I was 39 when I suddenly became a widow and a single parent of two young children. At the time, I was serving in an interim vice president role for a large health system, with responsibility across a region. Our team had already experienced multiple leadership changes and walked alongside colleagues through profound personal tragedies of their own. Then tragedy struck my family.
Suddenly, I was trying to understand how to be many things at once: a mother who needed to be present for two young children, a person trying to comprehend my own grief, and a leader responsible for other people. All of those things mattered to me.
My children mattered. Being connected and present for them mattered. My own grief mattered.
My work mattered, too. And sometimes I felt really guilty about that.
The organization, my team, our mission and the work itself were a source of purpose, connection and familiarity when the rest of my life suddenly changed.
People often talk about finding “balance” during difficult seasons. For me, there wasn’t balance. There was integration. I was learning to let all these important parts of my life occupy the same space, and accepting that what needed me most could shift from one day, or even one hour, to the next.
There is something unique about grief in healthcare leadership
Healthcare organizations exist around some of the most human moments imaginable. Every day, within our walls, people receive devastating diagnoses. Families say goodbye. People heal. Babies are born. Others learn that healing may mean something very different than they had hoped.
We talk about compassion, dignity, healing and mission because they are fundamental to the work. But the people leading those organizations are human, too. Sometimes the leader who appears strong, capable and composed is carrying something extraordinarily heavy underneath.
As coaches, we have the privilege of sometimes seeing beneath that layer. We see the leader who continues to lead meetings, make decisions, care for a team and carry responsibility while simultaneously navigating a diagnosis, a family crisis, a significant loss or grief. And one of the things I have learned, both personally and through coaching leaders, is that there isn’t one right way to do that.
Bereavement has a timeline. Grief does not.
An organization’s bereavement policy may provide for two or three days away from work. Grief doesn’t know that, because grief comes in waves. There can be hours, even days, when you feel clear, productive and completely present. You can make decisions. You can lead. You can laugh. You can feel almost like yourself.
And then something can unexpectedly hit you. A memory. A conversation. A song. A question. Something completely ordinary. And suddenly, the wave is back. It is difficult to explain the “grief fog” to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You can be functioning at a very high level in one moment and struggle to make a simple decision in another. That doesn’t mean someone is incapable of leading. It means they are human.
My experience was with the death of my husband, but grief isn’t limited to death. A diagnosis, divorce, a child’s struggle or a major professional setback can create its own version of that gut punch. Life doesn’t stop simply because someone holds a leadership title.
No two people will experience grief the same way
Perhaps one of the most important things I learned is that my experience with grief was my experience. It isn’t a blueprint for anyone else’s. Each of us carries a unique combination of experiences, relationships, beliefs, values and lessons that shape how we see and respond to the world. We bring all of that into our leadership, how we work, and how we respond to change, stress, loss and uncertainty.
Over a lifetime, each of us develops ways of navigating difficult things. One person moves toward others when life becomes difficult. Another needs space. One slows down. Another keeps moving. One needs to step away from work. Another finds connection, meaning and even stability in continuing to work. There isn’t always a right or best answer, just unique human beings experiencing the world’s unexpected turns in very different ways.
Understanding that changed the way I think about supporting people through grief.
“What do you need?” can be a surprisingly difficult question
People were incredibly kind to me. And I learned something about how we try to care for people who are hurting: We often offer comfort in the way we’d want to receive it. That isn’t wrong. It almost always comes from a place of genuine care. But what we would need may not be what another person needs.
I remember people asking: “Do you need anything?” My answer was usually something like: “I don’t think so, but thank you.” Or simply: “I don’t know.”
Because I really didn’t know. When you’re in a grief fog, determining what someone else can do for you requires identifying a need, deciding what would help, figuring out who could do it and then asking for it. Sometimes that’s more than you can process. What helped me more were specific offers.
“Can I take care of this for you?”
“Would it help if I handled that meeting?”
“I’m bringing dinner. Would Tuesday or Wednesday be better?”
“I can take this off your plate this week if you’d like me to.”
Specificity removes some of the burden of figuring out what help looks like. And there’s one more lesson worth noting: don’t assume taking everything away is what the person needs, either.
