When Grief Meets Monday Morning

Grief at Work

Source: DaLL-E / OpenAI

The copy room smelled faintly of toner and burnt coffee when a colleague walked in and asked, “How was your break?” Without thinking, I said, “It was good,” and turned back to unjamming the printer tray. The moment passed, and so did he, but I stood there afterwards unsettled by the answer I had just given.

The truth was that it had not been a good break. My dad had died unexpectedly, though peacefully, the Friday before Thanksgiving. There had been no warning, but simply a phone call from my brother and a rupture that split my world into before and after. And still, when asked, I said it was “good.”

This is part of the quiet choreography of grief in professional spaces where it feels like we are handed two scripts and expected to quickly choose one. We can either say we are fine and keep things moving, or we can name the loss and risk a pause that feels too intimate for a hallway conversation or too heavy for a chat in the copy room on a Monday morning.

What made that moment especially hard was that the truth did not fit neatly into either option. Some parts of the break were genuinely good. I was with my family, doing the familiar things people do after a loss, like trying to hold one another together even as we each struggled to stay upright. There were moments of beautiful tenderness in that space. It was also profoundly hard and heartbreaking. But standing next to the hole puncher, I was not about to say that my dad had died or admit I was still trying to find my balance in this new reality.

After I left the copy room, I returned to my office and answered emails, showed up to meetings, and gave feedback on students’ papers. All the while, I carried the surreal knowledge that someone who had always been part of my life was suddenly gone. I even noticed a quiet sense of pride in how well I was “handling it” while another part of me wondered what that phrase meant, and who that performance was really for.

The pressure to perform even when you're grieving

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about the ways we present ourselves in everyday life, noting how much quiet effort goes into maintaining our front-stage “face,” or a version of ourselves that fits what a given setting expects (1959). We constantly shape what we reveal to others, depending on the setting, much like actors adjusting a performance to fit the audience before them.

In moments of grief, the pressure to manage our presentation of self intensifies. At work, there is an unspoken expectation: You can show enough sadness to seem human, but not so much that it slows the workflow or makes others uncomfortable. Under this pressure, we often fall back on a familiar, pre-grief public “face,” even when it feels out of sync with what we are actually feeling. Over time, that constant self-monitoring adds to our stress and can deepen the very anguish we are trying to contain.

What makes managing our presentation of self after a loss even harder is that grief does not move in a straight line. Psychologists Stroebe and Schut’s dual-process model of coping with bereavement (1999) describes how people move back and forth between moments focused on the loss and moments focused on restoring a sense of everyday life. Some days are filled with sorrow. Other days are filled with ordinary tasks, like answering Slack messages or figuring out dinner. Both experiences are part of living with grief. This back-and-forth helps explain why we compartmentalize our pain in order to function, particularly in work environments that are not built to hold it.

Because grief shifts from moment to moment, disclosure cannot be an all-or-nothing decision. Part of the healing process can be choosing when and how to share what you are carrying. In her work on ambiguous loss, psychologist Pauline Boss, reminds us that grief is deeply personal and nonlinear (1999). The idea that grief must be articulated publicly in order to be real is flawed. We can grieve quietly and still heal without turning our pain into a performance, and the opposite can be true as well. Speaking it out loud, when the space feels right, can also be part of healing.

Grief isn't a season — it's a reorientation

I had known loss long before my father died. Over the years, I have lost my younger brother, along with all of my grandparents and my father-in-law. Still, with each loss, I am reminded that grief is not something you move through and leave behind. Rather, it is a reorientation. It changes how you move through the world, often without announcing itself. What makes that change especially disorienting is how much around you stays the same: People do not know, routines continue, and familiar questions arrive as if nothing within you has shifted.

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If I could return to that moment in the copy room, I would still pause and sense what both the space and I could hold. Maybe I would say, “It was a hard one. My dad passed away,” and let the silence sit where it needed to. Maybe there would be a few kind words before we moved on. Or maybe I would still say “good,” because that was all I had available that day. None of those responses would be wrong. They would simply reflect what was possible for me in that moment.

There’s no right way to answer

If you have ever replayed a conversation in your own grieving space and wondered whether you said too much or not enough, you are not doing it wrong. These moments are not about finding the perfect response like an actor on the stage. They are about navigating what the space can hold and what you can offer at that point in time. There is no moral prize for being the most honest griever, and there is no shame in protecting your energy. Grief does not ask for consistency; it asks for honesty with our own capacity.

Here is what I am practicing now when someone asks how I am doing, whether I am in the copy room or the grocery aisle:

• I pause before answering, especially on harder days, and choose words that reflect what I can realistically carry in that moment.
• I let responses like “Things are tender” or “It has been a tough stretch” stand as honest, even when they are incomplete.
• I pay attention to which spaces and people feel safe enough for more disclosure and which do not, without judging myself for making that distinction.
• When I do decide to share, I keep it simple and let whatever follows — whether that is kindness, silence, or a quick return to the task at hand — be enough.

What I am continually learning is that grief does not require a full explanation to be real. Like love, it exists whether or not it is named out loud. Sometimes the most grounded response is the one that protects your energy, honors what you are carrying, and meets the moment as it actually is. When we allow ourselves that kind of honesty, even quietly, we help create the conditions for more honest workplaces, too. That, to me, is possibilitizing: choosing truth over performance, and shaping work cultures where we can be fully human.