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In March 2019, Diana Wisdom’s teenage son, Bryce, texted her to say he had blood in his urine. A rush to the hospital led to a diagnosis of a rare form of kidney cancer. Thus began a grueling 16 months of chemotherapy, radiation, and constant medical appointments. While her son fought for his life, Wisdom, a seasoned commercial underwriter, kept working. Her family relied on her income as medical bills mounted, but the emotional toll was immense.
“It's difficult to find the emotional energy to care about a premium increase while your son is vomiting from treatment and looking to you for comfort,” she recalled.
Though Bryce’s cancer briefly went into remission, it soon returned and spread. Wisdom balanced the impossible demands of being the mother Bryce needed and the employee her company expected her to be, until her 17-year-old son took his last breath.
Seeking a fresh start and a more compassionate environment, she changed jobs. But when her husband of 27 years passed away in 2024 after a battle with kidney failure, she was met with the same corporate reality: just three days of paid bereavement leave to make funeral arrangements and process her shock.
“Workplaces often acknowledge loss, but they rarely make room for it,” Wisdom said. It wasn't until she joined Liberty Mutual a year ago that she finally experienced true compassion, receiving extended time off and unwavering support when her mother passed away. “For the first time in my career, I felt that my employer recognized that grief does not follow a schedule.”
An Invisible Crisis
Wisdom’s experience is far from unique. Grief experts warn of an invisible yet heartbreaking crisis affecting millions of working Americans. According to the workplace bereavement firm Bereave, at any given time, 1 in 9 workers is mourning the loss of a loved one.
Yet, corporate policies largely ignore the lingering nature of grief. Employees are typically granted a mere three to five days of bereavement leave before being expected to return to "normal." Beyond kind words and referrals to employee assistance programs, support is scarce, says Rebecca Feinglos, a certified grief support specialist and founder of Grieve Leave. Managers are untrained, coworkers are unsure of what to say, and the unspoken message to employees is often: *Leave your emotions at the door.*
“When people come back to work, they feel incredibly isolated,” Feinglos explained. “Your world just fell apart... And you are expected to go back to your spreadsheets and to hit your monthly targets.”
Feinglos knows this isolation intimately. In March 2020, while helping North Carolina declare a school lockdown at the pandemic's onset, she received a devastating call: her father, her best friend since her mother's death, had passed away suddenly. With no paid bereavement leave available, she used three weeks of vacation time. The unresolved grief eventually led to shingles and a divorce, but it also propelled her to create Grieve Leave to advocate for compassionate workplace policies.
"A Bitter Pill to Swallow"
For Pamela Buchanan, the worst phone call of her life came while she was working a 24-hour shift in the ER. In 2019, her 80-year-old father was recovering from spinal surgery. Buchanan, an emergency physician, went to work assuming his stomach ache wasn't serious. Mid-shift, her brother called with the news that their father had died.
Because no one could cover her shift, she never got to say goodbye. She finished her shift in a fog, unsure if she had practiced safely.
The place where she made life-or-death decisions became her own trauma bay. Avoiding the hallway where she received the news, Buchanan eventually left her clinical job. She now works as a stress management expert advocating for the mental health of clinicians. “The fact that I couldn’t navigate my own worst days because I am in service to other people was a bitter pill to swallow.”
The Heavy Toll of Unsupported Grief
The cost of ignoring workplace grief is staggering. Businesses lose billions annually to decreased productivity, low morale, and high turnover. Nearly 8 in 10 grieving workers consider quitting after a major loss, according to Empathy, a workplace bereavement firm.
On a personal level, unsupported grief manifests as isolation, anxiety, brain fog, and chronic pain. Sarah Kagan experienced this firsthand. When her mother died of pancreatic cancer, Kagan—then six months pregnant with her second child—worked through the ordeal to prove her dedication. She took only five days off after her mother's passing.
Upon her return, she was met with silence: no card, no message. Two weeks later, her performance review criticized her slow Slack responses and her "mood." The hypocrisy of the company’s "we are a family" mantra pushed her to quit. She subsequently founded Keriah Grief Coaching to help organizations build cultures that support grieving employees. "It’s not personhood versus professionalism," Kagan said. "It’s about building organizations that know how to hold both."
Rethinking the "Show Must Go On" Mentality
Carolyn Moore, a veteran HR executive, intimately understands the flaws in standard grief policies. Earlier this year, her 31-year-old daughter, a public defender, died suddenly of a heart attack. As an HR professional conditioned to believe that "the show must go on," Moore initially tried to maintain her usual level of commitment.
“I was a ridiculous mess,” she admitted. She had to swear off new clients for six months and struggled with basic tasks like grocery shopping. Her experience fundamentally shifted her perspective. “Grief isn’t something that ends. It’s something you learn how to carry,” she said. Moore now advocates for flexibility and compassion, viewing the lack of human-centric grief policies as a massive missed opportunity for employers.
When Employers Get It Right
Conversely, Caroline Dettman experienced the profound impact of a supportive workplace. In October 2023, her healthy 17-year-old son, Owen, died in his sleep from an unexpected seizure.
While she was engulfed in unrelenting pain, her employer, an events company, urged her to take as much time as she needed. Coworkers rallied around her, delivering food and arranging flowers for his service. “There was never a discussion of, ‘we need you back in however many days,’” Dettman said.
Later, while attending a corporate training at The Second City improv club in Chicago, a simple exercise about describing a smartphone triggered a wave of grief, as her phone held all her remaining photos and videos of her son. As tears fell, a colleague simply reached over and squeezed her hand.
“That squeeze allowed me to acknowledge what I was feeling, and then I was able to center myself back in the moment,” Dettman said. Her story underscores a vital truth: grief doesn't clock out when you clock in, and a little compassion can make all the difference.