Sometimes work is part of the anchor
People understandably told me I should take more time off. For some, that is exactly what they need. For others, having too much taken away can feel like another loss. Work can provide purpose, routine, connection, a place where you still recognize yourself when the rest of your life feels unfamiliar. That was important to me.
I needed to be a present mother. I needed space to grieve. I also needed connection to the people and work that mattered to me, and I needed the freedom to decide, moment to moment, which need was loudest. I needed enough trust with my team to talk about it openly, not someone else deciding for me.
That is one of the most important things leaders can offer someone experiencing grief: choice without judgment. Ask. Listen. Check again later. And recognize that today’s answer may not be tomorrow’s answer.
Our leadership strengths can become our protective strategies
Healthcare leaders deal with the unexpected every day. Change. Crisis. Complexity. Competing priorities. Decisions with incomplete information. Over time, most of us develop strategies that help us function under pressure. We work harder. We might tell ourselves, “I’ll just do it myself.” We might withdraw or use humor. We might take care of everyone else and ignore our own needs and feelings because those are just too painful and deep right now.
These strategies aren’t inherently good or bad. In many cases, they have served us well. They may even be part of what helped us become successful leaders. But they are also part of our unique human wiring and experiences, and grief can amplify them. The leader who has always responded to stress by working harder may work even harder. The leader whose instinct is to care for everyone else may continue doing so without realizing how depleted she has become.
That’s why self-awareness matters so much in coaching: noticing the response, without judging it.
The first work of leadership matters even more when life gets hard
Self-care and self-awareness cannot begin only when the crisis arrives. Leaders who haven’t done what we often describe in coaching as the first work of leadership — understanding themselves, recognizing their patterns and developing practices that allow them to remain grounded — can find themselves particularly vulnerable when life becomes difficult.
If overworking was already the norm, or your identity had become intertwined with performing, producing, and taking care of others, what happens when grief arrives and your capacity changes? The leader who was once passionate can begin to feel exhausted, disconnected, even burned out.
And they may not immediately understand why something that once gave them energy suddenly feels different.
This is where awareness becomes less a competency to master and more a daily practice.
What am I feeling right now? What do I need right now? And just as important, how am I responding to what I’m feeling — working harder, withdrawing, trying to do everything myself, or reaching for connection? There isn’t a “wrong” answer. The value is in noticing the response and asking whether the strategies that have served you before are still serving you now, because that can shift by the hour.
There isn’t a playbook for leading while grieving
Leadership loves frameworks and healthcare loves protocols, but grief doesn’t cooperate. There isn’t a five-step model that tells you exactly how to support someone through one of the hardest periods of their life.
Sometimes connection helps, sometimes space does. Sometimes someone wants to talk about what happened; sometimes they’d rather not. What you needed may be nothing like what the person across from you needs now.
So perhaps we don’t always need the answer. Perhaps we need to be curious enough to ask, and then listen.
What I would tell leaders now
My experience with grief is mine. That may be the most important lesson of all. Don’t assume someone needs what you needed, or that returning to work means the grieving is finished. We are unique human beings who bring our own experiences, beliefs, strengths, protective strategies and ways of responding to the world into our leadership every day.
Ask. Listen. Stay connected. Offer something specific when you can, leave room for the answer to change, and remember that sometimes there is nothing to fix.
For those of us privileged to lead and coach people in healthcare, our responsibility has less to do with finding the perfect thing to say than with creating enough trust that someone doesn’t have to pretend: noticing the human being underneath the title.
And for those leaders who are themselves walking through grief, the invitation is the same: Stay curious about what you’re feeling, notice how you’re responding, and let what you need today be different than what you needed yesterday.
The five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, as psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first described them — were never meant to be a workflow. They’re a journey through feeling many things at once, in no particular order and on no particular schedule.
There was learning to be present for my children, for myself, for people I cared about, and for work that continued to matter deeply to me. Practicing presence took time, and it continues to this day. Grief doesn’t move in a straight line, and neither does leadership. Sometimes the path forward begins simply by being present enough to recognize where you are.
