprise that people were not well equipped to have a conversation with me, or to support me. This is no surprise. And it's, A place where we can do much better. And so that's really now where my curiosity sits is how do we do better? How do we put systems in place? How do we support people better at work? Because grievers are at work. You know, the last study that I read, it's about 20%. So one in five. Which is way higher than any time, you know, the studies they do around management, they say it's like a negligible impact to their workplace or like, it hardly matters at all. I'm like, no, if you're one in five people grieving, another study I saw was one in eight. So it's somewhere between one in five and one in eight, depending on how you're slicing it and who you're talking to. That's still a lot of people. Yes. And in this state, right. And have brain fog and are not sleeping well and are struggling to feed themselves. And it's a triumph that they got dressed today. And. Most grievers want to be at work. We either need to be economically, or, you know, which is the reality for most, can't afford to take an extended unpaid leave. And for many grievers, work is a respite. Like, it's that place that you get to go, you know, my life at home, my personal life was a post apocalyptic nightmare. It was a night, like, Post apocalyptic. 100%. Gray. Cloudy. All bad. Trees with no leaves. Like, it was bad. So you go to work and you get to kind of touch that normal world that feels like it's moving on without you. Like, people have all gone back to their own lives. And I didn't resent that. And it was still really hard to watch, like I knew that was normal, and they of course should, no one, I didn't want anyone to live in this post apocalyptic nightmare with me, but it's really hard to watch. And so work also becomes that place where you can kind of touch normal reality, you can kind of have a sense of who you are, right? A lot of us take a big part of our identity from our job. So if you can still be working and you can still feel like you're connected to other people in this way, you're productive in this way, even while all around you feels like the bombs have gone off and you don't even know which way is up, that's really helpful for people and they need support.

Mandy: 30:49

Right. And there needs to be more flexibility, more more consistency, because, you know, we started this conversation talking about 2020 and just the huge inequities that there are in our country and our world. And, and then you think about people who are grieving, who have a loss and the wide variability about their jobs and how those jobs respond to that loss. I mean, It varies so much. Some people do have to go back to work the next day and aren't given any kind of leeway and, you know, deadlines or, you know, if they show up five minutes late because they were in their car sobbing, that's inexcusable and things like that. And there are, there is no paid bereavement for some people. So that's something that really just. It's always irked me and the fact that even the best of companies, the best of situations sometimes will give you three days off. That's the policy and how ridiculous that is. And I would just love to see a world where. There was a lot more understanding around grief from the employer perspective and being able to give a range so that the person who's grieving can sort of choose on their own, like some people might need to go back part time at first or, you know, might need. To work from home for a time being, you know, some of those accommodations and it's just so it bothers me how that's just another area of our lives that you see inequities and inconsistencies and privilege. And, you know, I I ended up, I think, after my brother, I got three days bereavement and then I took a week of vacation. But not everyone has vacation time, right? I mean, these are all just things that we take for

Suzanne: 32:34

granted. Yeah, and that's, you know, that's part of why that's really become my focus now is how do we have these conversations in workplaces? How do we get business leaders to come on site to have this conversation? It's twofold. So grievers are really struggling at work and this is impacting your bottom line. There's no question about it. The, the last study ridiculously in North America was in the States and it was in 2003. So a very, very long time ago and in life before COVID. So 2003, they priced out the cost of hidden grief in the workplace at 75 billion. So even if you just adjust for inflation and not for the catastrophic new level of disruption that we're living in, it's about 125 billion annually in just the U. S. That's a lot of money that is not, it's costing your business. But because we have this phobia as a collective, we're not talking about it. Whereas If you did talk about it, and you had the kind of structure you're talking about where it's structured but flexible. Mm hmm. It's applied evenly across the playing field, so everybody has access. It does a whole bunch of things. It creates comfort that your employees can be their whole selves at work, which is for most places what we're aiming for, right? We know that whole, you're just here to be a cog in the machine, that, that ship has sailed. That's not appropriate anymore. Nobody wants that workplace. So if we're supposed to be able to be our whole selves, That needs to be actually true. And if we're not talking about tough times and when people are struggling and when people are grieving, then you're not allowing people to be their whole selves. Remembering it's 20% ish of your workforce at any given time. It's a lot of people. If we're having those conversations upfront, if we're then starting to talk about Grief that comes from the workplace, because every business on some level has grief embedded in it. There's some loss, whether you launched a product or a promotion, or if you're on health services, we can understand that, right? We can wrap our heads around that. There's grief there, and people are bringing it from home. And then there's grief that happens in your customers, in your clients, in your end users that you need to be addressing. If we're starting to have those conversations and we're putting a structure into place, it also makes those conversations easier. Because the supervisor or the manager who doesn't have. really robust grief literacy skills can say, Oh yeah, I have this policy that I can kind of hang my conversation on and we can have this structured conversation. And the griever who barely knows what day it is just has to say, can we look at that policy together? They don't have to be trying to advocate. And like you were saying, okay, so I got the three days and I'm not ready to go back. And so you're having to advocate for yourself and say, well, what else? Can I do what other things can I access? Oh, great. I can. You'll, you'll allow me cause that's at the employer's discretion that they allowed you to use your vacation time. Lots of places, January, everybody books their vacation for the year and it's never changed. So even if you have vacation time, it's not necessarily a flexible thing, but you're having to advocate at the time when your life is topsy turvy and upside down and shattered to pieces. That's an unfair, unrealistic expectation, right? And again, as you say, the inequities that are in societal structure and in just people's individual abilities to be able to go and advocate for themselves. There's no fairness there, and everyone is struggling and suffering, and it just doesn't need to be that way.

