Handle with Care: Empathy at Work

Adopting a child can be a long process, full of waiting and hoping and so much paperwork. Friends, family, and coworkers can be unaware of the stress and high emotion involved. Beth and Andy Long share the story of bringing Drew from the forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo to Bloomington, Indiana and the hardest six months of their lives. In that story, they reflect on how people supported them well, the dangers of work/home compartmentalization, and the bravery it takes to create change in a workplace culture.

Opening Quote:

[00:17:54.430] - Beth Long

It was extremely chaotic. You've got this little boy, Drew, who's two and a half at this point, who we've we've been preparing for, you know, we've got a room for him. We've been talking about him but really to him we're strangers.

Intro

Today, we talk about adoption. But the conversation is much broader than adoption, it ranges from the forests of the Congo to the NICU to a car dealership in southern Indiana. Along the way, we will talk about how the stress of work impacts home, learning to say yes to offers of help, and the bravery that it takes to create change in a workplace culture.

My guests are Beth and Andy Long, two people that I have had the pleasure of calling friends for more than half of my life.

[00:00:00.610] - Andy Long

So should we introduce ourselves? What's our format? I'm Andy Long

[00:00:01.910] - Beth Long

I'm Beth Long.

[00:00:08.790] - Liesel Mertes

Tell us a little bit about yourselves. Andy, what do you do?

[00:00:12.890] - Andy Long

So I grew up in Indianapolis and then, after college moved down to Bloomington to join my family's business which is automotive retail we own several dealerships in Bloomington Ind.. So that's what brought us down here

[00:00:26.560] - Liesel Mertes

Beth, a little bit about you.

[00:00:28.900] - Beth Long

Well I stay home with our four kids. They're 9 7 5 and 3 at this point and, at this point, I've been in Bloomington eleven years.

Beth and Andy met in the halls of Heritage Christian High School, where Beth was my teammate on the soccer team and Andy was my co-lawyer on the mock trial team.

[00:00:51.880] - Andy Long

I tried to date her in high school, but she was having none of that. I didn't drive a hard top Jeep Wrangler that wasn't several years older than her. So I did make the cut.

[00:01:05.380] - Beth Long

Yeah. No, what he means by trying to date me was he was trying to date everybody else.

Musical interlude

Beth always knew that she wanted to adopt.

[00:01:42.010] - Beth Long

we had always talked about adoption. It was something I knew before we even got married that I had kind of put on Andy's radar.

Beth and Andy had two biological children, daughters that had come after complicated pregnancies. They were advised to take some time before conceiving again, and this was when they embarked on the adoption journey.

[00:02:26] - Beth Long

And so, that's when we drove in to the world of international adoption which is what was really on our radar at the time. And we're not really like super organized chart people but we made this big chart of all the countries in the world that you can adopt from and just sort of the different regulations there were because they're all different in terms of family size and length of stay in country and age of child you can adopt. And so we just made our chart and from there sort of narrowed down to the Democratic Republic of Congo which is where our son Drew is from.

One of the reasons that Andy and Beth chose the DRC was because it only required a ten day stay in country

[00:03:44] - Andy Long

I get two weeks off a year and so that ruled out countries that require like 30 days in country or multiple visits that would be a couple of weeks apiece. So we had ruled those out. So Congo fit with our with my work schedule being off two weeks. So a 10 day stay in country was what they what the program called for. So that fit. And then they had estimated a timeframe from the inception of the program to bringing your child home and about nine months.

About nine months, at least that was the hope. But things did not go as planned

Music here

[00:04:46.030] - Beth Long

Well we were matched with Drew, our son, when he was nine days old and that was in August of 2013. And in September of 2013, the country essentially shut down adoptions. There were the adoptions were still proceeding but they were not allowing adopted children to leave once their process was complete. They said you cannot have an exit letter. And they had done some suspensions like this before and they didn't last very long. They said initially it would last up to a year and everybody thought, oh it'll be a month maybe two months...Given the history, it ended up lasting about two and a half years.

[00:05:24.580] - Liesel Mertes

Wow. So two and a half years. What, what did that look like relationally for you guys to navigate that journey? I assume that it wasn't just calm and, OK, this is another delay, this is the next thing. How is it feeling to you in real time?

