Margo Fowkes on Losing her son, creating community, and Leading Through Loss at work

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” This quote by Isak Dinesen inspired today’s guest, Margot Fowkes, to create Salt Water, a virtual community where grievers can share their stories and honor their loved ones.

Margo is the founder and president of OnTarget Consulting and author of the award-winning book, LEADING THROUGH LOSS: HOW TO NAVIGATE GRIEF AT WORK, helps leaders create more compassionate workplaces by acknowledging and speaking openly about grief.

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Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

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Margot shares her journey of grief after the death of her son, Jimmy. She discusses Jimmy's resilience during his illness, and the moments that shaped her perspective on motherhood and loss.

Salt Water was founded to honor all types of loss, as a virtual community providing resources and welcoming guest writers to share their experiences.

She delves into the challenges of grief in the workplace—how to support grieving colleagues, navigate work when grieving, handle the death of an employee, and find support in virtual or hybrid work environments.

Takeaways

• Each person's grief is unique and should be respected and validated.
• Grief can deepen our understanding of what is truly important in life, and how we want to show up for ourselves and others.
• Navigating grief as a family requires open communication, understanding, and allowing each person to grieve in their own way.
• Creating spaces for sharing stories and honoring all types of loss can provide comfort and support for grievers.
• Grief can impact one's definition of motherhood, and navigating the balance between letting go and stepping in can be challenging.
• Creating a compassionate culture that recognizes and supports grief and loss is essential in the workplace and in society.
• Grief at work can have a significant impact on productivity and well-being. It's essential to create a compassionate and supportive culture.
• Companies can implement simple initiatives to provide support & understanding for grieving employees.

Connect with Margo Fowkes:

• ontargetconsulting.net
• findyourharbor.com
• Book: LEADING THROUGH LOSS
• IG @findyourharbor
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• @griefandlight
• griefandlight.com
• Schedule a Clarity Call
• Subscribe to my newsletter

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro song
• 0:46 Introduction, Meet Margo
• 6:04 Jimmy's Story, 'Type B Personality in a Type A Family'
• 11:35 Our Expectations about Life, Death and Loss
• 14:30 How does a terminal diagnosis impact motherhood?
• 18:15 Terminal diagnosis, the challenges of supporting our daughter through sibling loss
• 19:33 Redefining joy and hope through cancer diagnosis and treatment
• 24:59 Jimmy's Final Wishes
• 27:26 The Birth of Salt Water: Finding Strength in Shared Stories
• 35:35 Every Single Loss is Different
• 37:15 Find Your Harbor
• 40:25 Leading Through Loss: Navigating Grief at Work
• 48:27 Absenteeism and Presenteeism: The Cost of Neglecting Grief at Work
• 53:41 The nuances of navigating loss and grief in the workplace
• 57:22 Margo's closing thoughts: The only expert in the room is the person who his grieving
• 59:18 Margo's advice to her younger self as a newly bereaved mother

Transcript

The only expert in the room is the person who's grieving. You can tell me about your grief, right? But it's your grief. I only know what you tell me about it. And it doesn't matter what I experienced. It may not be relevant at all to things, something that you would find comforting. And if I go into the conversation thinking, I just need to show up, I can't make this better for Nina. I can't make her feel better. I can't make the loss better, but I can listen.

and I can be here. You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief -colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. The cure for anything is saltwater, sweat, tears, or the seam. This quote by Isaac Dennison inspired today's guest, Margot Foulkes, to create saltwater.

a dedicated virtual community where Grievers can share their stories and honor their loved ones. Margo is also founder and president of On Target Consulting, working with leaders at all levels to create a more compassionate culture that recognizes and supports grief and loss of all kinds. As the author of the award -winning book, Leading Through Lost, How to Navigate Grief's Work, which I have here with me, Margo also works with leaders to create a more compassionate culture by

acknowledging and speaking openly about grief and loss in the workplace. And I love this because it's part of the work that we're doing here as well. It's so needed. So with that said, hello, Margot, and welcome to the Grief and Light podcast. thank you so much, Nina. I'm such a big fan of your work and your podcast, and I've really been looking forward to our conversation today. That means the world. I'm so excited about this conversation. You have a wealth of information personally, unfortunately, obviously,

through the loss of your son, Jimmy, which we'll talk about in a second. But you have created such a beautiful space for other grievers, which is so needed. These important conversations need a place to be held and witnessed and shared. And you've done just that on a personal note and also in a professional front. So we'll get to all of that. But first, I would like to start with Margo, the mother, Jimmy's mother. Start wherever you'd like.

griefandlight (02:23.822)
So our journey started before we knew we were on the journey, if you will, because on Christmas Eve in 2005, Jimmy suddenly just got sick and threw up. And it was the weirdest thing because it came out of nowhere. And I remember even in the moment thinking, wow, that's weird, because it was like one second he was fine, the next second he was sick. But I thought, well, maybe he ate something funny. We were leaving in the next day or two to go to Hawaii. And I just kind of thought,

You know, what could it be? It's just like not a big deal kid, this happens. But over the course of the next few weeks, Jimmy started getting increasingly bad headaches and started having more and more episodes of nausea. And long story short, we took him to the pediatrician when we got back home. And after some initial back and forth, he went in for an MRI and we discovered that he had a brain tumor in the back of his head, which was the last thing that any of us, including the pediatrician, thought it would be.

