
Healing in the Workplace
My purpose in life was altered drastically when the hate inside one person overcame him and he murdered three people in April 2014. Two of these people were mine. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/jewish-center-shootings/eagle-scout-his-grandfather-killed-jewish-center-shooting-n79496
Since that fateful day, when evil actually won…I have motivated myself to create the good in any way possible.
One of these motivations is drawing attention to the sadness, the grief, the loneliness in our lives and at our places of work. We spend 1/3 of our life at work. We should be able to feel comfort, peace and healing in our workplace as much as any other.
When the heart is broken from a death, divorce, accident or illness, healing may come from our circle of friends and coworkers who know intuitively about our broken heart. They spring into action as prayers are offered, meals provided, cards written, hugs and tears are shared to offer comfort in the most human way.
Then, time passes. Life continues. The sun comes up again and again. Those of us with a broken heart are left to navigate through a maze of fog, discomfort, sadness, fear and more pain.
As a person who experienced all of this, and with great magnitude, I was hesitant to admit how “out of it” I was in the months after losing my own loved ones.
When the murders occurred, I was the CEO of a firm I had co-founded. Even with these credentials, I had trouble verbalizing to my colleagues how I felt and what I needed to heal.
Flashbacks to planning their funeral, writing Reat’s obituary and reliving fun life memories that were now justified as such — memories of life with Dad and Reat, would move me from a meeting I was physically in, to a place I could not seem to leave mentally.
I had a concoction of grief, anxiety, depression and fear all mixed together which gave me a foggy brain. Friends and family offer what comfort they know but the problem is they don’t really know the extent of the damage. Life may appear to be normal from the outside but the inside is still filled with discomfort, sadness, fear, and pain.
The foggy brain is a true phenomenon.
If I had this trouble, then I feel confident all of us have this same problem finding the best resources to heal in the workplace. It is difficult to talk about sadness, our own or that of another. From my personal experience of being in a position to dictate my work schedule and workload… I still struggled to heal effectively in my workplace.
Are your employees prepared to respond to the impact of grief or loss in the workplace? The cost to my firm was minimal because we had a fantastic team in place to take over my responsibilities. When small and large firms don’t have such strategies in place, what is the cost? I believe it is higher than we like to consider.
When tragedy occurs, a healthy workplace is a critical part of the healing process. The Faith Always Wins Foundation is partnering with Grief Transition Specialist Lisa K Cooper to develop resources to assist with healing in the workplace. Stay tuned — we are making ripples of healing.