Mandy: 35:57

Right, and one of the things companies also don't consider, I think that study you mentioned is so powerful to convince them that this is impacting their bottom line, but aside from that, you know, the workforce in general sees Very high turnover now. I think if you look now compared to 50, 60 years ago, when people would stay in one job forever, and this is a very small way that employers can really create some loyalty or show that they really care for their employees, because that can have a huge impact on whether an employee feels like. This is a company I want to keep working for for the next 10, 15 years. First, they didn't give a crap about me when I was going through the worst time of my life, and therefore I don't give a crap about them. And so I'm not going to like, I'm not going to work my hardest when I'm at work or I'm going to keep looking for another job. I mean, it impacts so much and it has so many downstream impacts, but it's not ever the forefront. I, you know, when my mom died, it was really sudden and I was actually not even a technical employee. I was a freelancer and I worked through certain agencies. And so I had reached out to the agencies I had work lined up with and said, you know, I'm taking time off. And one of the agencies sent flowers to the funeral, sent a card, reached out to me, said, like, right now we're here for whatever you need, whenever you're ready or not ready, just let us know. And I heard nothing from the others. And from that point on, I. I funneled my work through that agency because I was so grateful for the way they treated me. And it was such a simple thing. And so it's just something that I've always marveled at how that's overlooked

Suzanne: 37:34

as a really

Mandy: 37:36

cheap way, I guess, if you're coming from a business perspective, but it's a cheap way of, of boosting the morale and the loyalty of your employees.

Suzanne: 37:47

And really what it's, you know, the ripple is that you're showing all of your employees. How you care for people when they're struggling and suffering. So whether you're the griever or you're someone who's watching going, wow, they're actually serious about this. Like we're spending work time having this conversation. This policy is in place, you know? And as you, as you were saying, the workforce right now is so fluid. I was having this conversation with an HR person over the weekend, actually. And she was saying, cause. The date I'm old, I know that it's okay. I would get, you know, if you accepted a job, even if you got a better offer, you would stay with the one you had accepted and you knew like the standard was, if you didn't stay somewhere for two years, no matter how terrible it was, it was like a black mark on your resume. That has completely like that whole thing doesn't exist. People will come and not even finish the training. Cause I'll just say, Oh yeah, it's not a good fit. And they'll have a job tomorrow. I understand that those numbers are shifting a little bit, but they'll have a job tomorrow. And you know, the younger generations are just not prepared to put up with what we put up with. Right. They're just not. And most of us now aren't either. Right? Yeah. You know, they're leading the way and being like, you did what? I'm like, my kids would say to me all the time, what? I'm not doing that. I'm like, okay, it's so fascinating. But they're just not. And so if you can position yourself as an employer who really cares and isn't just Saying that, but actually has systems in place that do that. You will stand out in the crowd because not a lot of people are doing it. Right. And as you say, your loyalty immediately went to the place that treated you well. Mm hmm. And the other places lost someone who was really high value. Yeah. And that's the reality. Grievers are leaving, they're leaving their jobs, they're, you know, quiet quitting was the word of the year. We don't want that. Presenteeism is a thing, right? Where your body is there and you're like, just doing the bare minimum. Yeah, no engagement, no passion. No, we don't want that. I don't want anybody to be spending eight hours a day feeling like that. And no employer wants that in their workforce either. And not in a. You know, not in a way where like, oh, I don't want that. I just, I genuinely don't want people to live that existence. That just sounds miserable. Right?

