Rebecca Feinglos on Loss, Grieve Leave, and Creating Grief-Informed Spaces

Host, Nina Rodriguez, sits down with Rebecca Feinglos, a certified grief support specialist and founder of Grieve Leave, to explore her profound journey through loss. After experiencing the death of both parents and navigating the end of her marriage, Rebecca took a courageous year-long 'grieve leave' to fully immerse herself in healing. Together, they delve into the non-linear nature of grief, the powerful impact of loss on identity, and the contrasting experiences of anticipatory versus sudden grief.

Rebecca opens up about how connecting with her body through yoga and prioritizing rest became essential tools in her emotional recovery, and she emphasizes the importance of self-care in embracing grief as a path to personal growth. They also dive into how workplaces can better support grieving employees and how societal expectations of productivity often clash with the need for deep rest and reflection. Additionally, they examine the role of social media in breaking the silence around grief, highlighting how platforms like Grieve Leave have become crucial spaces for community support and honest conversations. This heartfelt discussion reminds us that embracing grief can lead to transformation and that connection—whether through movement, rest, or community—is key to healing.

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Click here to watch on YouTube
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Takeaways:

• Loss can significantly reshape one's identity and life perspective.
• Sudden loss can leave unresolved feelings and shock that lingers.
• Taking time off work can be a privilege that allows for healing.
• Yoga can help reconnect the mind and body during grief.
• Rest is essential for mental health and recovery from grief.
• Grief can unlock deeper emotions related to past losses.
• Community support is vital in navigating the grief journey.
• Society glorifies productivity, often at the expense of well-being.
• Rest is crucial for creativity and mental health.
• Grief in the workplace is a pressing issue that needs attention.
• Empathetic workplaces can significantly support grieving employees.
• Grief can stem from various losses, not just death.
• Creating grief-informed spaces involves everyday interactions.
• Social media has amplified conversations about grief.
• Community support is essential for navigating grief.
• Grief is a non-linear process that requires understanding.
• Policies should reflect the complexities of grief experiences.

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Join THE COMMUNITY | A virtual space where we can navigate grief, together.
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Connect with Rebecca Feingloss:

• grieveleave.com
• @grieveleave

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• @griefandlight
• griefandlight.com
• 1:1 Grief Support
• Subscribe to my newsletter

Disclaimer: griefandlight.c

Chapters

• 0:40 Introduction, Meet Rebecca Feinglos
• 6:15 Anticipatory Grief and Sudden Loss
• 10:45 Each loss unlocks a new grief
• 14:40 Divorce Grief and Finding Freedom
• 17:49 Grieve Leave
• 24:01 Grief and Yoga: Reconnecting Mind, Body, Spirit
• 27:52 Prioritizing Rest
• 29:38 Grief in the workplace
• 35:57 Creating grief-informed spaces
• 42:25 Grief and Social Media
• 48:33 The power of community
• 52:57 Grief'd Up Podcast
• 54:30 Closing Thoughts

Transcript

griefandlight (00:00.078)
We have just pretended like our grief doesn't exist and that it's over at the end of our bereavement leave. Like that would certainly be easier, right? It would certainly be easier if grief were this linear thing that we just box up and we are done with it and it's gone and we can get back to work. Sure, that sounds nice, but it's just not how grief works. 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. Hello, everybody, and welcome back. Today we have a very special guest. But first I want to ask you a question to ponder throughout our conversation. What impact can our lives have when we lean into our grief? Today's guest is an

absolute queen in the grief space. She's a certified grief support specialist, startup founder and former state and local policy advisor. Rebecca Feingloss founded Grief Leave in 2021 as a way to document her experience on a year-long sabbatical as she processed her own grief after the loss of both parents and her marriage. Grief Leave has since grown into a global community of

Over 30,000 members from all over the world. Rebecca's work has been featured in various publications, including Fortune and Time Magazine, inspiring a more grief-informed world, and we can all get behind that cause. It's very near and dear to our hearts. So with that said, welcome to the Grief in Light podcast, Rebecca. Hi, Nina. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to finally meet you. I feel like we already just vibe like

beautifully and the colors is very cohesive. It's an honor to have you here. And I thank you so much. Beautiful wallpaper and all the color selection. know it's like a big commitment when we have, you know, this space that we create, but I just love it. I love your energy. I love everything you bring to the table. So thank you for being you and thank you for being here today. thank you so much. This is great. I'm going to come here all the time. Thank you.

griefandlight (02:18.926)
So we'll start with all the big questions as I usually like to. So in your own words, tell us who is Rebecca today and how did she become this version of herself? my God, Nina. Who is Rebecca? Well, you know what? I'm going to put a wrench in immediately and be like, well, Rebecca was Becky for a long time. And my parents always called me Becky. And so it's funny because I think about like,

