my story

In July 2019, my wife of over 30 years died after a long horrible illness – Multiple System Atrophy – a horrible Neuro Degenerative Disease. Although we knew it was coming the end was incredibly hard.

I had been working as the CEO of a software company for a couple of years – a start up which in late 2019 had approximately 50 employees and offices in Melbourne and Los Angeles. It was a busy life. As Bernadette (my wife) neared the end I noticed how difficult people found it to talk to me about her illness. When she died it was very awkward at work – so much so that I published an article on Linkedin titled ‘Dealing with Grief in the Workplace’. I was simply overwhelmed by the response I received and the emails to me were extraordinary – people generally relaying their experiences from all around the world. Some stories, although years after the fact, were still so painful, others relaying some truly lovely stories as to how their communities rallied behind them – but generally, these were in the vast minority.

I resigned in mid October with a view that I needed space and time to grieve but also to investigate how companies can initiate a better way of planning for a time when someone in their community is suffering, someone whose life has been turned upside down, someone who now as a result of an occurrence in their life is living with a new normal. 

In many workplaces people who are grieving generally feel isolated and this is predominantly because the community hasn’t really thought about this life challenge.  

Make no mistake there are very few challenges in life as big as losing a loved one. Yet most workplaces and the people within them feel awkward when interacting with someone who is grieving because there has never really been a conversation about it.