[00:06:12] - Andy Long

We were relatively new to the program and some of the people that had been either, they had adopted previously from the DRC or they had friends or family that had, they had seen some of these suspensions kind of come and go. And so they gave us the expectation of, oh it'll be a few months or maybe a year. So then as it exceeded those timeframes. I think everybody that was in the program we're really confused and nervous about, well maybe this is going to be a permanent suspension of the adoption program or maybe our son will never come home and we certainly had those thoughts as well. There was no timeframe given. So you know after a year or two we thought, you know maybe, maybe that Drew will never come home. Maybe this is just not going to happen.

Musical transition here

[00:06:57.280]

We didn't really know what to do. There wasn't anything we could do on our end in order to speed the process up or to do that. So there was a lot of confusion. I think Beth and I were on the same page which brought us closer together, probably because it kind of felt like us versus them or us versus the world.

[00:07:16.720] - Liesel Mertes

Was there a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy?

[00:07:18.220] - Beth Long

Oh, absolutely. Oh yeah so much.

[00:07:22.390] - Liesel Mertes

And how much time did that take up for you and a given week or month because I picture there's a cost of just your bandwidth of having to do all of this.

[00:07:32.740] - Beth Long

Yes so I mean every day, and I was sort of reporting back to Andy, but every day I'm online looking at the rumors talking about the chatter of what's going to happen. I heard this, you know the senator said this, I heard this from DRC. You know, everybody was just kind of putting the information together because like Andy said we really had no idea, we're going on rumors and tweets

[00:07:57.850] - Andy Long

There are different Facebook groups and different message boards that we were a part of that we're trying to get information out. There was a big push to contact your representatives in Congress and let them know, hey this is what's happening over there. We need governmental support to put pressure on the Congolese government to get these kids home.

[00:08:18.460] - Liesel Mertes

Did you have much... So you're here in southern Indiana. Did you have much in the way of real time community of people who understood what you're going through? Because I imagine that this potentially could feel like very isolating and particular sort of experience as you're dropping your kids off at the local school and going grocery shopping at Kroger and checking about the geopolitical functions of the government in Congo.

[00:08:46.960] - Beth Long

Yes. So we had a lot of online support as any sort of Facebook groups but I think we had wonderful people in person but you know how it's difficult to follow another person's health journey or you know their court dates. It's hard to keep all that straight. I'm using a whole different language when I'm talking about this adoption world. And so there were definitely times when people were kind of like, oh you're you're still doing that you're still trying to bring that kid home? Yes this is my daily reality. I'm daily still working on this every day is our son and every day we're thinking about it talking about it trying to figure out how I can make this happen.

[00:09:22.870] - Andy Long

I think that even for close friends and family, after after it went past two years of this indefinite, you know like we're going to try to bring Drew home one day, I think even our friends and family were a little skeptical, maybe nervous for us that it wasn't going to happen and they didn't really know how to feel about that. They didn't, they were nervous that we were going to be really hurt and obviously just crushed if this adoption failed and we weren't able to bring Drew home. I think that they processed that and that manifested itself in the way that they dealt with us and the way that they dealt with our adoption. Maybe it's kind of like a hands off or arm's length that you didn't want to become too invested because they were nervous for us and maybe nervous for their own emotions and that felt isolating or that felt like they weren't invested like we were invested or they weren't sure they were skeptical.

Musical interlude

10:40, Andy

They were really nervous. And so I felt like they maybe moved to, maybe be wary of the way that they approached it. They kind of didn't want to talk about it or ignored it. In some ways, because it felt like they were really nervous for us and we interpreted that as, they didn't care as much or they were skeptical, which I think they had every right to be because it was an indefinite suspension. They didn't know what was going on, neither did we. But, it felt hurtful in the moment.

Musical interlude

[00:11:23.370] - Andy Long

They had a friend that had tried to adopt from the Soviet Union or a country. I think in the early 90s or the mid 90s and they were close friends with my parents and they had pictures of this little girl and they had spent a lot of money and they had invested over I think over a couple of years and trying to bring her home. And then, at the end of the process, the adoption was scuttled. They didn't have any answers. There was you know, accusations of fraud and maybe that there was never a girl that they were going to adopt. And the family that they were friends with were devastated. And I think that that informed their opinion and they saw maybe that coming back around and they were nervous for us that we were being defrauded or that there was a scheme to bilk us for money and that Drew was never going to come home, which were legitimate concerns because there was no timeframe and very little information. But, that felt really hurtful, because it felt like they were skeptical of the process and they weren't rooting for us to bring Drew home but were maybe rooting for us to have our guard up.