Mandy: 40:01

Yeah. No, I, I can't agree with you more. So I know you said it's been three years. How has your life shifted? I know, you feel like a whole new person, a different person from that before. But tell me about the after. You know, what are you doing? And you did mention that your curiosity lies in grief in the workplace. What does that look like right now? What are you,

Suzanne: 40:23

what are you doing? So what that looks like right now is giving workshops, giving you know, working with businesses one on one to have those conversations, right, to come in and facilitate those conversations, to identify where the grief is. You know, it's generally three areas where we get, you know, people bring grief with them. from their personal life. Grief happens at work. There's always somewhere in the structure where I'm like, hmm, but that loss, that's actually grief. And then if you have customers, which most businesses do have some version of a customer, client, patient, student, whatever it is they have grief in their lives. So identifying where those places are, identifying how you then support in those different areas. And what you do. To just make a really big difference because, as you say, it's not costly. We're not talking about, you know, massive restructuring or doing anything wild. We're talking about really simple things that really make a big difference. And it's ongoing. You know, the other thing that we don't know about grief is how long it takes. And it's a really long time. Like two years for early grief is pretty normal. Yeah. And that's not that, you know, very first days that are so impossible. You know, for me, those were probably about four to six months, probably, where it still felt like every day was a triumph that I just got through it. And then it does over time, it shifts, but it ebbs and flows. You know, you have harder time, like last week was almost impossible because it's the anniversary week and, you know, it's just all right back in the forefront again. But that support that. is ongoing is really what people need so that they're at work and being successful. You know, they're in their life. I, I had someone do my grocery shopping for me for about a year and a half. Like I just could not the grocery store. I would love to get into the grocers because that grocery store is almost impossible for grievers. It's so hard between the music and the like, Activation on every aisle because you walk past your person's favorite thing that you never ate so you don't need to buy it anymore and it's just so hard. And then you have to interact with the cashier who wants to know how you are and then wish you a great day like it's just the setup is terrible, it's just terrible, it doesn't need to be that way. Right, but it's that kind of ongoing support like I couldn't have anticipated that I was struggling with the grocery store for a year and a half, and eventually I got to the point where it's like okay, I can be in charge of the smoothie ingredients because that was four things. I just always knew that if we ran out of one of them, I would need to replenish that thing and make sure that all, you know, cause we just had the same smoothie every day because creativity is not high in the early days. And then, you know, and then eventually, I've taken over grocery shopping again, but it really is much longer than we think. The, there was a study done in the UK, which was really great about all things, workplace and grief. And they were talking about productivity being about 75%. For that first six months and then shifting up to about back up to about 90 because nobody's at 100 percent right shifting back up to about 90 between that six month and a year mark. So we're not talking about supporting people for the forever. We're talking about really that first six months where they just need some really simple scaffolding. And it's also, you know, usually when I'm talking to businesses and we're putting something into place, it's stuff that actually benefits everybody. Because really, if we had shared calendars and we had shared documents that had deadlines on them and broke projects up and you know, the kinds of things that grievers need because they have grief brain and their memories don't work very well, that benefits everybody. Nobody needs to be spending any bandwidth on that. We can be creative and innovative instead, right? Because you just click into Google Docs and there's the thing or there's signs on the wall or however it works for your workplace, right? There's all kinds of things we can do to help people that help everybody.

Mandy: 44:03

Wow, I think this is such important work. I wish that every company out there could have this kind of consulting because it's just so powerful. Just send them my way. Are you having, are you helping companies create new policies around bereavement and how to support their employees?