So he went in for an emergency craniotomy. And at the time, because they were able to get the whole tumor and he didn't have any sign of any cancer cells in his spinal fluid or any other tissue that they could see, tumor tissue, it looked like he would just go through his standard protocol at the time and be done.

basically with it. Now it was a long protocol. It was a year long. was six weeks of radiation. It was nine rounds of chemotherapy. was not a walk in the park, but he got through it remarkably well. And we had a year where we were back to normal life, if you will. Although, as you know, it's never completely normal, but it was this feeling of like, okay, we won, right? To use that cancer language. He beat the tumor. We're good. And

Two years after he was diagnosed, we went in for what we thought was a routine scan, only to find out that his cancer had come back. And over the next six years, it was this kind of back and forth dance of he would have treatments, sometimes really awful treatments, sometimes less so. He would look either clear or stable for a period of time, and then it would come back again. But it was manageable in those early years of recurrence, where he could finish high

griefandlight (04:45.518)
He went to college for several years. And then it got to a point where the treatment got really difficult to weather. And the cancer started growing very aggressively. And so he came home his junior year for what turned out to be the final year of his life and then passed away in February of 2014 here at home. I'm so sorry. And I want to give the listeners the opportunity to get to know Jimmy.

before the cancer, who was he? And I know he's one of your, I believe it's two children. Tell us who Jimmy was before this diagnosis and how he navigated it and the person he became throughout the diagnosis, which I understand from the moment you found the news that there was a tumor to ultimately his passing, it was a period of about eight years, which is a pretty long time to be enduring all of this. And it's a blessing because you got

for that many amount of years, you hear stories where people get diagnosed and then a few weeks later, it's a very short amount of time. At the same time, I could only imagine just the suffering, the constant angst and suffering and not knowing what's going to happen throughout eight years. So paint a picture of who Jimmy was and tell us how he navigated all of this. So Jimmy used to say he was a type B personality in a Taipei family.

And I think it's still the best description in so many ways of him because his younger sister, Molly, who's four and a half years younger, came out this little fireball. And she's always had just this sort of lovely but determined personality. And that was true from the time she was little. So she followed him around. She stole his clothes and used to wear his basketball shorts to school.

And she just really, she adored her big brother and he was so tolerant of her. He teased her, you know, they had the typical, you know, because you have a brother too, right? That you've also lost that leap. But you know, that kind of back and forth that goes on when siblings really basically get along well, but they also do the sibling thing at the same time. And so he was remarkably, remarkably kind to her. you know,

griefandlight (07:03.414)
He just, he had this really lovely, mellow personality with this underlying determination himself that people missed because he was sort of, he was not the life of the party kind of person. He was the one you'd find in the corner having the intense conversation. And it's not that he didn't love sports and hanging out with his friends and being in big groups, but he had remarkable empathy and he liked really connecting with people.

And he had a very quiet way when someone wasn't nice to him of just walking away from that without confrontation and sometimes almost without someone noticing. But it was as if he was saying, no more. I'm not going to do that. You're not really a friend. And so a lot of that, I think, flew below the radar. What surprised me when he was diagnosed, because I don't know that we really know our kids fully as when they're younger.

because they don't get tested, because they shouldn't get tested in this way. But he was just determined to live every moment. And so I remember asking him once if he worried about the quarterly scans and what we would find on them. And he said, no. He said, I go in for the scan. And he said, at that moment, then I get a little worried. And then you and Dr. Nicholson and dad and I come together and we find out what's on the scan.

And if the scan is good, I don't think about it for 90 days. And if the scan is bad, you and Dr. Nicholson and dad will figure out what to do, and then we'll do that thing. Wow. And I was just in awe of this because, as you can imagine, Nina, I am sweating most of the way through the 90 days. I would try to put it out of my mind for 30 or 40 days, you know, and then I would start worrying about it. But it really helped me.

to try to live more like Jimmy once he told me that he did that. He also really found his voice through this process because his dad signed him up for the Portland Livestrong Challenge while he was still in the ICU. And Dan's idea was not so much that Jimmy would become a cancer advocate or a speaker or anything like that. He wanted to make sure that Jimmy got some exercise.

griefandlight (09:21.614)
and got back out there, if you will, because we didn't know at the time how much that surgery and the treatment would impair him. So Dan thought, well, this is something we can do together. He can be on the bike. This will be great. And Jimmy just loved it. He loved meeting all these cancer survivors. And Lance was a hero of both of theirs at the time. So once he learned that if he raised, I think it was $2 ,500, he could get two tickets to the dinner that Lance was going to speak at

I think it was July that year. So he set his fundraising goal and pretty quickly got past it. And then he came to me one day and he said, Mom, I just realized that if I raise $20 ,000, I can go to Austin and be part of the Livestrong, that Ride for the Roses in Austin and get a chance to actually meet Lance. And he said, I'm going to go do that. was like, anything?

Sure, right? think he's... We're snoozing. Yeah, he's $20 ,000 by himself, but you know, sure. And he raised 35. It was just remarkable. And he did it by just telling his story and reaching out to all kinds of people. And that was Jimmy. And I didn't really know that about him, even as his mom.

until I just watched him do it. And it really also taught me to just sort of step back and let Jimmy be Jimmy, as opposed to like with them, you know, as you can imagine, particularly with medical things, there's a feeling of like, no, I'm the mom, I have to run interference. And that was true when it came to hospitalizations or treatment. But the rest of it, I thought, you know, he should be him. And it was really a beautiful thing to watch. It

so beautiful and he sounds like a beautiful soul who also sounds like a very old soul, like very wise. There was some wisdom in his short amount of time here, but it's packed with wisdom. You could tell that he maybe saw the bigger picture and I also hear that he trusted the process it sounds like to just do it. And in the meantime, between appointments, he would just live his life to the fullest. So I hear stories like this.

griefandlight (11:38.094)
common theme that I hear parents say that in retrospect, in the moment, no, but in retrospect, there were maybe not signs, but maybe looking back on the full picture from a bird's eye view, maybe you could see this person life maybe was complete even in their short age. I'm not sure I'm making sense with my words right now, but a lot of people think like, you know, we expect to live to a hundred, you know, die peacefully in our bed.

