Grief in the Workplace: How to Function When You're Falling Apart Between Meetings
Nobody puts "currently grieving" in their email signature. (Although maybe we should!)
You just show up. You open your laptop, join the Zoom call, answer the Slack messages, and try really hard not to cry in the bathroom between your 10am and your 11am. You smile at the right moments. You say "I'm fine" so many times it starts to sound like a foreign language you're not fluent in.
And somehow, inexplicably, the rest of the world keeps going. Your inbox doesn't care that your person died, nor do those pesky deadlines, and the quarterly review doesn't know your heart is in seventeen pieces.
Grief in the workplace is one of the most under-talked-about experiences there is, and honestly? That needs to change.
Your brain on grief is not your normal brain
You may already know this but grief does genuinely wild things to your brain. Memory fog, trouble concentrating, emotional responses that show up at the most inconvenient times (hi, crying at a spreadsheet, we've all been there). It’s science. You’re not broken.
When we're grieving, our nervous system is under enormous stress. The prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for focus, decision-making, and keeping your composure on a conference call, is basically running on fumes. So if you're reading an email three times and still not absorbing it, or you blanked on something you absolutely knew yesterday, please hear this: you are not broken. You are grieving.
Survival strategies that don't require oversharing
You don't owe anyone a detailed explanation of your grief at work. You also don't have to perform being okay when you're not. Here's a middle path that actually works:
Give yourself permission to do less, temporarily. Grief is exhausting in a way that sleep cannot fix. If you can scale back non-essential tasks during the early waves, do it. Even one less thing on the list can make a big impact.
Create micro-moments of transition. Before you get on a call, take sixty seconds. Breathe. Put a hand on your chest. Let yourself arrive. Grief has a way of pulling you into the past; these tiny pauses can help you come back to the present, at least for the next hour.
Have a phrase ready. When someone asks how you're doing and you're not ready to get into it, it's okay to have something prepared. "I'm taking it one day at a time" is honest and complete. You said the true thing. You don't have to say all of it. (I tend to say things like “Doing the best I can today, thank you”)
Cry in the car. Seriously. The car is a sacred grief space. No judgment, great acoustics, windows that fog up for privacy. Use it. If you don’t have a car see if there is a private room somewhere.
What to do with the waves
Grief doesn't arrive on a schedule (jerk), and it definitely doesn't read your calendar. A song comes on during your commute and suddenly you're wrecked before you've even logged in. (I write this because it literally just happened to me yesterday on the way to a client) Someone asks if you want to order lunch together and you remember that your person used to do that with you, and now the break room feels impossible.
The waves will come. The goal is not to stop them. The goal is to get a little better at surfing them.
When one hits at work: excuse yourself if you can, name what's happening internally even if you can't say it out loud ("I'm having a grief wave, this is okay, it will pass"), and give yourself grace. You are doing something incredibly hard. Getting through a Tuesday while grieving is genuinely a triumph. Let it be one.
A note on asking for support
If you have a manager or coworker you trust, consider telling them, even just a little. You don't have to map out your entire grief landscape. A simple "I'm going through a loss and some days are harder than others" can open the door for a little more grace to come your way. Most people want to help. They just don't know what to say, and they're waiting for a cue.
And if you're the coworker or manager reading this: check in. Not once. Keep checking in, weeks and months later, when everyone else has moved on and the grieving person is still quietly carrying it. That follow-up matters more than you know. Trust me.
You don't have to do this alone
The loneliest part of grief at work is the performance of normalcy. Pretending to be fine when you're not. Eating lunch alone because you can't explain why today is hard. Closing your office door and hoping nobody notices your eyes are red.
You deserve a space where you don't have to pretend. Where showing up as you actually are, grieving and real and still figuring it out, is not only acceptable but welcome.
That's exactly what The Good Grief Society is. A virtual peer support community built for people who are in the thick of it and need somewhere to land that feels human. There's 24/7 access and twice-monthly live Zoom groups where you can talk, listen, or just exist alongside others who get it.
Because sometimes the most healing thing isn't having the right words. Sometimes it's just knowing you're not the only one crying in a bathroom between meetings.