Suzanne: 44:21

Yeah, so the ultimate goal is to then have have had the robust conversations to talk about to do some grief education right back to like, what is grief education, what is that about you know, to do that grief education because we all need the basic understanding of grief. How it works, how it might show up at work, it helps us to watch out for each other too, when we have a better understanding to be able to maybe say to people, Oh, you know, like I know we're calling it stress, but is there, is it possible that maybe there's some grief going on here? Because if we can name it in a more nuanced way, then we can. do better, right? We can process it better. We can, even just the naming helps move it. And then ultimately, yeah, you want to end up with a policy. So the same way that you have whatever policies you have, your return to work from injury, your sickness and vacation policies, all of those kinds of policies, you have a grief policy that lays out, you know, here's this menu of things you can choose from. Cause that's where you get the flexibility from and you know, what the follow up plan is so that every, and then it. Levels it out across the board as well. Cause one of the things that I hear when I talk to sort of frontline kind of workers is that, there'll be some departments that are really good or some teams that are really good, usually because someone on them has that lived experience. Cause that's how we learned about grief since we don't talk about it. So they're really good at it, but this other team is terrible. And so then you get that inequity where also this team is operating really well, like from a business perspective, this team is really successful and this team isn't. And this team has a full team and this team has vacancies, right? And we can make those connections with their skills around, how are we dealing with this mucky emotional stuff? And I'm not advocating that people come and like lose control and are, you know, spewing their emotions all off. We're not talking about that. We're talking about at least being able to say, I'm really struggling. I have some grief going on. Can we pull out that policy? Right. What if our debrief meeting about a project that didn't go the way we wanted started with. The leader, because this has to start with the leaders saying, you know, we worked really hard and we thought we were on track and it didn't work. And I'm really mad about that. And I have a whole lot of feelings of disappointment and sadness and frustration. And I bet you all do too. And I still think you're all amazing and you should feel confident that you have a place here and you're a valuable part of the team. And if anybody wants to share, you know, you set the parameters. It depends on your company culture, right? Yeah. Everybody share one feeling word. And then we're going to get down to how do we regroup? How do we pivot? How do we do all of those businessy things? If you're setting up that kind of culture, that makes a huge difference too, because there's grief, right? Companies restructure on average every two to three years. We worry about the people who are leaving, but what about the people who got to stay and lost their coffee buddy, lost their lunch mate, lost the person they make tea with every morning in the lunch room, right, lost their position because they got restructured to some other team, so they lost their whole team, like there's so much loss embedded in that for the people who stay as well, but we don't talk about it, we're going to befriend change, and we're going to like all of these kinds of programs we're putting in place that don't talk about the loss, like you can't befriend change without talking about grief, Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. It's not. It's so, yes. It's so incredible. I'm on my soapbox now. I'm going to step down. Oh, I love your soapbox. So,

Mandy: 47:42

What is the name of your, so let's say a listener would like to recommend that their company get in touch with you. Is this like a consulting company that you have and what is the name Yeah,

Suzanne: 47:52

so it's literally called Suzanne Jabbour Grief Education. Very simple. So yeah, you can go to SuzanneJabbour. com right now. That will drive you to my lived experience website, which has all my blog posts. It's a lot about my personal journey there as well. So you can kind of understand where I'm coming from. There's a great ebook there. So if you go to the ebook, which is the last page, it's a great, it's like. Six pages, it's very simple, but it gives you a sense of where to start, some things to look for when you're even just wanting to be a detective and see if this is an issue for you in your workplace. I mean, I know it is, but business leaders don't and HR professionals don't, we're not talking about it. So it just gives you some ideas of where to start. And then, yeah, I run free masterclasses twice a month. So you can find out about those there too, and sign up to just get a sense of, boosting your own grief resilience and looking at what that could mean for your business. So yeah, and all the links to the socials and everything are there. So that's the easiest way to get ahold of me.

Mandy: 48:51

That's awesome. I think you're doing such. Incredible work. And that's so needed. We need like a thousand more of you out there doing the

Suzanne: 49:00

same thing. The cloning will begin.

Mandy: 49:05

Oh, I can't thank you enough for coming on and being willing to talk about your experience and, and where it's led you because it's certainly led you to, I think you're going to have a huge impact on so many people that you'll never meet and never know how you helped. But it's such a macro way, of reaching. So many others and helping their experience that may not have even happened yet, you know, their experience might be five years down the road and and because you got involved with their company, they're gonna have a little bit of an easier time than they would have. And

Suzanne: 49:36

what a gift that is. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

49:42

This episode is filled with so much authenticity from the way she describes her grief to the very real challenges we're seeing on a societal level. And I hope it leaves everyone with something to think more deeply about. As a writing prompt today, I'm going to leave you with a question that Susan asked herself. Who am I now? Who am I next? Thank you so much for listening, please make sure you subscribe. Share this episode with anyone who could benefit from it. And also visit remember grams. anytime you need to send a little love to someone who's grieving thank you so much and have a wonderful day