My Return to Work: Part 1

Most of us know enough to draw boundaries around work and the cliches that describe how it’s “like a family”. Yet, it dawned on me that when you experience a loss, one of the strange and immediate realities is that after your family and friends, your workplace is often one of the first places entrusted with your personal news.

We tell our workplaces for practical reasons.

But we also trust our employers, bosses, and teams at the most vulnerable, broken times in our lives, and expect that they will know enough, or seek guidance quickly enough, to respond without adding more harm. At least, that’s what I expected.

When I went into labour on early Saturday morning, basically still Friday night in my mind, Jordan and I watched the clock and shakily acknowledged the divine intervention: Jordan was supposed to fly out for a week-long work trip and, after everything, there was an alternate universe that he would have been on a flight instead of the two of us heading to meet Nathan in the NICU on Sunday morning.

But first, we were following the hospital care team’s direction, hour by hour. By 9 am on Saturday morning, both Jordan and I had called our bosses to give them the update on what was going on. I laughed with mine, saying that I probably wasn’t going to make it in on Monday. I wanted to go through my to-do list with him and outlined what needed coverage so there would be as little disruption for customers as possible. When I had my first contraction that I had trouble breathing through, I figured that I should probably hang up. 

While Nathan was getting taken care of and I was recovering from my surgery in my own room, I had the chance to tie some loose ends up. I had asked Jordan to bring my work laptop from home so I could follow up on the things I told my boss over the weekend. I remember leaning over my hospital bed to answer a couple emails, forwarding things that needed coverage, and putting my out-of-office response on Slack and email. 

Since we expected Nathan to be in the NICU for 6-8 weeks longer, I was thinking about my options to keep working on a very minimal basis for knowledge transfer and training my new direct report and interim. 

I did not understand at the time that maternity leave rules are tied to the birth itself, not to when your baby comes home. I learned the technical timing of maternity leave through an HR email that, to me, led with compliance before compassion. I later learned that there had been more options discussed internally that could have made room for pause before moving into policy. However, the way I experienced everything left me feeling reprimanded, cut off, and unsupported. 

From a business perspective, as a senior leader representing a customer experience function, I wanted to do a proper handoff or at least talk about my options in a way that felt respectful of the contribution, loyalty, and commitment I had given the company.

From a human perspective, I was looking for a recognition that my son’s birth happened suddenly and surgically, weeks before anyone was prepared for it. 

Unfortunately, by the time I saw that email in my personal inbox, everything had changed. I was no longer a new mom to be congratulated on an early birth. I was a bereaved mom trying to understand what would happen next.

In a haze and hurry to reach our family, friends, and close people as quickly as possible, I had sent out a WhatsApp update the morning after Nathan died and included my company’s leadership team, my boss, and a small handful of colleagues whose personal numbers I had.

Seeing that email from HR stopped me in my tracks. I ended up forwarding that email to my boss to ask what options I had, given that he had just received my personal update via WhatsApp. Soon after, I received a follow-up email from HR with condolences and reassurance that I could take the time off that I needed. I was relieved.

We received an outpouring of love through texts, cards, deliveries, gift cards, and donations in Nathan’s name from people in our village who saw the update. We felt so held and uplifted in those first few weeks, in the wreckage and depths of our grief.

Weeks passed, and I didn’t hear much from my workplace. I received texts from my boss and the colleagues whose numbers I had included in the WhatsApp update. One leadership team member sent me a thoughtful card, which indicated that at least one person outside the group I had contacted directly had heard my news. I was glad some people knew, but I wasn’t sure who else did. There were people I worked closely with every day, people I thought I would hear from if they knew what had happened, who hadn’t reached out. So, I reluctantly logged into Slack, wondering if maybe people were messaging there since my personal cell number was not widely known. When I checked, I had one more condolence message from another senior leader and a message from a colleague asking me if I knew anything about the status of a project.

Who knew? Who didn’t? Who was waiting for direction? Who thought they were giving me space?

What was happening, and why did I feel so out of the loop of my own story?

In the first month after Nathan died, I ended up having a few conversations with my workplace to try to understand what had happened around me, without me. I talked to my boss about a gradual re-entry, and we set a date that was after Nathan’s funeral and a family trip we were taking later that month for Jordan’s grandma’s funeral.

Then, I was told that my WhatsApp message had been put into a broader workplace communication. I wasn’t asked for consent or notified that the company had made that decision. The message I had written in the worst hours of my life about my worst nightmare had been turned into a corporate communication.

To this day, I have not seen a copy of that email, and I do not know who received it. I never asked because the thought of seeing my personal WhatsApp message in a work email makes me feel sick. That personal update contained intimate and devastating details about Nathan’s death. It was meant for close people and for the individual colleagues I had personally chosen to tell. It was not written or sent with the expectation that it would be distributed as a workplace communication. It was never meant for an extended group, nor was it meant for just anyone to receive the words that reflected the most shattered parts of my heart.

I was grieving my baby. I should not have also been teaching my workplace how to respond to grief. Still, I knew that if I had any hope of returning to work and repairing that loss of trust, I needed to keep communicating in the way I was known for professionally. I needed to say the thing, talk about impact, and lead with a suggestion for how best to move forward. This is what made me good at my job and I contribute to my work.

I can’t believe I had to use that strength while on bereavement apologies acknowledging that my experience had not gone well. I was responding to text messages while planning my son’s funeral to explain to my workplace’s leadership what I believed had been missed. The first step should have been simple: my personal information needed to be handled with care.

Later, there were apologies and conversations about what could have been done differently and what might make my return feel workable. I can hold that people cared and wanted to do right by me, while also being honest that the gestures did not reach me in the way they needed to. This is one of the hardest parts of grief; intention matters, but impact still matters. When it comes to bereavement in the workplace, silence is not neutral. Short, imperfect messages are better than not hearing from your team, and there’s a balance between giving someone space and making them feel cared for and connected.

Ultimately, I still planned to return to work. One week before my return date, I wrote a Slack message company-wide to share my story in my own words and set expectations for how I wanted people to interact with me.

In hindsight, I can’t believe how soon after Nathan died I was checking in and asking what was going on at my workplace. Everyone will handle their loss differently, and I had energy and adrenaline with nowhere to go. At the time, I thought a gradual return would support me and offer a productive step forward. I was watching Jordan return to himself as he went back to work. I was looking for purpose and impact, however misplaced, while I was missing my baby, and that loss was irreplaceable. 

No one explicitly asked me to return to work when I did, but I expected that my return would be met with excitement, gratitude, and relief. Eight weeks after Nathan died, I picked up my projects where I had left them and jumped into my first week of meetings with internal colleagues and customers. I lasted 28 working days.