When Personal Grief Meets Professional Expectations

There’s this surreal split-screen feeling that happens when you’re grieving, but work keeps moving like it always does. Your life is coming apart at the seams, and yet the calendar notifications keep rolling in—status meeting at 9, project deliverable at noon, performance goals due by Friday. It’s jarring. It’s exhausting. And it’s real.

When my husband, Ken, was sick, I was fortunate. My company gave me flexibility and time away when I needed it. I know that isn’t everyone’s reality. Not by a long shot.

Even with support, it was still hard. I’d step back into work and feel like I was stepping into a world that didn’t match the one I was living in at home. There were days when I could find some steadiness in my tasks. And there were days when the effort of stringing together coherent sentences felt like climbing uphill with no air in my lungs.

For people who don’t have that kind of support or space to step back, the weight is even heavier. Not everyone gets understanding leaders or extra PTO. Some folks have no choice but to show up, do the work, and carry their grief in the quiet spaces between meetings.

So what do you do when you don’t have the luxury of stepping away?

You start by giving yourself permission to be human. Not heroic. Not hyper-productive. Just human.

You do what you can with the energy you have. You let the “bare minimum” count as enough for now. You lean on the coworkers who show up in small but meaningful ways—the ones who say, “I’ve got this part,” or “Take the first five minutes to breathe.” You let yourself pause when the grief hits instead of muscling through it like you’re made of stone.

And if you’re a leader or a teammate, pay attention to the people who are carrying something heavy but can’t step away. Often, the greatest support isn’t a grand gesture—it’s letting them be real, not pushing them to “power through,” and giving them small pockets of flexibility when everything else feels inflexible.

Grief in the workplace doesn’t follow a policy. It doesn’t care about timelines or deliverables. It just sits with you. And the truth is, you can meet expectations and still honor what you’re carrying. Those two things can exist in the same space, even if it’s messy.

If you’re navigating that right now, please know this: you’re not behind. You’re not failing. You’re doing something incredibly hard, and you’re doing it with more strength than you probably realize.

Humanity belongs at work—especially when life outside of it is breaking your heart.

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