I know your parents lived to an older age and very good health and they benefited from that. that's usually the expectation that we have and we don't ever expect for that not to be the case or at least not in this way. So when it is, I hear some parents say, looking back on it, there was a story evolving that maybe this was the fullness of my son or daughter's life. Was that the case for you looking back on

It's such an interesting question and such a tricky question, right? Because he was 21. And so, you mentioned, in my family, many of my relatives, including my parents, lived to be in their 90s or even their 100s. And so it was absolutely my expectation that I would live to that age and that Jimmy would be right there with our daughter, Molly, taking care of me at that age.

In one way, no, but in another way, what it makes me think of is I remember talking to Dr. Nicholson, Jimmy's primary pediatric oncologist, and he had already lost his mother, I believe, and his father had then just passed away. And I was talking to him, and I said something about how sorry I was to hear the news. And Dr. Nicholson said to me, he was living until he drew his last breath.

And Jimmy was still alive at this point. And I thought to myself, that's what Jimmy's doing. He lived until he drew his last breath. we can't ask for more than that in some ways. Would I want another 60, 80 years for my son? Of course I would. And yet I also feel like he took advantage of everything he wanted to do.

griefandlight (13:55.406)
during the time that he was here and that that cancer, as he himself said, was this sort of wake up call of, need to figure out what some of those things are at a younger age and get a little bit more serious about pursuing them. So not becoming serious or in that way, but really starting to think more clearly than most 13 -year -old kids would about who they wanted to spend time with and what they wanted to do. Yeah. Obviously, we want

our loved ones to live the full life that we imagined for them. So I managed to approach that question from a place of nuance. How did that diagnosis impact your definition of motherhood or did it impact your definition of motherhood and how you showed up in the world for him?

It deepened something I was raised with and believed in, which is that our kids should be part of things that are happening. There are some things we shield them from at different ages, which is, of course, appropriate. But from the get -go, when we met Dr. Nicholson before he took over Jimmy's care, we were leaving the assigned pediatric neuro -oncologist who we did not like, and we were looking for someone else to take over his care.

We brought Jimmy with us for that conversation and we sort of set a pattern of that. And one of the things I loved about Dr. Nicholson is that he talked to all three of us, but then he also talked just to Jimmy. So there was from the get -go this feeling of like you are the patient and yes, because you're under 18, your parents are here and of course they're gonna be involved in the conversation, but we also have a relationship. And so that Jimmy was able at times when he wanted to, particularly as he got older, he had his own relationship.

with Dr. Nicholson. And so I think that was definitely a piece of it. That dance of like letting go versus stepping in was really tricky. So on the medical side, it was easier because if a nurse was, we had very few bad experiences, but we did have one or two nurses that I thought, one of whom, for example, got very annoyed by Jimmy when he had a very simple request. It's not worth telling the story because it's not that important or interesting,

griefandlight (16:09.024)
It was one of those where I just, because of the situation, it made it fairly easy for me to go to the front desk and just say, no, you need to find someone else to take care of him, right? So those kinds of things, he didn't care about handling. He knew that I would take care of. The dance got more tricky when we got into high school, for example, and he wanted certain freedoms. And it was that layered nuance of, okay, there's the fear of just generally like...

when your kids are that age and they're going off and you worry about all the things, right, that we worry about as parents. But he had these added challenges because he was going through treatment, right? And so I worried more in a way than I would have. And I don't know that I got it right. I think it really, really helped to have a spouse who had slightly different views on things. So there were times when Dan would say to me, you gotta let him go on this one.

right, it's gonna be okay, and I needed that. And then there were some times when I might say to Dan, you know what, I think we need to let him try this and see what happens. So that really helped, because otherwise I think I would have been much more of a helicopter parent than I am. Understandably so. Yes, although Jimmy, if you were here, would say, yeah, you were still too much of a helicopter parent. I think every teenager thinks that no matter what degree their parents parent them, but, and I'm so happy to hear

You and Dan had this partnership in a very difficult time that makes such a big difference navigating grief because we may be in the same family system, but we're grieving differently. So I imagine your husband grieved his way, you grieved your way, maybe your daughter Molly grieved her way and Jimmy ultimately his own way as well. Even though we're all related, we're all approaching it from different perspectives. So it's nice to see that there was that camaraderie and that unity. think some of that is just luck and a product of the relationship.

not something you can control, in other words. Because you do here, and as you know, there's so many parents in this case who will split up after the death of a child because it's a terrible blow. And it can be very hard thing to navigate. And so much of that, think, is making space for one another. But in some ways, I found the most challenging part of the aftermath was trying to figure out how to be most helpful to our daughter, Molly, who was 17 when Jimmy died.

griefandlight (18:30.574)
There's so little support available. There's more now. But 10 years ago, there was just so little support for grieving siblings available. There weren't very many podcasts or podcast interviews out there. There were very few books. There's a few more now, but it's still, it's kind of a growing area. And it was very difficult to figure out the best ways to provide what she needed as a 17 -year -old who was breaking away from us in a very age -appropriate way.

and yet was devastated at the same time in a way that just absolutely broke my heart. Understandably, and obviously as a grieving sister, I can relate. My heart goes out to her as well because I know siblings have language. We have a relationship that is very unique to us. They are the witness to our life. And when that's taken away, it feels very disorienting as I'm sure it does for the rest of the family. But it's a very unique space just because we shared our early years together, our home, our parents, our memories.

our inside joke so I could, you my heart goes out to Molly as well. So for Jimmy, it was his dream to go to Stanford, believe, despite all of these challenges. He still managed to hold on to some level of joy, it sounds like, and even enthusiasm for life. And to my understanding, he still went to class. He still participated fully with his friends. His spirit was very much in tune with making the most out of this life.

