189: Should You Hide Your Grief?

Hi, it's Jimmy, and I wanted to speak to you directly without an audience for just a bit before we start the show, because here we are again on another day of mourning in this country. Once again, we grieve. For the little boys and girls. Whose lives have been ended and whose families have been destroyed.

Hi, I'm Molly, and I wanted to speak with you directly about grief, specifically about wearing your heart on your sleeve in a way that lets everyone know you are in pain. This week on the podcast. I don't have much of a podcast because I had, by all accounts, the hardest week of my life. I thought I was through it last Sunday evening. It was seven days of hard, and I thought I was through it. And then I heard the tragic news about the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. My already raw and broken heart sank. As a mom, my heart ached for those parents worried about their children. The ones who survived, the ones who lived, the ones who witnessed the atrocity, and, of course, the ones who perished. My heart was also broken for the teachers who were killed. I was thinking about the people who I know and care about, who are educators. I thought about my kids. I thought about all kids. But for my kids, we were all raw because last week we had to put down the most beloved member of our family. And for anyone who has a dog, they know the crack in my voice and wondering, is it okay to speak about the death of a family dog in the same breath that you're talking about the slaughtering of innocent children? And for people who love, you understand, love is love. And losing love and grief, it's universal. Grief is grief. In this podcast, I did not have much to say, just as I did not have much to say last week publicly on social media. I just did not have it in me. But I did want to speak about grief because I had to address something that I was witnessing on television, watching the evolving tragedy with what happened with these poor children. So the topic of grief and how to do it publicly, and should you do it publicly, and I'm saying this and doing this firsthand because I had to make that decision myself. In a digital age, it's hard to hide from the ugly side of life. Social media has allowed us all to bear witness to some of the most tragic moments in our human history. From videos of natural disasters to intimate updates from people in the midst of a personal crisis like what I'm doing right now, all of us are constantly just barraged with images and stories that are hard and difficult to stomach. Amidst this onslaught of sadness and suffering, it can be very difficult to know how to cope with your own grief. How do we balance our need for solace and our desire not to overwhelm with our personal baggage, our personal grief? But what should we do when we find ourselves in a public place? You know, grieving in public. And by definition, I mean, it could be public as in the four walls of your business. It could be public on the social platforms of your business, and it could be just showing yourself for other people to witness. Is it okay? Is it not the answer? The upshot is I don't know. But I'm just going to share with you my experience and some ways to explore how to handle grief in a way that is respectful both to ourselves, but also to the people or your companions who you grieve for. So any tragic situation is going to provoke stress and anxiety and sadness. And in what we are witnessing in Texas, it is a collective time of grief and sorrow. This week, the collective grief and sorrow started before the tragic shooting. My best co worker, my co worker who has been with me at my feet every day of my business. In fact, my business started the same month that this wonderful creature was brought into my life. Finbar, my Portuguese water dog, her family's dog was the best. As is isn't everyone's family dog, and they become family. And my dog, Finbar was by all accounts my best companion with me all the time. I planned my life around that dog, around the schedule, around the walking and the sitting, and when I traveled to make sure there were people here to walk him when my kids couldn't do it. And also, Finbar not only kept me company, but our family called him the therapy dog. Because whenever someone was having a rough time or a rough day or there was some disappointment that I saw in my kid's eyes, I said, therapy dog come. And he would come running. In the last two years for my family, for me in particular, well, geez, it's Covid. It's all of us, right? But I had a particularly difficult Covid, and Finbar was with me through all of it. So grief, as I read on the plane in the midst of my week, when I found out that he was ill on Saturday, we were running on the beach. There are three of us running. And someone said to me, what an amazing dog. A dog who runs with you and runs in the water. I mean, how amazing. And less than 24 hours after hearing that, he fell ill. And it turned out he had a brain event. His. His head was there but his legs weren't. He was paralyzed. And I had a training that I had to attend. There was no way I could cancel this training, and I had to be. And so my kids had to step in, leave school to take care of a dog because it was a big ask for anyone else. And I had some friends fill in as well. But it was an all hands on deck moment, and it was the most difficult training I ever had to do. It was a wonderful training. I was with just two amazing groups of people, with managers one day and communicators the next. And just in my truly happy space. And the event facilitator, Anna, asked this great question at the beginning of both trainings. What could you talk about for an hour? It's a great icebreaker. And as most people went around the room, some, well, both always start with the workplace. You know, I could talk about my job, I could talk about this. And then it takes just one person to say, I could talk about my kids, I could talk about baseball. You know, then people got it. What does your heart want to talk about? And on the second day, when it got to. I'm almost positive her name was Kelsey, she said I could talk about my dog. And then I lost it. Well, I contained it, but it made me very sad. And I had to admit, you know, that I was having a rough time because in a matter of days I was going to have to put my dog down. But. But this is about grief. And what starts very personal. Watching my kids grieve one by one in four very different ways was a great in how to grieve personally, at that moment that we had to say goodbye to Finbar, I had to be strong. If anyone watched Steel Magnolias, when Malin said, why is it that women, they think are so precious were like magnolias? That wasn't the word. It was, you know, men are supposed to be made of steel, but the point was that women often are the ones, the mothers who are the strongest in the end. And women, I notice collectively, whenever something happens in society, we tend to be very resilient. It's not to say that men are not, but I tend to go to the women. Communal grief is healthy. It helps you heal, but it also evokes this response of action. So this podcast is about public relations, crisis management, reputation management. So the question is, you know, should you hide your grief if you are in a public space? And the answer is, in my opinion, is no. Again, grief is communal. If you can grieve in public, remember, the world is watching and that world may be the entire world. If you happen to be someone who's in a public space, if you're on the news, if you have lots of social media followers, or it could be in your community or it could be in your home. Showing grief is healthy. Showing grief is strength. Even when you show weakness, you are showing strength by allowing yourself to show weakness. But it also shows that you care. Grief is a price for love. And if you can show people that you care and that you are capable of love, it increases one of the most important factors in your business and commerce, in community and organization, it is the cornerstone of character, and that is trust. If people grieve with you, they can trust you. So embrace it, speak about it, post it, share it with your co workers, share it with your colleagues, share it with your employees, share it with your customers, share it with your consumers, your members, share it with your constituents, share it with all your stakeholders. Show people that you care, whether it's your own personal grief or if you share in the grief, just like Jimmy Kimmel did at the top of his talk show, sharing the grief and tying it in with a message about what happened to those children in Uvalde, Texas. So in every podcast I leave an indestructible PR tip. So leave behind to help you think about your reputation, to strengthen your reputation, and that's this. In the moment of tragedy, in the moment of grief, embrace it. Wrap your arms around it. It will bring people in and will also bring people to you. And those people are going to lift you. And all of you together will get through together. But in the end, you are left with love. So I'm going to leave you with a clip from one of my favorite movies for weddings and a funeral and the poem by W.H. auden that inspired my social media posts about my best companion, Finbarr. I miss you, Finn. Stop all the clocks, cut off the.

Telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin. Let the mourners come. Let the aeroplane circle moaning overhead, scribbling on the sky the message he is dead. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves. Let traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my north, my south, my east and west, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song. I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up.

The woods.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.