Getting to this place today is really just embracing like, damn, there's been a lot of loss in my life and that is okay. Like I don't have to constantly be trying to outrun it and like prove everyone wrong that I am so successful and I'm so smart and I have so many friends and I'm so good at school or I'm so good at work or whatever the things are. I'm so good at marriage. Like whatever the things were that I was.

always trying to strive for in spite of losses. My mom died when I was very, well, she was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, really deadly form of brain cancer when I was five, and lived for eight years with the impacts of treatments and the brain cancer, and died when I was 13. So that was my entire childhood was really rooted in a lot of pain and a lot of

grief in our household, but we didn't talk about it that way. I was going to say, you didn't know it necessarily it was grief. were just, this is just what's happening in our life, but there was no necessarily like a relationship to grief or what it was or an understanding of it. And you were so young. It's just, it was normal for us. Like it was normal to have a mom who was dying. It was normal to have all of us, my brother, my dad and me, you know, caregiving for mom.

And what was also normal for me was just trying to have all of my shit together at school and like show up ready for the day and be that amazing student and that amazing friend to everybody. And I just, wanted to be, I think perfect. Like I really wanted to appear like there was nothing, no chaos going on at home. And I think I tried to keep up appearances for a long time. I

griefandlight (04:40.522)
I'm very grateful for the wonderful education that I had, the wonderful career that I built in policy and government. I married someone that like optically looked like the exact person, like on paper, we were just the perfect power couple. Like everything was going so well, Nina. And then my dad died too. And my dad's death was very sudden at the beginning of

the COVID pandemic on day one of lockdown, though he did not die of COVID, we think anyway, that set off like just a big reevaluation for me. Like I suddenly realized that without both of my parents in this world, what was I trying to prove and like to whom? And my dad's death made me reevaluate a lot of things, my work life, my marriage, also

being in lockdown with someone who's not great for you will really show you that your marriage probably needs to end. So that happened at the beginning of 2021. And by the end of 2021, I was like, I need a full reset and I'm gonna make some pretty drastic changes in my life. that's, I'll pause there because that's like kind of setting the stage for getting to where we are today.

Thank you for your openness and I'm sorry for all those losses because you were a child when your mom unfortunately passed and you experienced the grief and the long-term effects of her illness and then you're very young to lose both parents and then the marriage and all the things. So it's something that I'm sure reshaped who you are and how you show up in the world. And I actually did a recent post about the anticipatory grief versus sudden grief.

What were those two experiences like if you could shed some light on that? it's so interesting because there's another example of grief in my life that I left out of that story. My grandma, who lived to be 98, yay, shout out to the late Beryl. She was great. This was my mom's mom. She died at a normal, if not very extended timeline. mean, 98 is significant. That's a good amount She died.

griefandlight (06:59.958)
Right. In my grief year, my year of grieve leave, after I left my job and was on this kind of reset and this journey of figuring out like, what the hell am I doing? And I need to get in touch with this deep sense of grief that I don't even really know how to talk about in my life. Of course, during that year, my grandma died. She was my last grandparent. And the reason I bring her up right now is not only because she was badass.

but because I got to spend a lot of time with her that year, very intentionally as she was really in her final months of life and to be present for someone who is clearly unwell is aware that they're going to die and to have that experience as an adult, like both of us knowing what was happening and just being able to sit in it together and anticipate

what was coming. That kind of anticipatory grief is, it was quite beautiful actually. Like we got to, I think my Nana just like let her guard down and I got to hear just wonderful stories and she was just raw. And it was also fun because I was single. So I was in the middle of my divorce and she really encouraged me to date, which was unexpected and fun.

So that example of this longer term, more quote unquote normal timeline for someone's death created this really beautiful environment for me and my Nana to almost grieve together as she was nearing the end of her life. That versus my mom's long road to death, God couldn't be more different, but I guess you could categorize both sort of as anticipatory grief.

My mom, it was just awful. Any of your listeners who has experienced the cognitive decline of a loved one, someone who mentally is not there but is physically there, my heart just goes out to you because it is awful and I don't wish that on anybody, especially watching someone who's supposed to be able to be parenting you who just can't.

griefandlight (09:26.594)
So yes, I mean, I guess in a way we, my dad certainly was experiencing anticipatory grief. He knew what was going on. I was too young. I didn't get it. Honestly, I didn't know she was gonna die. I just thought she was gonna be sick forever because that was my norm. All of that said, it's such a different feeling than my dad's sudden death. I talked to him on the phone at 11 a.m. on March 14th, 2020 and he was dead by one o'clock. Just wild.

That is what I So that kind of like suddenness, like your grief doesn't have anywhere to go. And I still feel like to this day, my grief for my dad just pours out of me versus like I had time to process my grandmother's death. My mom's death was like a whole different ball game, but I think her death was more of a relief for our family. Like the pain and the struggle was over. Yeah, what a grief buffet.

of experiences I can just, it's, Yeah, my heart goes out to anybody who can relate to the brain cancer side, especially. It's a special kind of pain when you see, like you said, that loved one in decline and understanding what's happening and there's nothing you could do about it. So I hear you, I see you. I'm always curious how one type of loss unlocks other aspects of the previous losses. So I'm curious how that showed up for you.