I think that's true. One of the things that was a real blessing for him was that Stanford does something called freshman seminars that every freshman has to take. And it's usually a very seasoned professor teaching a class of 10 to 15 freshmen. So it's this amazing opportunity for the freshmen to get somebody that's high caliber on a topic they're passionate about and interested in, where they can come together with a small group of peers and learn together.

So when Jimmy was looking through that course catalog, he found one called Travels Through the Afterlife, which was about how major religions and a number of other religions look at the afterlife. And he applied to be in the class, and he was chosen to be part of it. And it changed his whole trajectory at Stanford because he became a religious studies major as a result of that. And the man who taught the class, Professor Wiseman, became his advisor through

griefandlight (20:58.318)
And Professor Weitzman told me at some point, either as Jimmy was dying or just afterwards, that when he got Jimmy's application, he wasn't sure whether or not to take him because Jimmy disclosed that he was in treatment for recurrent brain cancer. And he thought, God, how is this going to be for this young person to be talking about death and how all these religions view death and the afterlife?

But he said there was something about Jimmy's application where he said, thought, I think he can handle this. And what he said he learned was how much he learned from Jimmy because of Jimmy's willingness to engage in this and his curiosity about it that really left a mark on him too, which was a lovely thing as his mom, as you can imagine to hear. Yeah, that's impactful. Maybe he was trying to explore his own beliefs about the afterlife.

understood that this was going to be a challenging road. But at what point did you understand, no, there's a finality to this? It would have been about a year before he died. No, actually, I would say at two years even, I started to have a bad feeling about it because I think that was the scan where for the first time his cancer had really grown and gone into his spine for the first

And even though in that moment he was asymptomatic, so it was a shock to get the scan, I had this feeling of, no, now we're really starting to lose this war, if you will, to use that language. And then the following, then he would have some intervening scans, but the one then the following year, it really had gone everywhere. And I had, for the first time, I had started seeing symptoms where Jimmy was losing some feeling in one of his feet. He was having some neuropathy.

I realized that it was not the symptoms of the treatment, it was actually the cancer growth that was causing this. And so we tried re -radiating him as a means of kind of fending it off. But when he had a scan in November, it was clear that the cancer had already in some places already come back, even from the treatment like six months earlier. so, no, three months earlier. So that was the moment in November when I knew

griefandlight (23:18.498)
that we were where we were headed for sure. Did Jimmy know at that point? No. No. No, he didn't. And I don't think, I don't want to speak for Dan, but I don't think Dan did either because Jimmy's medical team in San Francisco, because he was seeing a different doctor since we were here. And Dr. Nicholson was in Oregon where we lived when he was diagnosed. They had this way of always having hope for the next thing. So there was still another drug to try.

And it was very much couched in a way of, you know, this is what's on the scan and here's what we're going to do next. So the nurse practitioner, Shannon, pulled me aside and said, you know, I'd like to get him home health so that he doesn't have to go out for lab draws and different things. And also because they can transition into hospice. And she said, I don't want to start him there.

because he'll know what that word means and what that means. So if we start with home health, then it can fluidly become that. she said at some, then at that point, actually, I didn't say anything to him. When he had a scan in January, she said, now you've got to tell him, then he's dying. Because if you don't, he will miss this opportunity for whatever time he has left to spend it the way he wants

And that was one of the worst moments of my life, was when I had to tell him. I'm so sorry. I can imagine that being horrible. And I don't wish that upon anybody. What helped you get through that time? Or how did you survive that? I think strength is the right word. What Jimmy said he wanted was he said he wanted to see the people that he loved most. So he made a list

some family members he wanted to see, as well as his good friends. He wanted to see Lance, for example, our friend Howard, who lives in New Zealand. He wanted to see some of his high school friends, his best friend from Steeleford. And as he's making this list for me, and I'm writing it down, I thought, my gosh, what have I done? This is never going to work. How are all these people going to make this happen? And the amazing thing, Nina, is every single person on that list came. What?

griefandlight (25:36.534)
And so we staggered it, which actually it sort of staggered naturally because people were coming from different distances and juggling different commitments and things like that. But his high school friends kind of all came together, but with a bit of staggering in the timing so that he would get a day alone with one of them and then another one arrive and then maybe the third one would come and then the first one would go. And so there was this lovely just flow for about two and a half weeks where the people he loved most just kind of flowed through the house.

And he at night, when he would get into bed, whoever was staying with us would come in and Jimmy would have this conversation, which I was not in the room for, but I would learn later, was where he would tell this person how much he loved them and what they'd meant to him. And it was just this incredible honor and privilege to be

to watch, I mean, I didn't tell them to do that. I have no idea where Jimmy got the idea that this is, but this was the thing you wanted to do. And it changed all of us, I think, not just even the person in the room. It's everybody who was here during that time. It had an impact we'll never forget on us. I can only imagine that just even hearing about it and envisioning that scene and the reality, the magnitude of that moment, it's...

It puts things into perspective. So I could only imagine what it's like actually being there and listening to Jimmy and exchanging those words with Jimmy. And so he just sounds like a beautiful, beautiful person. And I'm grateful that we get to know him even years later, all these years later. I believe in the power of storytelling. I believe in the power of sharing our stories. I am so grateful that despite the pain and the suffering and the fact that we would probably trade all of this in to get our people back.

we get to share them this way and they live on these this way. And one of the ways that has evolved after Jimmy's passing was saltwater. So take us to how that came to be. What is saltwater and how it evolved over the years? So saltwater came about the way that it came about was because as you touched on earlier, I lost my mom a year after I lost Jimmy.

griefandlight (27:55.84)
And that is as profound as an impact as Jimmy's death had on me, of course. The site would have been only for grieving parents if I hadn't lost my mom. But when I lost her, it was my very first introduction to the ways in which we look at loss. That when you lose a child, very few people will try to diminish that in any sort of way. They may get frightened by it. They may not say anything.