[00:12:32.720] - Liesel Mertes

Do you feel like, by extension, there was any sort of implication of: you're being foolish in this, you're being taken or had ,that felt offensive in its own way?

[00:12:46.330] - Beth Long

Yeah.

[00:12:46.730] - Andy Long

We are both shaking hands before we answered yes. I don't think it was intentional in their mind to make us feel that way.

Musical Interlude

[00:13:24.750] - Beth Long

And I think, just in general just in, sort of in the way that when you're pregnant, like that baby isn't as real to everybody else as it is to you. That's sort of how I felt with Drew. You know, I knew this child. He was ours. I had the pictures. I was invested and it wasn't real to anybody else. They couldn't see him. You know they weren't, they weren't experiencing him and so, I think that was the hard part for me just in real life. Friends seeing, you know I think sometimes they felt so worried for me and concerned that I was really invested in this thing that really wasn't going to happen, maybe.

Andy also felt missed in his workplace

[00:14:49] - Andy Long

Well, I think the people knew; I had been very open that we were adopting. I've got pictures of Drew. This is my son. So I think they're aware of that, but I don't know if they were super supportive. Well, our workplace is very much like you try to leave your problems at the door, you come in when you're in the office you're focused on work. It's not really a community where we would share problems from home or family life, But there was a moment, towards the very end of the process when Drew was coming home and was literally flying home that there was a major hang up and a copy of the visa wasn't the right one and there was a big problem where they were stopped on literally on the way to the airport. He was stopped and detained with his escort. And I remember getting that phone call at work and I literally just took the phone callm found out that that was happening and just left the office and went home. I don't think that I told anyone that I was going they probably thought that there had been a big emergency, which there had been, but that was the one time maybe where I have a really vivid memory of just having to leave work and it was that environment wasn't gonna be suitable for handling or dealing or processing what was happening with our adoption.

Although there was a disconnect with family, friends, and work, there was still a community of people that supported Beth and Andy.

[00:16:13] - Liesel Mertes

Where were the places that you were finding people that came alongside you and supported you well and what did that look like?

[00:16:20.850] - Beth Long

I would say mostly our family and our church here in Bloomington

[00:16:25.110] - Andy Long

Our small group a church was extremely supportive throughout the entire process.

[00:16:29.190] - Liesel Mertes

What were some of the best, tangible things that they along this two year journey with you?

[00:16:36.650] - Beth Long

Well, I would say, to back it up just a little bit. So Drew did come home as we said in February of 2016 but in December of 2015 we had a baby. So that's a whole other part of this because it led to sort of a six month period for us that was probably the most difficult of our lives. So we had Luke the baby as he will forever be known

[00:17:01.610] - Liesel Mertes

As babies are.

[00:17:04.370] - Beth Long

So he was born a month early in here in Bloomington and he spent ten days in the NICU and, unfortunately, I had the same crazy delivery but but worse with him. So he had to spend some extra time sort of getting used to life on the outside and and then Drew came home February. And then Luke, in April, began having seizures. And so, we took an emergency trip up to Riley and a second trip up to Riley the following week.

[00:17:36.680] - Liesel Mertes

And Riley is in Indianapolis, which is about an hour and a half drive.

[00:17:42.470] - Beth Long

So that was December to May was really taken up with, I mean it just felt like to us, absolutely more than we could handle.

[00:17:52.390] - Liesel Mertes

It sounds so chaotic.

[00:17:54.430] - Beth Long

It was extremely chaotic. You've got this little boy, Drew, who's two and a half at this point, who we've we've been preparing for, you know, we've got a room for him. We've been talking about him but really to him we're strangers. We'd been to visit him for a week. But, the language, the food, the clothes that everything every place that he went, every person he saw was new to him. And so you can imagine, that that was an extremely difficult transition for him. And then we had this baby who had these health problems that of course we were not anticipating. So this was a really difficult time for us. And we just we feel so thankful to the people that are in our life that were really there for us. I mean we had friends that were stopping by too because Andy was still working very long hours at this time too.

[00:18:45.550]

And I had a friend that came over many nights during bedtime just to help me with bedtime because I've got now four kids to put to bed. I have friends that would say hey, I'm running to the grocery store. What can I get you today? We had so many people bring its meals. People take our older girls, you know for a playdate, so I could just handle the boys.

[00:19:06.100] - Andy Long

My parents came down, your parents came down to watch the kids and help you around the house.

