Synopsis

When grief strikes, we are rarely allowed to sit with it and be. Our hustle society demands that we get back to life quickly. Most workplaces that offer bereavement leave only provide about four days of paid time off for a spouse's death. Many of us have to or think we should return to work even though we are still dealing with death trauma. For some of us, there is no time off. All of this is a reflection of modern attitudes toward grief. We can be pressured by our friends to "move on." They find our grief uncomfortable and want to see us get back to the way they knew us. It's an incredibly selfish notion that comes from a caring place. Every day the grieving are forced to look away from their grief and pretend they have somehow resolved it so that they can get back to work or keep socializing with friends.

My story of loss will take the reader through my attempts to get back to work, the isolation of grieving alone, and my challenge of being a parent to grieving children. I confront each of these situations in a raw, open, and honest fashion. I'll explore the choices I faced and my mistakes in thinking I could get it all right. As we travel our grief journey, we have to find our path to resilience. We can't fully understand our strength unless we understand our suffering and, more importantly, how we have transformed. This book points out that:

• Grief irrevocably changes a person, and we have to acknowledge that.
• We won't get back to the person we were, but we'll become someone new. We'll begin to understand how our resilience needs to change, too.
• Grief is forever, and we build our new life around our grief. That requires embracing the awkwardly uncomfortable and facing who we've become.

My efforts to realize my resilience centered on living with and understanding my grief. I had to challenge contemporary attitudes toward suffering and grieve in a way that made sense for me. I had to find a way that gave me as much time as I needed and learn not to listen to all those who thought they knew exactly how I should grieve.

This story is one I'm uniquely qualified to tell. I spent 30 years in the human resources space. Much of my work was around designing a workplace culture that cares for employees. Yet like most, I thought a week or two away from the job would be enough for anyone dealing with grief. I coached executives and emerging leaders on how to be resilient and build resilient teams, using the assumption that tragedy or hardship didn't change you. When my husband died in 2019, I came face to face with those assumptions. In a slow, stumbling way filled with missteps and mistakes, I learned to look into the heart of my grief and understand the love that made it. I got to know it and understand how it was remaking me. I realized that my life was a life transformed by suffering. The love at the heart of that transformation was my path to resilience.

Sales arguments

• A 2016 study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found most employers offer four days for the death of a spouse or child, three days for the death of other family members like a sibling or parent, one day for an extended family member like an aunt or cousin, and zero-days for a friend or colleague. No one can nurture their resilience in 4 days.
• No US law grants workers the right to paid leave for the loss of a family member. The most recent figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates only 60% of private-sector workers have bereavement leave. That means many of those who work and are in grief have no time to understand their grieving.
• My social media presence includes over 1,300 connections on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/jakobfranzen), over 130 followers of my company on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-modern-coaching-company), over 550 contacts on Facebook (www.facebook.com/https://www.facebook.com/jakob.franzen.52), and over 480 followers on Twitter (www.twitter.com/jakobfranzen).
• I regularly interact with over 250 high-tech HR executives, having served on an information exchange round table for 20 years.

Similar titles

• A Year in the Grief Valley by John Pavlovitz (Parson's Porch, December 2019). My book will be similar to this famous book in that it is a very personal story and will support the idea that grief is experienced alone. My book will be a deeper exploration of getting to resilience.
• No Happy Endings: A Memoir by Nora McInerny (Dey Street, an imprint of William Morrow, 2019). My book will be similar as it will be a personal story that is frank, honest, and doesn't promise storybook endings.
• Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Cheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant (Knopf, April 2017) My book is similar to the ideas posited in this book as it relates to confronting grief honestly, with compassion, and with empathy. This book unfortunately strays into the area of prescriptive advice and assumes that this advice will work for everyone who has suffered a trauma. My book focuses on the honesty of knowing not everything can have a happy ending right away.

Audience

About 2.5 million people die in the United States annually, each leaving an average of five grieving people behind, all of whom are looking to understand how to authentically realize their own resilience in a life irrevocably changed.