But no one suggests, well, very few people suggest that at least you got this or that there's a few of those things, but mostly there's a real honoring of the death. And when my mom died, I got a lot of, she had a long, life, which is true. And she wasn't ready to die. And I didn't want to lose her because I was a year past the death of my

And I started to realize how important context is, which is exactly what you're talking about with story, right? So you hear the facts of something and you know only the tip of the iceberg. So I started to realize as I was looking at things, how much we diminish each other's grief and how much we look at it as if we're grieving that somehow there's only a set amount

empathy available or space and that if I get more, you get less. you know, it's like this weird feeling of like it's a pie and there's only so many pieces to it. I was talking to a really dear friend of mine last night whose dog passed away about a week ago and she's devastated. And then she caught herself and said, but my friend just lost her 40 year old son. And I said, Pam, that doesn't mean there's no space for you to grieve freckles your dog, right?

They can both be true, they can both be sad, and they don't have to cancel each other out or be weighed against each other. So when I started to think about doing a lot more writing and actually capturing it somewhere, like in a blog, I started thinking about wanting this space to be about stories, but not just mine, to be about other people's stories, and to cover a whole range of different losses.

griefandlight (30:03.52)
And so the way that Saltwater is constructed is that it's a, I think of it as sort of a gathering place for stories and humans who've had some significant loss and it can be of any kind. So there's resources available. Anyone who reaches out to me who wants to write a piece, I generally welcome that. I love having other voices featured on the blog and then also through social media and other ways then we meet and we connect through

And that was really important to me. I wanted it to be a place where it was about what we could do and what we could say and how we could support each other, as opposed to some of the things that you read are so much about the what you shouldn't do, and then that people just get stuck, right, or feel diminished or silenced. And I didn't want that. So Saltwater is very much built in Jimmy's image of being empathetic and welcoming to everyone, regardless of their circumstances.

Another way that his legacy lives on. And I love the quote, the cure for anything is saltwater, sweat, tears, or the sea. So I know that that quote inspired the name and the connection between saltwater. So tell us a little bit about that. So I have a dear friend, Andy Prestaucin, who is just brilliant when it comes to marketing and branding. And she's named, she named my consulting practice. She named saltwater for me and she actually she named my book.

because she's just so good. So I took her and another friend to breakfast and I had this like two page list of all these things I had thought of to call it, most of which were not very interesting and know, just, and more typical of what you might think one would call a site like that. And on there I had written the word saltwater and she said, what is this? And I said, well, that refers to the Isaac Dennison quote that you just read. And she said, that's it. That's what you call it. You call it saltwater.

You organize the blog posts around the sweat, tears, and the sea. She said, and then you say, it's your safe harbor. And we hadn't even ordered breakfast yet, She didn't even have coffee. No. Exactly. Exactly. It was brilliant. And I thought, that's it? It's perfect. Yeah. It is perfect. Even the sweat part, because.

griefandlight (32:22.99)
Grief is very physical as well and one way is to move it through the body. Tears help our nervous system relax and so there's even a biological purpose to our tears other than just the emotional release and remembrance. And then the sea, mean, being out in nature and there's this reference to oceans and harbors and lighthouses and grief, but it just feels like that. It feels like a light amidst a storm or being lost and helping each other find our way. So I thank you for answering that call and

and thank your friend for the very clever name and the very beautiful connection there. So I love how that's evolved. And I want to acknowledge something you said about the different types of losses and making room for all of them. I remember when my mother shared with her to her friend that my brother had passed or her son had passed. Her friend says, my gosh, I know my cat just died and she's been with me for 20 years. And initially that comment was

You're just like, what? My son, your cat, it's not even the same thing, right? Years later, obviously we've gained some distance and years later, first of all, the fact that this person addressed the loss and in a very awkward and maybe not the most appropriate way, try to relate to it, right? Which is usually what most people try to do. But like you said, even pet loss, I could see how this lifelong companion, especially one that's been with this woman for 20 years,

than a whole lifetime, I can see how it's not the same thing, but there's a lot of grief in there as well. And also, like you said, I had a friend say to me recently, well, I'm going through divorce, but I wouldn't want to go to a grief group because if I hear about a mother losing her son, my loss seems so insignificant, right? so, and it kind of broke my heart because I said, I see where you're coming from, sure, but there is also room for your grief because it's your grief and it's what you're going through.

I appreciate that Saltwater is a space for different types of losses. You also offer a lot of resources for people navigating cancer or addiction or divorce. There's all these different types of losses that you address on your website as well. I that's very important to make room for all these losses. Yeah. Well, I will say too, I'll just add one of the things too that I learned really early on that I didn't know. When you have a child's...

griefandlight (34:44.77)
or really anyone who's diagnosed with a cancer like brain cancer, for example, where it's not genetic, it's horrible luck. It's like as somebody, I think it was Dr. Nicholson, but one of the doctors said it's literally a single cell when the baby's formed, in Jimmy's case, that forms the kind of tumor that he had, right? So nothing we could have done, nothing in our family, you know, right? So when you have that kind of situation and the child dies from that, or an adult dies from that, it doesn't have to be a child.