Especially with your dad, I experienced the sudden loss of my brother and there's just that shock that lasts so long, so much longer than we realize. And the acceptance of one, the permanency, but also the things left unsaid because there's, at least you have a little bit, at least nothing. I hate that word. I'm sorry. I Just kidding. Nevermind. No, at least. Don't cut that out. Leave it. Just like we all, we all mess up. Like I'll.

Sometimes I'll be like, I will say at least sometimes to someone else. And I'm like, no, I'm really sorry. didn't mean that. Yeah, we're all human. I'm sorry, go ahead. What I meant is, you know, there are opportunities to say goodbye and then there's the goodbyes you have to live with for the rest of your life. And both of them are equally horrible. So I'm curious how that loss of your father and then your grandmother and then the divorce kind of all happening at once really because they were so close in time. And then hashtag COVID, you know, so.

griefandlight (11:53.274)
all these life changes happening at once. What did that unlock for you? What did that stir up for you? I'm curious. Okay, so first of all, thank you for sharing about your brother, Yosef, right? Yes, thank Thank you for bringing him into the space too. Thank you. It's so interesting because when my dad died and my grandma were dead, I was like, there's no one that knew my mom.

the way her family knew her. They're all gone. No one who was there from the beginning, no one who really deeply knew her is left. And that was heavy and really, really difficult. I started to feel that when my dad died. He used the word unlocked, and I like that. My dad's death unlocked this depth of grief for my mom that

Like my dad was still carrying her memory around and still could say like, you look like your mom today. Or I remember that dress you're wearing your mother's blah, blah. And he would remember where it was from or that jewelry or whatever it was that I I honor my mom all the time via fashion. This is her scarf. Thank you. Beautiful. Hi mom. But having him be gone, then I'm looking through so much stuff. This is kind of the.

logistical side. There were just so many like family boxes of things that only he or my mom could have explained. Random things. Postcards, little trinkets from different hotels, notes, pictures from places that only they would have known. And I'm like, there's no one left to ask.

So that was hard. And then obviously when my grandma died, going through all of her stuff, it was like many other layers of grief being unlocked because she was the last living person for like all of her family. She outlived both of her children. My mother had a sister who died very young and my nana outlived her husband and had a big house full of lots of dead people stuff.

griefandlight (14:18.75)
her parents' stuff. So my brother and I were facing like all of these additional layers of grief that were unlocked and learning about people who just we never got to meet but like kind of got to know them through going through all this stuff. That was interesting. And then read the divorce. I've said this before and I don't know. I've said it and I don't actually know if I still believe it anymore.

I have said that if my dad hadn't died, I don't know that I would have gotten divorced. And I think there was a time. think there was a while that I believed that. Maybe it's more of like, I don't know that I would have gotten divorced right then. I think the experience of losing a loved one helps you evaluate the other relationships you have in your life.

and magnifies conflicts that were already a problem. You either grow together as a couple or you don't, you know, if you're, you know, and with my dad's death plus COVID, those experiences magnified problems that were already there.

But I think especially like my dad being gone meant that I didn't feel like I needed to prove that I was like a good daughter anymore. And that gave me a very uniquely post grief sense of freedom almost to leave my marriage. But I wonder if I would have gotten there eventually anyway. I don't know. Yeah, my dad's death.

a lot of things. I understandable and I love that you brought that aspect up because grief or loss really takes so much. The ripple effect, the secondary losses, everything is felt in ways evident and less evident with time and new things arise as time goes by. And I also found that it could be very liberating. I say it's an opportunity not only to slow down, but to rewrite life on your own terms.

griefandlight (16:38.016)
And that's something that maybe year one grief me would have told me to shut up and go away if I said that. But with some distance between the loss and my life now, I could see that. So I hear you when you say, now that he's gone, I don't have anything to prove to anybody so I get to rewrite my life the way I want to and the way that serves me.

Absolutely, COVID and these difficult situations, they bring a lot of things to the surface. So whatever wasn't evident or you were trying to ignore, not saying you, I'm saying people were trying no, me, me. I was absolutely trying to like hide a lot of issues with my marriage, for sure. It's an opportunity to get so honest with ourselves and we get to decide how we move forward. So it emboldens us to take steps that maybe we wouldn't have necessarily done prior to.

So I hear you. So how did COVID happens? All this loss, the Greece, the divorce, all these things. And I'm curious, did your grandmother's, the conversations with your grandmother, did they inspire the sabbatical or was the sabbatical a totally different thing on It's already on it. Yeah, it was already on the sabbatical. So at the end, let's take it back. Rewind. It's the end of 2021.

I am in the middle of a really awful divorce experience. Both of my parents are dead. I'm 31 years old. I'm living alone for the first time in my entire life. I am working at some of the highest levels of state government on COVID response, leading all of our school reopening effort across North Carolina. Everyone in our team has been working like 18 hour days since, you know, March of 2020.

