crying at work
I have been crying at work a lot lately. My grandma, the one who raised me and my brother, passed away recently. It was quiet and peaceful and expected. Still, I’m at a loss.
I don’t have a lot of experience with grief. I’m lucky in many ways, but perhaps most specifically in that way. My loved ones don’t leave me. In fact they put up with all sorts of shoddy effort and lack of communication and plant themselves into my life. Like weeds they refuse to go away and continue to blossom beautifully regardless of my neglect. I’m grateful for their resilience. I am and have always been so lucky.
Grief is new to me. I find it unwieldy. One minute I’m overwhelmed, sobbing and hiccuping, the next I’m instructing recruiters on what a competitive salary for a Media Lab student is and politely informing them that students should have four weeks to make a decision on a job offer. I can laugh and joke with my coworkers and a minute later sit in my office, hands trembling while I try to regulate my breathing. It’s like a switch that flips on and off without warning.
I suspect crying at work is not a great look. I’ve only been caught a couple of times and it’s kind of a shock for everyone involved, I think. I’m embarrassed. They’re embarrassed. It’s not good.
I’d like to stop, but I’m not sure how. I wonder if it’s better to explain or not. Talking about my grandma tends to induce more tears. And even if it doesn’t, people don’t really know how to respond. Not that I’m blaming them—I don’t know how to respond either. Pretending like everything is fine makes me seem like a crazy person when all of a sudden the sight of a spoon makes me cry. (My grandma liked to steal them. All her pockets used to be full of spoons.)
I used to be all about separating work and life. As someone who can get a bit obsessive about things, having a clear line between the two helped me to not be totally consumed by my work. I did work only when I was at work. To me, this was work life balance. Then, I had a baby and that logic stopped making as much sense. Turns out I couldn’t just stop being a mom once I got to the office. Plus, my day felt less packed if I spent a little time in the evening answer email. Still, I attempted some semblance of separation. It took my grandmother leaving (as my dad prefers to put it) to make me fully accept that I was just pretending these parts of my life don’t intersect.
It’s tempting to keep pretending though. A friend of mine lost her father while she was in college. She didn’t tell any of her professors and never missed a single class. Not one. She told me her dad would have been appalled if she’d missed school simply because she was sad. All of this sounded impossible to me at the time. But now it does almost feel easier to go about business as usual. It’s less real this way. I don’t have to face it. It’s like it’s not happening.
It’s a false sense of control though. Grief, I’m learning, is heavy and unbalanced. It tips from one side to another—okay to very, very, not okay. I only get to pretend for so long before it starts swaying in the other direction again. I’m waiting for the crash. Every time I recover, I wonder, “Was that it? Is it over now?” But that’s probably the wrong way to think about it.
More realistically, this is just part of my life now. A periodic reminder to tend to my loved ones and stop assuming they’ll be there forever. A reminder that as much as I try to separate out work and life, I can’t. It doesn’t work that way. It’s all jumbled together for better or worse. Expecting people to respond to emails at all hours of the day or while on vacation is clearly not okay, but I’m starting to feel like it’s equally unrealistic to have people keep their personal lives out of the workplace.
A couple of years ago, I don’t think I would have hesitated to say that crying at work was unprofessional. Now, as a granddaughter who misses her grandmother, I don’t know if I still believe that.
(Thank you to all the people who put up with me crying at work.)
interesting reads
Almost half of American workers have cried at work. More here.
I wrote about cover letters for internships for The Muse. Read here.
cool jobs
Wellesley College is seeking an Associate Provost & Executive Director of Career Education. It doesn’t get more high profile than this in my field. Apply here.
Not actually sure what this job entails, but can’t imagine a better job title than Head of Creation at LEGO. More info here.