People don't walk up to you and say, well, you should have done more. Like, why didn't you stop this from happening, right? They may offer you some kind of crazy ideas while the person's still alive about dandelion weed or some funky treatment, but they don't assume that you should fix this or make it better. By starting Saltwater and starting to talk to parents who'd lost children in other ways or other families in other ways, one of the things I learned really quickly, and I'm so grateful for

is that every single loss is different and that the pain that each of us carries from the way our loved ones die can have a dramatic impact on how we navigate that aftermath and how supportive or not supportive people are. And I just didn't know because in my case, people don't say things like, well, why didn't you take him to treatment? Why didn't you get her mental health help or whatever it is? And there's an assumption that we have a lot more power.

over our loved ones and we actually do. Thank you for saying that. Thank you so much. I've encountered that quite a bit and there's an assumption that we have that type of power and there's an assumption that that hasn't been done. So for example, in the case of my parents, it's like, well, didn't you get him help or didn't you do this or that? It's like they did for years. So there's an underlying assumption that sometimes the more bizarre or tragic the death or sudden or unexpected that

I guess it's that innate curiosity in the person to say, went wrong over there so that doesn't happen to me. It's that operating mechanism. Unfortunately, those can be the most painful comments. met this couple whose son, I believe he was about three years old, unfortunately drowned in a pool. They were being accused of neglect and all these awful things and you should go to jail and all the comments. The most insensitive things that people don't realize a lot of grievers receive because of

griefandlight (37:10.498)
their person past. That's a whole topic in and of itself. So thank you for addressing that. And where can people read more of these stories? Where can people submit their stories? And how can they find saltwater? Saltwater is findyourharbor .com. And there's there's links on there either to send a note to me. You can also sign up for the newsletter if you want as well. And that's oftentimes people also find me on social media for saltwater, which is find your harbor across

know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram as well. And yet people should just reach out because I love to connect with people in general and be helpful if I can, providing resources or sometimes it's an introduction, right? You might have lost your person in a way where you don't really have someone else to talk to who has a similar kind of experience. So I've also done that where I'll make introductions to people that I think, you know, could be supportive of each other. That's beautiful.

And I know that you also have themes for each month. So there's topics that you focus on sometimes on social media. Is there a theme for the upcoming months perhaps or is that in the works? So I don't do it every month because it got very big and very cumbersome, but I do something around the holidays. So I do something daily during December because it's just such a fraught time for all of us missing the loved ones who should be there.

the things that our families do and don't do, you know, all the things. So I do something in December. And then in January, I feature the tattoos that people have gotten in honor of their loved ones who've died. And it started off, and I barely filled like 30 days of January. And it's grown over the last couple of years. So now I'm doing two a day all the way into late March. And it's just amazing.

The tattoos that people get in honor of their loved ones, they're so gorgeous. And Jimmy had gotten one before he died in honor of a nine -year -old friend of his that died of cancer, which was really beautiful. And that led to my husband getting one in honor of Jimmy and then Molly getting one in honor of Jimmy. And I'm hoping this is going to be the year where I finally figure out what I want to do. And do you need to get one? Get one as well, right?

griefandlight (39:25.848)
But it really got me interested in that whole topic and the way that we honor the people we love most who've left. it is just fascinating and beautiful to see all the amazing ways that people do that. Truly, truly. And I used to not really pay attention to tattoos. It was never something on my radar. And now every time I see one, especially like if I'm at a restaurant and somebody's nearby and I see it, I will make it a point to ask.

I have yet to find somebody who doesn't have a beautiful or heartbreaking story behind their tattoo, some very impactful story behind the tattoo and it has led to some of the most beautiful conversations. So what a great way to highlight and to share and allow people to share their loss and their loved one and their memories through sharing about their tattoos because that's not something you automatically think about. So I love that. I'll link all that information in the show notes if you want to find

but that's not all you have so much more that this has led to. And now I want to pivot over, I'm getting a copy of your book here, Leading Through Loss, How to Navigate Grief at Work, Acknowledging Grief, Grieve Leaders, Compassionate Cultures. So how did we arrive here? How did this book come about? The book came about really, I would say, because of saltwater, because I started writing.

you know, and talking about to me, and I'd always been pretty open talking about, you know, his journey through cancer anyway. But as I wrote about as how I was navigating his loss, my clients would see it on my social media, and they started to disclose their own losses to me in ways they never had before, because it felt safer since they knew that I had had my own loss. And then at the same time, people that were connecting through saltwater

started telling me their stories about navigating work. And it wasn't a topic that was on my radar, truthfully, because I've been a consultant for 25 years and I work for myself. So when I went back to work, I didn't have to navigate an unsympathetic manager or four days of bereavement. I had full control, up to a point, over what I could do and how long I could take off. And it just really struck me how

griefandlight (41:48.174)
You know, you and I've already talked about some of the things that people say to those of us who are grieving, but how much worse it is in the workplace, particularly pre -COVID, when we were virtually 100 % in a workplace, where there's nowhere to go if you have an awkward encounter or someone says something hurtful or you're just having a bad day. It's really difficult to

take a quick walk sometimes, or hide the fact that you've been crying. It was such an interesting blend between the people who had had really phenomenal experiences going back to work and the people who had had just dreadful experiences. So I started doing research on it and discovered that at the time there wasn't a lot available. The couple of books that had been written, and I think this is still largely true, are really one person's experience of their loss and going back to

And what I found was just like with Saltwater, to me anyway, the magic is in the multitude of the stories, because my experience is not going to be your experience, it's not going to be someone else's experience. And yet there's something maybe that I could learn from you, but I also need to hear from four or five other people whose situations were different,

So one of the first people that I found to talk to about this was a man named Tim Loy, who works at Delta Airlines and started this amazing support group for bereaved parents who were employees of Delta called Wrenched Hearts. And I called Tim, literally cold called him. I couldn't find him anywhere on the internet. So I called the 800 number at Delta corporate.

and asked to speak to him. amazingly enough, they put me through to Tim, who was pretty shocked. this random woman from California had like tracked him down. But he gave me an hour of his time and he told me all about the program. And I remember hanging up from that phone call thinking, I have to do something with this. And I didn't know it would be a book at that point, but I just thought, this is so important, what he's doing and the way he's approaching this. Could you share a little bit more details about the specifics of the program?