And I was just done. I was so overwhelmed and so exhausted. And these coping mechanisms that I had developed as a child to move through my pain, which was just outrun it and out achieve it and stuff it down, actually like that didn't work anymore. I had too much.

griefandlight (18:58.326)
compounded loss going on. was exhausted at the end of 2021, which is so reasonable given the amount of shit that had happened. also think like all of us were struggling in 2021. COVID changed everything for all of us. COVID changed everyone's sense of normalcy and just living in that world, that

COVID world was exhausting in itself. So let's take out like everything else that was unlucky enough to experience in my life. I decided at the end of 2021 that I needed to make some pretty darn big changes in my life to preserve my own mental health and wellbeing. And I, I got shingles at some point.

Let me throw that into the right camera. Because nothing will tell you that you are 31 and you are just really struggling with your, for those of your listeners who are young, like I sometimes feel like I still am, 31 year olds typically don't get shingles. Typically the people who get shingles are well into their 60s and 70s at least. But if you are under enough stress. Yes.

And you had chicken pox as a kid. The shingles virus is just waiting for you. So that hit and I took FMLA for that. And that was my first taste of like, I could take a little time here. What a privilege to be able to leave work for a while to focus on myself. That is an immense privilege that I had the option to do that. And I recognize that. And I named that outright.

And my view was, okay, I want to take a year away from work to learn about grief and loss. I'm going to call this year Grieve Leave because that's fun to say. And I'm going to blog about it because hopefully my own explorations can help somebody else.

griefandlight (21:17.58)
and let me use the privilege that I have to take time off to try to do something good for the world. And that blog grew in ways I never, ever, ever would have expected, But yeah, my Nana, I got to spend more time with her because I was on That's Vatical, because I was on Grieve Leave. It was so like, I'm not a divine thinker. I'm not like a very woo-woo person, but like that timing was beautiful.

absolutely beautiful. And I could not be more grateful to have had those months where I was up. She lives in Montreal, lived in Montreal. I was up there for months with her. That's beautiful. And I'm thankful you got that as well for yourself, for your own journey. And also because I really do believe that when we do dedicate whatever time is accessible to us and whatever effort is accessible to us to process our emotions and what happened and

quote, quote, do the work. That's not like a very accurate phrase, but I think you know what I'm saying here. my God, it is work though. Like grieving is work. It is emotional labor. And it's not like, it isn't like, yes, just crying. Sure, that's part of it. Like the release, but that's work too. Like giving yourself the permission to just release this. I don't know that some of this heaviness, like it has to have somewhere to go, but we are so taught as a society to like contain and.

not talk about these things, that it takes work to let it out. Absolutely. And in doing so, a lot of people benefit from it. That shouldn't necessarily be your main driving force, but just know that each individual who faces this, who does the work, who embraces it, leans into it, if you will, it ripples out to the people around you, to the community around you. And know you do not have to start podcasts or communities or all that stuff if you don't want to. It could be very quiet and close to the heart.

Or it could be very out loud and out in the public. However it manifests, think it's just beautiful to see a person realigning with their new reality or aligning with their new reality and embracing it fully. And that harmony ripples out to everyone else. I firmly do believe that. And I want to touch on something you said, and it's related to the shingles, not the shingles, but the connection between grief and the body. want to talk about the connection, how grief is so...

griefandlight (23:42.818)
physical. Yeah, that was the thing that surprised me the most. Would you say this was like a e-pray love chapter of your life or an attempt at it after the grief? And you know, was that something that you were able to reconnect your mind and body and spirit, if you will, during that time? Yeah. Okay. I want to give you a specific example of that's not shingles. This is like a happier examples example about kind of the body and grief and

When my dad died, my therapist was like, will you please just like try yoga? Just like try it. And I was like, no, yoga is stupid. I don't want that. I don't, I'm not flexible. I can never be quiet. Why would I do yoga? That sounds dumb. And I was just never like, in terms of like the ways that I took care of my body over the course of my life, it was like a little bit of exercise and like sometimes eating okay.

Mostly I was just lucky through my genes. And then when my dad died,

I just, I was feeling physical pain. couldn't really explain in my wrists a lot. Some of that had to do with like being hunched over typing all day, every day for government work. Right. Some of that was the agony of grief just being carried in my body. And when my therapist quartered me and was like, just do me a favor and try yoga. Just try it favor to me.

Here's a class, here's a woman, she's great. It's virtual, like it's COVID, you can do it from your own home, just try. And Nina, like that changed my life. Just like taking the time to sit and be in meditation or be in a particular pose and shutting the eff up and just like getting connected to how my body felt.

griefandlight (25:47.586)
Right. Was huge for me. And this was before I even went on my year of grieve leave that I started to try yoga. That was part of the impetus of me thinking like, huh, this is really interesting. In yoga, you really balance a lot of rest in between very stressful movements, harder poses or poses you're holding for a longer period of time. You might do child's pose for a minute, you know, in between.

