(Author’s note: This week’s articles are designed to provide an employer with information about helping an employee experiencing sudden widowhood at an age society considers “young.”
Today’s article is an attempt to get you to understand sudden widowhood. I use the word attempt because however, I describe it the description is not accurate enough.)
What Happened
The best way I know to describe what happened to your employee is:
the scene in Deep Impact where Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) and her father Jason Lerner (Maximillan Schell) are standing on the beach waiting for the first tsunami wave to engulf them after the comet hits earth.
An emotional tsunami has engulfed your employee.
The Pain
The best description of the pain she is feeling is:
Her heart was ripped out ad put into a mortar and is being ground 24/7 with a pestle. No matter how much grinding is done, her heart is like a jawbreaker and never gets any smaller.
Michele Kearns
Feelings, wo-o-o feelings (Morris Albert)
Other feelings she might be dealing with are loneliness, abandonment, loss of identity, and lack of self-esteem. You name the emotion and if she is not feeling it now, there is a good chance she will feel it later.
For example – I did not hit the “anger” stage until six months after Joe died. It was just one of those days where every little thing went wrong. I slammed my car door every chance I got while saying more than a few unpleasant things to Joe. Luckily, my 2004 Saturn Ion survived the abuse.
Healthy Choice
Letting her deal with grief is not only healthy but a positive and productive step in the recovery process.
If she stuffs her negative feelings inside she is hooking herself to an I.V. bottle of poison, attaching it to a rack and rolling it around for the rest of her life.
In case you did not realize it –
Poison Kills
Maybe suddenly or maybe over months of years but the poison those negative emotions cause will slowly eat away at her mental and physical wellbeing.
By the way, this is true for anyone who stuffs their grief inside, not just us widows.
Life Is A Highway (Tom Cochrane)
Sudden widowhood is a nightmarish journey some of us must take while traveling life’s highway. It is not fun but it is a learning and growing experience. Once she gets through this journey she will be a better employee.
Don’t you want an employee who is able to endure being engulfed by an emotional tsunami, slowly ascend through the wave and break through the crest?
Imagine what she will do for your company – the possibilities are endless.
Coming tomorrow: The answer to “How Long?”
Bio: Michele Kearns is the founder and HUG© (Hope Unites Globally) Award-Winner of JoyReturns. She shares her widowhood adventures hoping to encourage widows to move through grief and rebuild their lives. A graduate of Kent State University with a Bachelor’s degree in communications, she’s used those skills while managing call center teams, facilitating a grief support group and helping small businesses with various writing and administrative assignments. Michele is a bookworm, lover of chocolate, red roses and golden retrievers and is an amateur photographer.
Credits:
Mortar and Pestal Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash
Cell Photo by Christopher Windus on Unsplash
Wave Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash
JoyReturns 
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