griefandlight (43:54.474)
So Tim was a mechanic at the time that his son Jason died. And when he went back to work, Delta was really good to him. Delta has a lot of language about our employees, our family. And unlike some companies who will say all sorts of things about like that and then not treat people that way, Delta seems to have a very strong culture of really being good to their people, particularly when they lose someone dear to them. So he was told, take as much time as you need. We've got you.

you know, go do what you need to do. But he said, you know, when he came back to work, no one knew what to say to him. So they'd send condolences. They were offering to help. But he said, I would walk down, you know, one of the hangers, I guess. I'm Robbie's the wrong terminology. But he would walk down. I think it's a hanger. You he said, I could see people just kind of cringing because they just, they didn't know what to say to

And someone introduced him at some point to another man who'd also lost his son. And the two of them had a conversation and cried and hugged each other. And Tim left that day and said that he felt a little bit better. And he thought to himself, what if bereaved, in this case, just bereaved mechanics, because that's where he started, could come together and talk about their children that they'd lost. So he started.

wrenched hearts just for mechanics. And then eventually it got the attention of corporate and he was able to bring it and make it into a corporate wide program, which he ran until he retired recently. And so now it's open to anyone in Delta who has lost a child and they do an annual fly in where anyone who works for Delta can come to Atlanta in the fall and they have a day together where it's all people who work for Delta who've lost a child.

That story is included in the book and I remember reading it and it was so impactful because if you think about it, the premise is so simple. It's so human. It's allowing the space for people to talk about it. Some people believe bereavement leave, which is currently what three business days at best. I'm laughing. It's not funny at all. One of those things that it's like, gosh, we have to do so much better. There's so much room for opportunity for improvement here. The type of

griefandlight (46:17.78)
support that is needed at work is just human. It's that human component to it that I see you, that space for witnessing, that space for allowing honest and open conversations about the vastness and the reality of the loss. I love how it started with a conversation with a fellow coworker who had a similar experience and then it blossomed into what it is today. One thing that I absolutely loved about your book is that initially when I started to read it, I guess I judged a book by the cover.

I thought it was going to be a story about one person's loss and how they managed it at work, which is fine. There's always something to gain from all of these stories. What I loved is that this is essentially a how to navigate grief at work, like a manual and instruction book with that human touch, with the storytelling, with the examples, like the one you just mentioned with Delta and Wrench Tards. You have these examples built into the book

It's interesting because I've thought about the ways that grief could be navigated at work. I've spoken to people about it. I've had different meetings about what could be improved. But even then there were aspects within your book that I'm like, I would have never thought about this, right? And I don't want to give too much away, but this book is, I would say an absolute must have for all companies, organizations, nonprofits, anybody who's working with human beings, navigating life.

should have a copy of this book. It's very important to understand this information because like you said, one of the most challenging aspects of grief is going back into the workplace after your life has been completely shattered at the foundation and you're trying to figure out how you move forward and nobody knows what to say. The book is very relatable and it's important to understand why grief

in the workplace is coming to the forefront of many conversations because the discrepancy between our lived reality and the expectations at work are so jarring that it makes it very difficult for people to really survive. It adds to the suffering when it doesn't have to. With your permission, I'd like to read some statistics that really stood out to me. Even on a financial level, a lot of people think grief is so abstract and in a way it is, but

griefandlight (48:38.798)
a cost to not addressing it in the workplace. In 2003, and what continues to be the only study of its kind, well, that's another topic. Which is, know, our reasoning was massive. So it's not a criticism of the organization that did it, right? It was not easy to do, but no one's updated it. So yeah, the statistics are 20 years old now. And we can imagine how it's shifted even more after COVID.

It says, the Grief Recovery Institute, GRI, calculated that grief costs U .S. businesses more than $75 billion a year due to absenteeism, diminished performance, and lost productivity, or $119 billion today. Just let that sink in. Employees experience diminished ability to concentrate, and that can lead to the leading causes of workplace injuries. So think about somebody

who has grief brain, they're in that fog state, they come back to work, they're operating machinery or they're leading some research that they just can't focus very well on and how that impacts the work. So tell us about absenteeism and presenteeism or just any aspect of this book that you want to highlight in terms of what you've seen needs to be addressed most immediately. I love what you said and the way that

think about this, because you and I are of like minds, is that it is all about the humans in the company. Yes, when I was talking about Delta, yes, Delta has some lovely practices and culture that's embedded in the culture. And yet, it still matters who you work for. Because even in that company, like any companies, there are managers that are more or less empathetic, more or less equipped to deal with an employee who's had a significant loss. And that's really

what I think we sometimes miss in this conversation about grief and loss is that we focus on the corporate policy, the company, and yet when people leave organizations, they leave their manager. And if the manager doesn't know what to say and do, then it doesn't matter how empathetic the environment is. that's really the approach that I took with the book is you captured it just perfectly. It's a guidebook and a roadmap.

griefandlight (50:57.582)
for what you actually do when either you are grieving yourself as a leader or you have an employee or colleague who's grieving. Because we don't spend enough time teaching people how to do that. And also, there's a lot of wisdom in the organization already that doesn't get captured, if you will. So what Tim did that was so beautiful is he brought all of these bereaved parents together so they could find comfort.

and support and acknowledgement from people who really understood. But it's not like they become best friends with everyone in the group, right? They find the people that are most comforting, most relatable for them. I think the same kind of wisdom that exists, that wisdom exists in any company, right? So there might well be somebody in the organization who could talk to me about the six miscarriages I've had or what it's like to be 20 and lose a

And it would not be that complicated for companies to make those kinds of resources and connections available with people's permission. I know there's HIPAA laws and things like that, right? And it's virtually without cost to do this. People could gather at lunch hour. They could gather after work. They could connect offline. So we're not talking about expensive trainings, big new initiatives. We're just allowing people to learn from each other and to find support from each

And sure, there is sometimes some coaching and training involved in that, but the idea is to empower the people that are already there. And you can't really change that by making a lot of changes at the corporate level or enacting a lot of initiatives. We have to change, like Adam Grant says, we have to change behavior and we have to incentivize it. To say, we're going to measure you on this and therefore that's how people change their behavior, even if they don't necessarily want to change it so much at the beginning.