And something clicked for me in that realization that I was like, huh, that's interesting that I allow my body to rest during yoga and that I give myself permission to take these moments of rest, but I don't allow myself to rest in my daily life. That I view rest as a sign of weakness, a sign that I can't keep up professionally, a sign that I can't keep up mentally, whatever it is. And so yoga became this microcosm.

for me of a model of a more balanced way of just showing up in the world. Yeah, I got very in touch with how my body was feeling and what I was capable of, how I wanted to feel, how I wanted to like stop and appreciate stillness and breathe. It was totally revolutionary for me. I had literally never done yoga. I did like once at a bachelor at party and.

I was like, this is awful. And I sat in the back and didn't want to do it for them. I love that because our society runs on productivity and hustle culture and go, go, go, go, go. And exhaustion is like glorified. Like I do it all. That is a glorified thing. And honestly, I had internalized that prior to the loss. then loss teaches you, well,

Here is something that drains you so much of your energy that that's just not possible. Even at your fullest, you're literally going to start breaking down. That breakdown seems very evident and it usually starts with the body is what I've noticed, right? So here's this again, invitation to slow down. And like you did it through yoga and it's that reconnection of your mind and body and that listening to your body and attuning. And I have a friend who works in helping high performers essentially.

griefandlight (28:02.498)
The key is to prioritize rest. rest is not just sleeping or watching Netflix on a couch. There's different types of rest. There's literal, like visual, go stare at a lake and a pond, right? Like, rest your thought and your mind, go out in nature, go for a walk. That is actual rest. And that is part of peak performance, if you will. So you can have both. Actually, I would argue that rest is key to having it all. And it doesn't necessarily look like the way

society glorifies productivity, right? Like all this hustle, hustle, hustle, like burn yourself to the ground type of energy. So I can appreciate your yoga class and your therapist encouraging you to do it for her. I'm guilty. Guilting me into it. Yeah. Thank you, therapist. No, but you're right. Like our society is designed in a reward-based way. Yeah. And so we see the reward for our output. What we don't get to see is what inputs are required to get there.

and it is not just grind, it is rest. I get my best ideas when I'm driving or when I'm in the shower or when I'm just not sitting there trying to have an idea. It doesn't work that way. Our thinking, our brains need time to just clear out a little bit and rest is not anything to be ashamed of needing. is.

essential for our well-being, particularly when you're grieving. Your body's on damn overdrive. Absolutely. You have to rest. And on that tangent, so resting and the workplace, grief and the workplace. I know this is a really hot topic that keeps coming up quite a bit, especially now with a lot of companies saying, you have to come back to the office and people's lives have changed with...

COVID and just life in general, as they say, we are living in unprecedented times like every day it seems. That's true. Talk to us about grief in the workplace. I know that this is part of the work that you do. You help companies create grief-informed policies. So talk to us a little bit about that, maybe what your experience was like or wasn't like, and what can people do to improve grief in the workspace? my god, Nina, this is such a great and important question.

griefandlight (30:21.588)
So first of all, just to explain kind of where Grieve Leave is now as a company, we provide all kinds of supports for people who are grieving and for workplaces that are interested in building more grief-informed environments, more supportive cultures. So Grieve Leave started as like my own journey in my own blog and has grown into something just like way, way, way more than that. And

There are lots of things that I love about Grieve Leave, but one thing that just really, I don't know what the right expression is, really like jazzes me up is when I get to talk to companies and do trainings for them. And my favorite people in those trainings are the ones who like didn't want to be there and are in, it'll be a big group. Or the ones that are like, ugh. But it might be something mandatory,

Those are my favorite people because it is like the average person in America is not thinking about how their workplace is going to treat them or is going to feel in the days and months after the worst day of your life. We don't think about our workplaces being the front lines of grief support in America, but they are. You talk to your boss.

about the losses that you go through because you have to disclose to your boss why you're requesting days off. So your boss actually hears if you manage people, if anyone who is listening manages a team, you have already experienced calls about other people's grief or if you haven't, they're coming. If you go to work in the months after a loss and your colleagues aren't talking to you about it,

They're pretending like nothing happened, but you know that they know. It is an incredibly isolating feeling. But if we flip that, if we have workplaces where not only do we have empathetic bosses, but we also have empathetic colleagues who are willing and interested in talking to you about you and your life, we create grief-supportive workplaces. We create places where the people that you see and interact with

griefandlight (32:46.456)
daily are able to hold the fact that you are grieving and you are at work. Both things are true. We don't have to just pretend like we are these little productive robots. What I think is really interesting is in this shift to a remote work environment, I think it becomes even easier to ignore somebody's grief. And so I spend

quite a bit of time these days in trainings encouraging different strategies for grievers themselves to make space for their grief at work, to honor it, even if they're working remotely, whether that is keeping a journal nearby or keeping your notes app on your phone, like available to you to jot down thoughts when you are feeling overwhelmed by your grief. So you can put them somewhere and then focus again on the meeting that you're supposed to be in, whatever it is.

or that is encouraging colleagues to email or message or call makes, acknowledge somehow that a colleague who's remote is going through a loss. When you can't just stop by their desk and like say I'm thinking about you, you could DM them. You could send them an email. You could write them a note. It all matters. Our workplaces can either be someone's anchor

when they are going through grief, or they can be the most isolating place for a griever. And we don't have great data on rates of attrition for people who are grieving in our workplaces because we don't track things like bereavement, leave, or incidents of death, like well overall in our workplaces.

