Dispatch #9 - Grief March
Last week, on a shelter-in-place-keep-six-feet-apart-from-other-people evening walk with my wife, I told her I felt “grief” about the situation we’re in. Grief for the world, our country, our community, our friends and family, for us, for me. I couldn’t explain it much further than that.
Earlier this week, during a meeting with a contractor’s leadership team, one of the members got tearful and had to excuse himself for a few minutes. Grief.
And then I came across an article in the Harvard Business Review that put the pieces together for me. In “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief”, Scott Berinato interviews grief expert David Kessler, who co-wrote a book with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (of Five Stages of Grief fame).
Here’s a passage from that article:
[W]henever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world. There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.
Kessler gets props for using a construction metaphor, of course, but thinking a bit more expansively, I’d say that he helps us by naming what we’re feeling. Naming and normalizing, so we can respect the feelings and take care of business at the same time.
And taking care of business is what the contractors I’m working with are doing.
I’m inspired by their constructive, positive attitude during this crisis. Their thoughtful attempts to balance the well-being of their companies with the well-being of employees, customers, subs/suppliers, and the community at large. Their clear-headed, no-blame process of “figuring out how to proceed”.
Where does this end? What’s on the other side? In practical terms, no one can say. In the realm of our spirit, though, there is a clear end game, and Kessler names it in this article as the sixth stage of grief: meaning.
This short interview is well worth the read.
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David Stern CFO makes every effort to provide useful and accurate information. This content, however, is not intended as a substitute for specific business-related financial advice. We disclaim all warranties and liabilities from its use.