[00:19:11.360] - Liesel Mertes

Because Andy, you're still operating on, I have 14 days to use over this year. Did you, did that feel like a pressing concern all through this of I can't be present because I have...

[00:19:25.470] - Andy Long

Yeah, that was, that was it I'm not proud of the way that I handled that but, I was so ingrained in the culture of my particular workplace which was you don't miss work, that is unacceptable. As a leader, as a manager, you're gonna be at work no matter what. And I had had over 10 years of being in that environment and it seemed so natural and I had blinders on to how unreasonable that would be. But I I had taken time off for Luke's birth and I had been to the hospital and I would go my lunch break to the NICU but I didn't feel like I had enough time or I had already taken off too much time. So, I had my mom pick up Beth from the NICU when they were released to bring them home. So, I didn't even go and pick up my own child when he was released from the NICU to bring him home for the first time because I felt like I didn't have enough time in my day right or I taking off too much time for this for the birth and that that kind of came around when Drew came home I took off one day but then after that worked my normal schedule, which was really close to 8 to 8. So, I was gone all day throughout the week and then Saturdays.

[00:20:43.170] - Liesel Mertes

That sounds exhausting for both of you on a number of levels when you talk about that culture, Andy, so you're going to the NICU on your lunch break and then coming back and needing convince someone that this is the car for them to buy. Was it difficult for you to re-engage with work? What did you find your capacity for coping or compartmentalization needed to become in the workplace?

[00:21:11.430] - Andy Long

You know, looking back, I'm not sure how I did that or if I did a very good job. I probably suffered at work and wasn't aware of how distracted that I was. It felt like, maybe I probably was trying to do my best but I would imagine if I look back now was probably very distracted and was underperforming. I think the part that suffered the most was home life because it's more difficult to turn off work and being on stage and you know trying to be pleasant, providing great customer service acting like everything is fine, leaving your problems at the door. I think I became very good at turning that off and when I was at work focusing on work, so that it became more difficult to engage when I came home to pick that back up and then engage with the problems and the difficulties that we had which became a major stress point for Beth and I. Probably the hardest thing that we've been through was my inability to say no to work or to change what I was doing there, which lasted for months and months probably six months. Throughout that time when we had both boys home and Luke was diagnosed as epileptic and we just had tons of reasons to not be at work as much.

[00:22:26.960]

But I wasn't able to see it that way. And didn't turn that off and was really embarrassed and ashamed of how I dealt with that. Looking back. But in the moment, it felt like that was just the reasonable way that you would handle life's problems would be to check them at the door go to work act like it was normal leave work come home and try to re-engage.

[00:22:50.970] - Liesel Mertes

Beth what does it feel like even as you listen to that and reflect on that season?

[00:22:57.470] - Beth Long

Like Andy said, he was so entrenched in, this is just the way we do it. It's not like anyone at work was saying, you better get back here, you know. That was just the expectation. Sort of an unstated expectation but he had been in it for so long that he didn't see what it was doing to our family life as well. And, honestly, during that time I mean I was barely hanging on. I felt like I was barely treading water and I really needed him and he wasn't there. And so thinking back on that time I just it brings back a lot of emotions for me and I'm just trying to navigate all of that and also to help him see, hey this is not the right path for us.

[00:23:42.200]

Something needs to change about your work life and that's a hard conversation to have. For me it's a family business. It's work that he loves. He loves working for his grandfather. So those are really difficult conversations to have. He wants to be the one who's working the hardest. He wants to be there and I really respect that about him, he's a hard worker. But there are also times in life when that cannot be the focus.

[00:24:08.720] - Andy Long

We didn't have real clear policies at work about, hey if you have a baby or if your family has a baby, this is what's normal to take off or these many days or this doesn't count against your vacation time or if you've got a medical emergency you know take this amount of time away from the office. We didn't have any of those policies really, really clearly stated at all and so then it was kind of, we were jumbling through it together where there was a lot of weird expectations on my side and I'm sure my co-workers at work needed me there and so they didn't really know how to process that or, you know, they, I'm sure would have liked to have me there more but they also understood it was inappropriate to ask me to come home or to skip some of that family time, so that I made it more difficult that we didn't have any clear policies on how much time I should take or what the procedure was for something like that like a medical emergency or traumatic birth.

[00:25:11.440] - Liesel Mertes

Do you think back oh let's update the audience though. How is the Luke doing?