But anecdotally, it seems like around 50 % of people who go through the loss of a close family member quit their job in that first year. After they leave. we talk about loss because that's very evident, meaning the death of a person, the death of a loved one. And also, it could be non-death-related, Greece. And I just want to highlight that because even yourself, I went through the divorce, right? But I've had people with their son or daughter is an act of addiction.

griefandlight (35:11.852)
and they didn't sleep last night because blah, blah, blah happened, crisis at home, right? Or they have a child with unique needs that they had to tend to and they haven't slept in like a week and there's this new situation or their marriage is struggling or there's so many things that sometimes we don't think about. It's not just the death and the bereavement policies. It's not, I think people have this idea of grievers just want a bunch of time off and get paid for it. And it's...

So misinformed, that's reducing it to something so tiny in comparison to the magnitude of what grief is and how it shows up. So talk to us about how creating grief-informed spaces is more about how we do our day-to-day interactions. I love that you include the remote work because if it falls through the cracks when we're in person, it falls through the cracks even more when we're remote. So talk to us about the...

nuanced ways that grief shows up in these scenarios. my god, Nina, you said so many things that I love. First of all, you named death and non-death related grief, which is like my favorite thing to talk about. Obviously, divorce is the thing that comes up in my own story, but like you just gave a bunch of other examples too that I think are critical. We grieve all kinds of losses. And because we are human beings, all of that grief doesn't just like magically stop.

when we start our work day. Like that grief is still with us and it is going to impact our teams. It is going to impact our productivity. It is going to impact just the way that we show up. So our workplaces can do more to support grievers. That looks like, yes, flexible leave policies. That looks like bereavement leave that isn't just a giggle saying it three to five days.

in the immediate, after the precipitating event or however these policies are named for a close immediate family member that is defined in these very rigid ways. What do you do on the death anniversary of that person years later when that is a really can be a really awful day where if you're at work that day, probably not doing your best work anyway. Taking that day off could be really great. A work environment that has

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flexible leave policies could allow you to do that. Then the other piece of that is building a workplace culture. So this is like not quite policy, it's these intangibles of a workplace culture that creates an environment where grief is not only accepted, but it's like welcomed in a workplace. So let's say that we have great flexible leave policies. Let's say I can take off

more than three to five days for the death of a loved one or the death of someone else in my life or whatever. Let's pretend we have great leave policies. I still want to be in a workplace where I can tell my boss or I can ask my boss or my boss can check in with me about my grief, where I can say, hey, can I take off March 14th because that is my dad's death anniversary?

And that opens up an opportunity for my boss to say, absolutely, I will be thinking of you and I will check back in on you in the weeks leading up to that day. Let's think about how we can, you know, best schedule your time for that whole week. Cause I imagine things might be tough. That kind of back and forth, that kind of a workplace culture is revolutionary.

And it keeps people working at a workplace like that where you feel like your boss and your colleagues value you as a person and that you can show up as your whole self. So yeah, the policies of leave, like sure, I could, like how wonderful that I could request a day off. That is part of it. But the other part is just being able to talk about our whole human self at work. And that is what I love doing those trainings on.

That comes with practice. That comes with coaching around, like, these are the types of ways you can start a dialogue with someone who is grieving. And just changing mindsets, like those people I was talking about who don't want to be in that training, by the end are like, wow, I hadn't thought about the fact that grief in our workplaces can go together. This can be something that is workplace appropriate because it has to be.

griefandlight (40:00.596)
I love that. And it's also identifying the ways that grief shows up, bringing up the different ways that grief shows up that most of us are not even aware of it. People think it's like if it's not your mom, dad, spouse or child, it doesn't count. so ridiculous. And I love that you say, you know, like, mark the calendar, be aware that this is coming up, send extra support to that employee that week. Little things. It's our everyday interactions and how we allow them to be more human. And in the context of our workplace, which is, don't know where we spend

a lot of her time. Yes, period, right? I love that you specifically named two, like mark the day on your calendar. Like if you manage someone who lost a loved one, put that day as a repeating annual event in your own calendar so you remember. And if it's a colleague, you could put the calendar reminder in there for yourself too, to just, you could just bring that person coffee the day before and not say why, you'll both know.