And then over time, what happens is it gets easier and they realize, wow, this really does make an impact. And it goes back to what you were saying about the absenteeism and the presenteeism. It's still going to be really, really hard for someone who's grieving to be at work. But if I get the support that I need, if I get a little flexibility so that maybe I can work more late at night when I can't sleep, or I can come in a little bit later in the morning, or I can work a little more

griefandlight (53:23.534)
home or whatever that looks like with that flexibility, I will be more productive and more present than if what I'm greeted with is, okay, you've had your five days of brevet leave. Now that report is due. I need that spreadsheet. How come you missed this meeting? Right? Absolutely. I really appreciate that you also addressed the sequence of communication depending on the loss and depending on the level of trust between employees.

which is so nuanced, but like you said, there are certain employees that are able to openly and willing to openly talk about, let's say the six myths carriages, for example, but you cannot have that as a set policy to say, you are going to assign so -and -so to so -and -so. It's not a buddy system that way, right? So I really, really like the way that you explain who gets notified first. How do they get notified?

Who is on a need to know basis? What are the legal boundaries, the timing of when you tell people honoring the religious aspects, respecting the employees' wishes, the families' wishes? What additional acts can the company do? For example, let's say somebody passes away, they had a charity of choice, the person had a charity of choice, so they donate on the family's behalf to this charity, let's say. That's one example of many that are included in the book. And there's all these smaller

Aspects outside of the concentric circle that you talk about most people don't think about but if you have that as a company with already planned out Outline, they don't have to do much work. It's already outlined here They just have to implement it for their particular company if you have that in place and you Explain it to your employees to HR. They manage it accordingly it would make all the difference in the world because I think I don't have evidence of this but I

Sometimes when companies think of bereavement leave, they think, it's a free for all take as long as you can. You're not coming to work. We're paying you for all this time off, which I don't know, depends on the loss. But more than that, bereavement care and grief care and helping employees navigate loss is more about the day -to -day interactions and the acknowledgement than it is about time off, let's say. That's just one aspect of the really big picture that is loss and grief in the workplace.

griefandlight (55:50.434)
and just being human in the workplace, to be honest. It was interesting to me personally because I said, gosh, yeah, something so simple, all these different chapters addressed the nuances. Even having experienced some of that myself, I said, I wish somebody would have thought about this other aspect of it. I wish somebody would have addressed it this way. I wish it would have been communicated this way. And here you have this beautiful outline of how to, why, what does it look like at different levels, and what are the potential hurdles.

navigate with different losses and with certain legalities. Are you doing speaking engagements for companies? Are you doing trainings? I do presentations and workshops and then I also will do some consulting work depending on the situation. absolutely. the easiest way is probably just to go to my consulting website on targetconsulting .net and there's a page on there on the book and there's also in the resource section there are other resources available too for free around Grafian.

in the workplace. Yes, you're a wealth of information and a wealth of resources. I'm so sorry it had to be because of the loss of Jimmy and everything that ensued thereafter. And because we live in the both and world, I am very grateful that we got to meet. We get to have these conversations and that so many grievers get to have this guidance in the workplace, in their personal lives, from tattoos to the corporate room.

All those from social media to HR through your beautiful work. So I thank you so much for everything that you're doing. And before we end, I would like to allow you some time to give some final thoughts, cover anything that maybe I missed, and we'll take it from there. So the thing that comes to mind that I've been thinking a lot about lately is the way in which we expect people who care about us, or even just people we work with,

that we have a relationship with. There's this expectation that people should know how to support someone who's grieving. And it just creates this distance, as you know. And so what I've been thinking a lot about is that somewhere along the line, fairly recently, I would say, it suddenly dawned on me that the only expert in the room is the person who's grieving. You can tell me about your grief, right? But it's your grief. I only know what you tell me about it. And it doesn't matter what

griefandlight (58:14.292)
experienced, it may not be relevant at all to things, something that you would find comforting. And if I go into the conversation thinking, I just need to show up. I can't make this better for Nina. I can't make her feel better. can't make the loss better, but I can listen and I can be here. It goes back to the idea of stories, which you and I both really prize. What we want most of all is to tell our stories.

to say our loved ones' names, to keep their memories alive. One of the greatest gifts we can give each other is to do just that, to make space for that and just listen. And that's why I love your podcast, because it's so story rich, right? You ask such great questions and you make space for people to share their wisdom and experiences and their loved ones. And so I think that's the greatest thing we can do for each other. Thank you so much. And likewise, because that's what you've also done with Saltwater and...

We need more of these spaces where we can allow each other the room to share our truth as it is, as it shows up, and as we feel it. So thank you. And as a final question, what would Margot today tell Margot after Jimmy passed? Margot today would say, kindness is way more powerful than you think it is. That letting something go, not carrying a grudge,

staying angry, trying to see the why, why someone does something that's hurtful is way more powerful than just reacting to what they do. The Margo today would say, just take a deep breath and let it go and don't carry it around. Beautifully stated, Margo. It has been an honor. Thank you so much. We honor Jimmy's memory. I hope this story helps many others along the way. So thank you for being here. Thank you for your time. And thank you for what you're doing. Thank you, Nina.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight, or you can also visit griefandlight .com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember, you are not alone.