Grieving Takes Energy

how to connect and take action even when it ebbs and flows

Author

Alison Pena
January 14, 2024

Hi there,

After a person you love dies, everything that used to be easy can become exhausting, such as:

  • Interacting with people

  • Following through on projects

  • Making plans for the future

After my husband, David died, I remember having trouble remembering appointments, not answering phone calls because I had no energy to talk and having a short attention span for getting things done at work or at home. I couldn’t work more than 4 hours at a time or talk to people on bad days.

Relationships Are the Foundation of All

Grief impacts our ability to maintain our relationships most of all:

  • Nurturing existing ones

  • Building new ones

  • Healing broken ones

Nobody thrives alone. Yet it’s hard to reach out to another person or allow them in at such a vulnerable time.

  1. If you can’t answer the phone or don’t call back for a while, will they keep reaching out? Relationships require nurturing.

  2. If you don’t feel like yourself, how do you grow new friendships when you don’t know who you are without them? Building a new network of support requires clarity and reinvention.

  3. If you experience overwhelming feelings and lash out at others, forgiveness of yourself and them matters. Healing requires clear communication and apologies.

Action Steps

  1. Identify the relationships which matter most and prioritize them in your calendar. Don’t put off taking time to be with those people.

  2. Communicate with anyone you want to keep in your life about what level of connection is possible right now. Help them to understand that your needs and availability for closeness will change over time.

  3. If some relationships no longer fit, people leave you or are unwilling to respect your boundaries, let them go. As we change, and loss of a loved one changes everyone, the same people won’t stay a lifetime.

Following Through on Projects

According to the HR Magazine article, How to Support Employees Through Grief and Loss, grief-related losses cost U.S. companies approximately $75 billion a year.

The effects of grief can include:

  1. absenteeism - taking extra time off since bereavement leave tends to be shorter than the time needed to grieve

  2. presenteeism - being at work but not operating at full capacity, unable to follow through on projects which were formerly easy

  3. brain fog - struggling to remember appointments and tasks, thinking more sluggishly than usual

Grief creates problems, especially at work where projects need to get done but, for the bereaved, their ability to follow through is diminished. This means you must create nets to prevent unforced errors in performance.

Action Steps

  1. Identify specifically what issues are happening at work as a result of the effects of grief.

    1. can’t deal confidently with spreadsheet numbers

    2. forgetting follow-up calls after appointments

    3. not communicating clearly with teammates

  2. Ask yourself what would solve the issue.

    1. fill out spreadsheet, then have a colleague check it

    2. immediately put follow-up call in calendar with details

    3. identify who needs to know what and communicate with the person responsible for that part of the task. Keep it simple

  3. Use systems or engage allies to help you keep the tasks you are responsible for from falling through the cracks.

    1. Make lists of all responsibilities and tasks so you can consult it if you get brain fog

    2. Assess networks of support for who is the best resource for each one and ask for help before you need it

    3. Trust yourself and take your time

Making Plans for the Future

After a loss, the future appears uncertain and unpredictable. It’s impossible to plan anything when the horizon of grieving feels endless.

Action Steps

  1. Set short-term goals, based on the energy you have that day

  2. Celebrate the accomplishment of every one, however small or big

  3. Be grateful for the changes grief brings to you and your path forward

This newsletter issue, Grieving Takes Energy, offers just a few tips on how to manage your energy. It doesn’t address YOUR specific challenges with unreliable energy in your relationships, at work or at home.

My clear and easy 5-step Heartbreak to Hope Blueprint can help you take back your life, on your terms.

Schedule a complimentary Grief Resilience Assessment with me at https://thebadwidow.com/ConnectWithAlison to find out more.