The Grip of Grief: Managing the Physical and Emotional Costs of Loss at Work

I was at my barber for my quarterly haircut. I’ve known Travis now for about 3 years and he’s the only one I’ll go to. As the writer Saki said, “I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter” (The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope).

Hair cutting is an intimate process and a matter of trust: someone is holding sharp implements against your neck. So, after three years, we have what I’d characterize as a comfortable relationship. We exchange news about our families, we commiserate on the state of the world, we tell each other jokes and, after the cutting is done, we often have a hug, and maybe a selfie.

But this time, though, I noticed I was gripping my hands throughout. Each time, I relaxed them. But a few minutes later, they’d be gripped tight again. What was going on? It wasn’t that I’d suddenly lost trust in Travis. I started noticing that I’d grip my hands in Zoom conferences, when I was chatting to clients, or giving an online presentation – in fact I’d become a terminal hand-gripper.

My long career as a college professor has accustomed me to standing in front of groups of people. I was always nervous at the beginning of the semester but once we started the dialogue, I became focused on my class. Now, as an advocate for women in my career with empowerHER, I’m still nervous before presentations but, again, once I start, I’m in the flow and I’m looking for dialogue opportunities with my audience.

So why the hand-gripping?

My brother died last year. He was my first defender in my childhood and throughout my teen years and undergraduate years. My protector has gone. The protection is now up to me. It’s hit me in waves. Sometimes I’ll go for days without thinking about him. Sometimes I can’t seem to focus on anything else.

We lived in different countries for the last thirty years of his life. He never left London while I bounced from Switzerland back to England briefly before leaving for Kenya, then California and finally ending up in Portland, OR.

After my mother’s death in 2019, we started having weekly Zoom calls. By that time the Motor Neuron Syndrome that would finally take him was seriously impacting his ability to move around. During my annual visits, I’d see his steady deterioration. We were still able to go out and visit family, pop into pubs, attend an old school reunion. He supported himself with a stick and, occasionally, me when we had to negotiate steps.

In 2020 when I came to clear the house of my mother’s belongings, he sat on a stool with a series of open trash bags while I loaded them. He drove us to the dump and I wrestled each one, and a no-longer-needed mattress, over the side of the dump. I knew it was difficult for him to be the observer and not the doer, as he had always been.

By 2023, he could no longer stand for longer than a couple of minutes. I made my usual visits to friends but stayed more at the house while we watched old videos of family, friends, trips to Brazil. We pored over maps to track his beloved cycling trips around Scotland and one epic Land’s End to John O’Groats.

In 2024, I had planned to visit him for two months, September through October. Then the call in June: His diaphragm was weakening. I rescheduled my flight for the next week. I was finalizing packing so I could leave for the airport when I heard from my cousin: Adrian had died earlier that morning.

The trip to England was a series of blurrily fast activities – phone calls to banks, organizing the funeral, phone calls with friends and family -- and then aching deserts of nothing but phone calls and sorting through papers.

When I got back to the US, I fell into my work routine and while everything seemed normal, nothing was. When anyone asked me, I would say – can we all repeat this together – I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

There were no long weeping evenings or mulling over photographs. But even as I didn’t do those things the grief was building up. There were days when everything seemed blank. I reprimanded myself for being lazy, inept, unfocused.

Grief comes in small bursts. Gripping my hands. Taking twice as long to write a workshop, a presentation, a program. I can be social for specific periods of time, and then I retreat. The brother who helped me climb at Cheddar Gorge, who gave me lifts to school on his bike when I was eight, who gave me practical advice on dealing with a crazy boyfriend (no joke – the guy would show up at midnight demanding to mow the lawn), who was always there to go encourage me, to make me believe I was worth something – is gone. And no one can take his place.

And because of him, that one steady shining light in my life, I can do the work of advocating for women’s professional growth through grief, being a public speaker, writing and publishing. Standing by and for myself is difficult, sometimes lonely, but it's possible because of him.

If you’re struggling in grief, please know you’re not alone. It will get worse and better in cycles. It will never leave you, and believe me, you would not want it any other way. Grief is a manifestation of love. And, as Khalil Gibran says, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain” (The Prophet). The deeper that knowledge, that compassion is, the greater your ability to reach others more successfully. And you'll learn to ungrip your hands. I'm learning that, too.