This morning at the hospital, as I was being prepped for my second cataract surgery the nurse asked me, “Are you getting your surgeries in before your doctor retires? When I nodded yes, she said, “We’re sure gonna miss her around here.” Several months ago, when my physician first told me of her plans to retire my response was one of shock, “but you’re so young!” She laughed and blamed her hairdresser for making her look younger than she really is. But as I thought about it, in my own social network I know of more than a few health care professionals who are about to retire. I’m certain they will all be missed as our health care system struggles to meet the current crescendo of human needs.
In the US, since the pandemic, the percentage of people 55 and older who are retired has risen by two percentage points to 50% according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A booming stock market and an ignited real estate industry are making retirement more likely for the well off, but other issues related to the art of grieving are clearly operating as well.
We all know women, especially mothers of young children and Black Women who during the pandemic resigned their jobs or were laid off. It’s clear now that many are reluctant to reengage, leading to what organizational psychologist Anthony Klotz labeled “The Great Resignation.”
Thirty plus years ago, when a colleague and I established the Women and Work Research and Resource Center at the University of Texas at Arlington, the hot button issue for women was “work/life balance.” In the years since, women have struggled to find that sweet spot of investment in a career/work life alongside a rewarding family life, with some energy left over to take care of themselves. One gain is that more men have joined the pursuit, and during the pandemic, when everyone who could do so, worked from home, and schools and day care centers closed, there was a Great Unveiling of how slender or non-existent our community support systems for families really are.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis, a trauma informed therapist who specializes in grief and loss wrote an article recently asking a question I’d been asking myself, “Why aren’t we talking about the role of grief and loss in the Great Resignation? After listening to podcasts and reading research papers from economists and sociologists attempting to explain the Great Resignation, Jarvis found no mention of how loss impacts people’s desire and ability to do their jobs, of the massive losses that nearly everyone in the culture has endured, or of the failure of the workplace to acknowledge and help people to deal with their grief.
One of grief’s gifts is the underlining, aha moments of clarity about what’s important, what really matters. Along with this comes the realization that this is it. Life’s not a dress rehearsal. The kids will grow up, adults and elders will become frail and vulnerable and all of us will die. As expressed in the popular Meme, “Hardly anyone on their death bed says I wish I’d spent more time at work.” With close to a million deaths in the US from covid alone in these past two years, with each loss affecting 9 people, and the interruption and loss of traditional rituals to deal with them, grief and loss may have a great deal to do with why twenty-four million Americans left their workplaces between April and September 2021.
With the seismic changes in people’s lives, we shouldn’t be surprised that some have lost all semblance of work/life balance and given up even trying to achieve it. But let’s pay closer attention to how others have recalibrated and with the support of enlightened workplace leaders, gained flexibility in their schedules, and are beginning to move towards a more dynamic balance. As people return to the workplace, this “new normal” may involve less prestige, less stress, less struggle, but more engagement, more connection, and more say for the worker about when, where, and how work gets done.
Let’s start keeping track of those enlightened workplaces where creative work/life solutions are being forged by decision makers in collaboration with their employees. When organizations can go beyond awarding a two or three day bereavement leave per incident and find ways to offer compassionate grief support for each person at all levels of the organization, work/life can have purpose and meaning for all involved.
