Not Every Day is Just Another Day
Supporting hidden sadness in the workplace
For each of us, calendar days represent occasions that stain our memories like red beets on a white napkin. Annual demarcations drop memory bombs waking up our nerve endings to occasions.
As we time travel, our senses move to moments we’ve lived with a lightness of cotton candy. An engagement or a wedding anniversary enliven happy memories. A graduation brings imagery of laughter, happy tears and a shift happening. At my wedding I wore a perfume that when sprayed, shifts my heart back to the bridal suite, getting ready with my sister and Mom. I can still feel the wind in my hair, windows down, traveling downhill on Franklin Street from SFO towards my apartment when I got news I made Director. Months of travel, my shoulders aching from the stress load I carried while hovering over my laptop transitioned to a breeze filled victory of that new title
My nerve endings just as easily recall where I was sitting, with my youngest on my lap, when I learned my boss had been murdered. The sunshine dove through the playroom windows, heating up the house keeping pace with my heartbeat. Moving in slow motion, through the house, handing off my baby to Jon as if I could only hold myself that moment. A mentor lost tragically.
Zooming out like a director’s move camera, I witness myself in the Florida hospital room where my Mom was diagnosed with cancer. My mind went to the worst case scenario that moment when the doctor the exact diagnosis told me on his rounds, moving directly to his next patient. Bracing for more emotional falls after scary news, my stoicism held me up like the hospital bedrails guarded my mom’s shaky movements.
More sadness is demarked by memories driving towards an art workshop with my girls and their friend. I pulled over the car to say a final goodbye to my father in law from his own Florida hospital room. The car felt still for a very long time, the tears uncontrollably leaving my system, the tree line burned in my framework, the fall leaves discoloring my mind.
Memories are tagged by dates. Many of us carry all the details of experiencing major milestones in our lives each day locked under our phone passcodes. we memorialize the good and the bad in mental calendars. We bring it all to our day, meetings, our driving and conversations.
We never know the grief and anger our colleagues are carrying. As often as I implore anyone I coach to go within, stay focused and get self motivated, my empathy string is being pulled around with cat like yarn.
I’ve cleared and held people in grief and loss over the past two years in private session. Yet those struggling to tread about sadness take steps to get to work and participate in daily life in silence. Privately they release the silence of pain and hold it every day.
Checking with your community of friends and colleagues who might be having a bad day or a really horrible day. If your work pal needs a break and you don’t know exactly why, Venmo them a coffee $5 pick me.
Everyday is different marker on our milestones It’s not just another day. Holding each other up is the way to humanize work each day, even if we aren’t in each other’s memory banks.