You know, these are the little things that we can do to support each other in an environment where I think for too long as Americans, we have just pretended like our grief doesn't exist and that it's over at the end of our bereavement. Like that would certainly be easier, right? It would certainly be easier if grief were this linear thing that we just box up and we are done with it and it's gone and we can get back to work. Sure.

That sounds nice, but it's just not how grief works. It's not how it actually shows up in real life. And I think that's the part, the education component, that is really necessary for a lot of people and a lot of companies. It's the fact that there's no timeline. There's no, I was going to say deadline. hate using that word because it's so, in a way, it's kind of appropriate. But we should add that. of lying, right? Well, it's like.

That's a really good, I try to keep a mental list of like phrases that I hate using because they're uncomfortable. Like a post-mortem analysis, have you heard this in like a workplace? People say like, we'll do a post-mortem on that. And I'm like, this should not be said by anyone. I hadn't even thought about that to be honest. my God, my God. It's absurd, it's absurd. And it's the thing, and it's even that just becoming aware of these things.

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One thing that I have noticed is my loss happened five years ago. And when I was looking for information, podcasts, books, all the things about what the heck is going on, how do I navigate this, what's happening, I was trying to like yourself, understand my grief. The amount of information, especially for adult sibling loss was like not like there was barely anything there still is barely anything, but I am seeing a shift. Would you say that social media has contributed to

the way that we're having an open dialogue about grief. Now I feel like now, I don't know if it's my algorithm, but it's like way more people are talking about it now and more people are understanding, know, bits and pieces of it. So how would you say that has shifted, especially with your personal experience, understanding policy, understanding the public discourse, how has that shifted over the last like five years, really since COVID? Yeah, I, first of all, you are doing

such beautiful work with your podcast and on social media to normalize these conversations and to like bring yourself and sibling loss in particular to the forefront of conversations around grief. think it's a funny question. I think about that too, that I'm like, my God, is everyone talking about grief now or Instagram? No, I like, you know?

Which is really funny, but I actually think it's a mix of both. think between the pandemic and between social media, we have collectively, like globally experienced grief in this profound way that cannot be ignored. Levels of death from COVID, a shift in normalcy overnight.

Like that is a collective sense of worldwide. Right. people wanted to talk about, or their bodies were like reacting in such a way that they were just finding that they needed to release this grief somehow. Right. So I think between COVID and then social media making those conversations more visible, much more public than they have been.

griefandlight (44:47.53)
It has led to such a...

Proliferation is not even the right word. It has led to more people acknowledging that grief and loss is an everyday part of their lives and that that's not something to be ashamed of. I would argue we've just really come full circle as a society because grief and loss were very public before the 20th century, before the 21st century, before we siphoned off death.

into hospitals. Death happened in our communities, in our neighborhoods, at home. We would see our parents facing losses. would see children dying. Death was something that was a community experience. We supported each other. We talked about it. We had rituals. Grief is meant to be carried together as a community. And we tried.

as America, especially to like pretend that wasn't true because it was inconvenient to a workplace culture that was focused on production. And now with social media, we get back to this community that we've always had as human beings. Like we get to have it again. And of course that's a double edged sword. Of course there are negatives to social media. I know, you know,

We have a huge mental health crisis for our youngest folks who are engaging on social media, maybe without protections in the ways that we should have. For those of us who are just looking to be seen, like for our pain to be seen, social media, I think can be such a godsend for gravers. Like I know people, no, I'm putting in quotes, but like really know them, they're my friends who also have two dead parents.

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And they're my age or younger. Right. Like that is from social media. That is such an uncommon thing. But my connection to them of just feeling like a little bit more seen, a little bit more heard, a tiny bit more normal, that is life changing for people. So yeah, my god, there's so much power in social media. And I think our algorithms are totally messed up because I do not think that everyone on earth is talking about grief, but you would think that they are. Are you sure?

Now, you touched on so many things there that I just want to unpack individually, but we don't have enough time for that. what I do want to highlight is that you said we get to have our community back. This is a difference in evolved version compared to like 100 years ago before all the Freudian type of understanding about grief and the stages and the linear and all the things.

we get to have our community back. And I agree with you. I don't think we're meant to be grieving alone. I don't even think we're supposed to be doing life alone. Our lives are unique to us. Our experiences are unique to us, sure. And we're meant to do this, all of this in community. So I love that you brought that up. think it's extremely powerful. And if social media does have a good side, it is that. It's connecting these conversations. It's...

expanding these conversations, bringing people together. I've seen, you know, like I started finding other siblings who have lost their sibling, people my age, because when I did find information, it was like, you know, usually older people who had lost their, like very older. I should have rolled my eyes. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that like we write so much grief support that's out there is catered to older people who have grief on a more quote unquote normal timeline. But that is like, then where does that leave us? You know?

