As a law enforcement psychologist, I have had the opportunity to connect with a great resource in the Los Angeles area to help navigate the loss of a loved one. The founder and CEO of griefHaven, Susan Whitmore, has since provided unmeasurable support to LASD employees struggling with grief. She started griefHaven in 2003 after losing her 32-year-old daughter, Erika, from an extremely rare sinus cancer. It was after her death, and the pain of losing her came flooding in, that she decided to start griefHaven and create the kinds of tools and hope that she so desperately needed but couldn’t find. She was kind enough to agree to answer a few questions about grief and what it may look like for an LASD employee.
WHAT DOES GRIEF LOOK LIKE?
Grief has as many different faces and looks as there are people. Grief also acts in just as many ways. In fact, Mark Twain once said, when asked how he was doing after the death of his daughter, “To answer your question would bankrupt the vocabulary of all languages.” That is a perfect description. One minute a griever might be sobbing, and the next minute acting perfectly fine. Sometimes, people will tell me that they have been doing well for days and then write and ask me, “What happened? I was doing so well?”
I liken grieving to an ocean wave with your back to it. You know it’s there, but waves come in all different sizes with different strengths. When it comes, you can either navigate it by swimming under or over it, or it might pull you down because it’s a big one, pulling you around under the water until you feel as if you are about to lose your breath. Just in time, up you shoot for air, and getting that air will always happen. In fact, once, I was interviewing our former mayor, Richard Riordan, who lost two children, and he said, “Grief would come in waves. I learned not to fight it but to let it wash over and through me. I would be sitting in an important meeting with many executives, and the grief would just appear. I got to the point where I would just cry until it ended. I wasn’t afraid to cry and let it out.”
In many ways, grief has a life of its own. We want grief to work in a linear fashion, but it doesn’t work that way. If you look at the grief drawing, you will see one of my favorite depictions of what we want and what we get with grief. It’s important to remember that we can never say by looking at someone whether or not they are grieving. Also, grief changes over time, so how it manifests the first year and the coping mechanisms that help will most likely change in the second year.”
THE DEPARTMENT GIVES US THREE DAYS TO GRIEVE A LOVED ONE. DOES THAT MEAN I SHOULD BE OVER IT THAT QUICKLY?
The idea of paid or unpaid bereavement days is to give the family members and friends some time to gather and plan all that is needed for the service. The idea is not that one should be over one’s grief in three days so they can return to work. For many, though, this is simply not enough time, and I encourage people to take bereavement time from accrued vacation if possible. There is a time when returning to work is not only necessary but, oftentimes, a great distraction for people who regularly tell me that going back to work was the best thing they could have done, even though they might have gone back kicking the entire way.
A very important point about grief is that one never gets “over” losing someone they love. It’s not like having the flu or a cold, where every day, a person gets a little better than the day before until the flu is completely gone. Grief is a normal and natural response to the death of someone significant who has died.
WHAT SERVICES DOES GRIEFHAVEN OFFER LASD EMPLOYEES?
• Packets of information specifically put together for a person’s loss
• Private/closed support groups, either in person or via Zoom
• Workshops for teams on coping mechanisms, the grieving brain, and the truth about grief
• Team group support meetings for individual teams
While we all are doing the best we can, knowing that a resource like griefHaven is available to help us navigate the loss of a loved one is priceless. If you think you need a little help with processing your grief, please contact Psychological Services Bureau at (213) 738-3500 to schedule a confidential individual counseling appointment, link up with a peer support member or connect with a chaplain. Stay tuned for next month’s “From the Docs” article to hear more from Susan and griefHaven.