[00:25:16.800] - Beth Long

He's doing very well. So, it took a while to find the right medication for him that would control his seizures. And then once they were controlled, he was on the medication for about two years without any repeat seizures. And so we did another EEG last summer and he was able to wean off the medicine. So he's been doing very well.

[00:25:39.850] - Liesel Mertes

And Drew's here, he is going to be starting kindergarten not next year but the year...

[00:25:44.420] - Beth Long

No, this year. So crazy. So yeah he's ready. He's very excited.

[00:25:51.310] - Liesel Mertes

And Andy and Beth, you guys made some purposeful shifts in some of your work life structuring in the aftermath of this. What decisions did you make for your life balance moving forward based on some of what you experienced?

[00:26:07.350] - Beth Long

Well I think after the NICU situation and having his mom bring me home and then only taking a day off when Drew came home those two situations and the chaos that was our life at that time, for me was the final straw. Really

Weave some music through the drama of the following section…

[00:26:27.160] - Andy Long

The breaking point

[00:26:28.130] - Beth Long

Yeah, breaking point, I just said I can't I can't keep up with this anymore. And so when, when we were Riley for the seizures, Andy was there for all of that, he was able to take time off and I think everybody at work was really understanding about it. It was just your own I think expectations to it, you you felt really bad because the nature of his position is that he is the one who does that work. You know it's there isn't it.

[00:26:55.780] - Andy Long

We a very lean operation. So there wasn't a second person or third person who did my role. I was the president who was in charge of those dealership roles and those tasks. So, if I wasn't there there, I was nervous that those were going to get done and the dealership was going to suffer substantially because we don't have someone else who backed up my role

[00:27:18.730] - Beth Long

But, that's when we did make some major changes.

[00:27:22.860] - Andy Long

Yeah it wasn't that Beth had not brought up the work life or work family life balance before, but she said it was a lot more urgency in, I think that the combination of events finally got through to me and I realized, man this is crazy. I'm putting work way before my family. I need to make some big changes. And we did after that. It took about a year to enact all the changes. But there is a shift at work. I requested to be moved from what I was doing to another role, which required some really difficult conversations over a period of about six months with my grandfather, who's the owner of the dealership, and we had some conversations about what that would look like and how that's very different than the way he came up in the business, which was a lot more old school of, you work every hour that the dealership is open. You're at the at the bridge of the ship. You're commanding it. You've got to be there every minute every day. And what that would look like maybe for my schedule, which was going to be more family focused and maybe more new school and millennial where I'm placing a greater, a greater value on being with my family and having time away from the dealership, which was some pretty new territory for him but we were able to work it out.

[00:28:41.500] - Beth Long

Yeah. It's a difficult conversation as you can imagine to have with your grandfather, because I think it feels a bit to him like an indictment of the way he raised his family. And so, he had five children and they are greatly loved and he showed his love by working super hard for them and providing for them. And so, when Andy says I want to do it this way it feels a bit like, hey you did it the wrong way. And that's a really difficult conversation to have with your grandfather.

[00:29:06.940] - Liesel Mertes

The complications of what is a culture shift in a lot of ways, and even a translation of a different set of values coming in and being, still furthering the mission of the company, but not the way things have been done before. This been a really helpful conversation on so many levels, as you think back and have snapshot in your mind of yourselves as you're going through that super intense season, what words would you offer back to that to that version of Andy or Beth from where you are now?

[00:29:47.410] - Andy Long

Well, hindsight is 20 20. And as I look back at the younger Andy of those years he was so wrapped up in the culture of the business that he was in. He was really blinded to the effects that it was having on his family and the tremendous amount of stress it was putting on Beth and his kids. And it seems crazy now that I would have thought, yeah it's totally normal, I should have my Mom pick up my wife and newborn baby from the NICU and bring him home. In the moment, that felt like the appropriate thing to do for work. So, sagely old Andy would tell that young guy,hey there is, that's crazy and you need to try and seek that balance way before you get to a point where you're at your wits end and you're really just treading water and trying to make it through each day. We should have addressed those concerns years previously and tried to figure out, hey what's a, how can we slide gradually into a different schedule or how can we have some backup at work that or some overlapping roles that would allow not just me but other managers to take more time off if something like this happens or to to enjoy a better work life balance? We should have addressed those years ago not just when a crisis comes.