Exactly. And there's a lot of us, unfortunately, experiencing all these life changes. Life is life, life. But on the topic of community, I love that you have created a global community through your platform, Grieve Leave. Tell us about the evolution of that and what can people access, what can grievers access through your community? And if they wanted to join, where do they find it? Nina, thank you. Grieve Leave is global. We...

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are easy to find. You can connect with us on Instagram, on TikTok, on Facebook. But the easiest place to go is to www. Do you even have to type www? Just grieveleave.com. G-R-I-E-V-E-L-E-A-V-E.com. There you can sign up for a newsletter. You can get directed to all of our social places. You can find our online community forum.

which I like to call like our griefy Reddit, where people can ask all of their ridiculous questions that like you think you're crazy for having. And then when you post it, you're like, right. Everyone who's grieving can actually understand what I'm talking about. And we just launched a podcast called Griefed Up because I'm trying to be like you, Nina. And we're together. I'm trying. it's, but like,

Conversations like these are so important to broadcast because people get to hear, grievers get to hear an intimate conversation between you and me about these things that are so heavy and so hard that you can listen to wherever you are, in your car, in the bathroom, know, when you're like eating Brad fit. It's private spaces. Wherever your private time is. But that like,

Just by hearing you and I talk or your interviews with other people or my interviews with other people, it helps us feel that sense of community still. That is just another example of the power of the internet. And I think podcasts are incredibly useful from a grief standpoint, especially. Incredibly proud of Grieve Leave. We continue to grow. I never would have expected the way things have gone.

I continue to hope that we will impact public policy change in grief supports. There's a piece of legislation that is still just sitting there in the North Carolina state legislature right now that would provide bereavement leave to state employees. Amazing. Yeah. Are you still actively involved in local policies making?

griefandlight (51:24.256)
I keep myself involved. So I have strong relationships with elected leaders and my background in policy and politics helps with that. But yeah, we put forward bipartisan legislation this year to provide bereavement leave to state employees and it has not gone anywhere. There are a lot of stigmas around what supports people should or should not have when it comes to how they grieve. And a lot of it is

beginning to understand what grief is, how it actually works, not how it's portrayed in movies or these like very old understandings of how it functions. So on a personal tangent, I used to work in policy as well, but it was in the, worked at a think tank many years ago. So it was called the Center for Hemispheric Policy. And I cannot emphasize the importance of, you know, our civic duties, like getting involved, being aware of what's happening now more than ever, the power that we have

individually and collectively to influence the things that we want to see, the world that we want to see, the country that we want to see. So I'm not going to get into that. That's another conversation for another episode. and me, right? How do we change the world and grief? But there's something, you know, the outcome, not an outcome, the ripple effect, an effect of grief is that it can clarify your purpose and the direction that you want your life. And sometimes you start seeing how

your individual puzzle piece fits into the bigger picture and the power that we have to change all these things. So without getting too like too eagle's eye view about this whole conversation, I just appreciate what you're doing through your work, through your now podcast, Griefed Up available. Is it on Spotify, Apple, I'm assuming? Yeah, yeah, we are Spotify, Apple podcasts. But you can find all the episodes too at griefleave.com. Awesome, awesome. And what kind of conversations are you looking?

forward to have in your podcast? Is it more conversational like this? Is it more presentation? What kind of podcast is it? First of all, you need to come on the pod. Second of all, no, it's very much like vibing with other people who have gone through loss or who are experts in the space, whether those are physicians, whether those are professional athletes or former professional athletes who have.

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their own experiences with grief that I, as just a spectator of sport, cannot understand actually, but love hearing about. Everyone is grieving and I love that I get to have conversations like that through the pod. So definitely listen and then let's just, you need to come on.

Come on, they left, I'm there. That's amazing and I agree that normalizing these conversations is a huge step. Most people are confused as to what they're experiencing. They go to Google, they try to figure out what is happening. Find conversations like these, then it is a sigh of relief to know nothing's wrong with me. This is normal in the context of loss and I am a okay and I will be okay. So this is very powerful. Again, thank you so much for your work.

Is there something that maybe I didn't ask that's in your heart to share today? Is there something that maybe you feel you want to share in order to complete the conversation? Otherwise, if it's complete, we can... I just want to tell you thank you and that I think the way that you connect with people on your podcast is beautiful. I feel seen and heard and supported. And I know that all of your listeners can hear that and feel that.

And that means anyone who is listening to your podcast, Nina, feels seen and heard and supported too. So thank you for what you're doing. I think you are just a goddess. So now I feel complete having said that to you. You're amazing. I receive it fully. Thank you so much. And likewise, I really love your energy, your spirit, and your passion for what you're doing. And as a final question then, what would Rebecca today say to Rebecca after the loss of her father?

And as she was signing those divorce papers, committing to a new chapter in her life, what would you say to her? Girl, keep going. That is what I would say. Girl, keep going. You are on the right path. Just keep going. Amazing. Again, thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for being you. Thank you for your time. And thank you for all that you're doing. Thanks, 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.

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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.