[00:31:04.150] - Beth Long

Yeah, and I would say, for me, this is something I really had to become more comfortable with. But, in the beginning, did not know what to do when people said, let me know how I can help. You know, alright, let me let me...even when they were specific about it, let me take your kids or you know, in the beginning I felt very uncomfortable taking that kind of help. But pretty quickly realized like nope, I just need to say yes you could take my girls or you could come over you know whatever those things were that were going help, I had to get real about that because I I couldn't do it. I really needed that backup.

[00:31:39.750] - Andy Long

Beth is really independent. And I do remember us having that conversation about, it was it was unnatural and a little bit against your personality to accept help especially from strangers or people that we didn't know really well. It was different when your best friends like, let me take your girls. But when someone from church was like hey let me bring you a meal or can I bring you some groceries. That felt maybe uncomfortable at the beginning, especially because Beth is very independent, so that was a big change, but it was a good change once we said hey these people are wanting to engage with us wanting to help. This is the way that they're going to show us love. We need to be way more accepting of it. That was huge.

[00:32:19.570] - Beth Long

And I think, also, one thing I wish that I would have done is just feel more comfortable to be, to tell people, this is how I'm struggling I feel, I actually later in the year started extreme problems sleeping. I started having chest pains and I felt like I was going crazy, which I think if I had just talked to people they would say know that, you're experiencing anxiety and you probably should be based on your life circumstances right now. It took me slowly telling people small parts of that to put that all together, but I wish that I would have been braver with those emotions to say, hey here's what I'm experiencing. What do I do with this? Or even start, as I ended up seeing a counselor starting in the fall. And I wish I would have started much earlier. So that's something I would have told myself like: hey look at your life right now. In fact I remember once in that time in that six month timeframe someone gave me a picture that said something about: in mountains high and valleys low, ttill I am with you. And I was like, why did they give me this? Which is like, I was so unaware of like how chaotic my own life was that I was like, Oh this is a valley low. You know, I didn't even, I wasn't aware enough to know that I needed help beyond groceries, that I needed to see a counselor that I needed to work through the aftermath of watching my son go through seizures that I needed...the traumatic birth, I needed to go through that. You know I need to talk to me about that. So that took me a long time to realize, hey I need to deal with this and my body betrayed me, because I thought I was doing so well. I thought I was holding it together so well. But then I was not sleeping. You know, I started sleeping as you're having chest pains and my body said, Look you're not handling this as well as you think you are

Musical Interlude

Here are three take-aways from my conversation with Andy and Beth

• What are the implicit demands that your company makes on employees? Have you stopped to wonder? If not, now is a good time to ask. Go ask a coworker or a direct report about how they think the company views time off. And, call this lesson 1, part b, do you have established policies around time off and leave? Andy and Beth were trailblazers in many ways, creating policies and precedent around NICU stays and adoption. If you don't have established policies, its time to get some things in writing. As you create these policies, ponder, what kind of a culture do you want to create?
• If you are going through the stress of an adoption or a prolonged hospital stay or any sort of substantial stress, coax yourself to be able to accept the help that is offered.Taking your other children to play, receiving a delivery of groceries, it is good to be able to accept the help that is offered.
• Beth talked about the world of adoption policy and news and updates that was "an entirely different language" than what was being spoken around her in southern Indiana.If you are part of a support system for someone that is going through an adoption process, take time to ask them about the policy and the Facebook groups. And then listen. Really listen. Andy and Beth spoke about how it was difficult for them to feel that some people close to them were not "in their corner" and rooting for the adoption to go forward, as you hear about difficulties or obstacles, before rushing to judgment and advice, instead consider offering a statement like, "I'm so sorry for that hassle! That sounds complicated and difficult; I imagine that you just want to be united with your son or daughter as soon as possible." This sort of statement conveys empathy without pronouncing judgment.

Outro

Injuries can leave employees sidelined and organizations flailing. As an employee recovers, is management demonstrating support and trust or neglect and suspicion? Liz Simpson shares the story of her laceration, the importance of communication and trustful gestures, and how NOT to deal with employees that are injured.

00:04 – Opening quote, Liz Simpson

Liz Simpson

You're at work more waking hours than you're at home. What are you going to do with the people that have been put there with you? What are you going to do with this? What are you going to make of it for people? Are you going to make people where they don't want to come in? I mean, I've had many days where I was, when I was, this kept going on, there were so many days and I was like, "Oh thank God, I cut my fingers! Now, I don't have to deal with them." And, that's crazy!

00:36 - Intro

I think he's been sick. She just seems sad all the time. I think something happened at home. What should we do?

You want to help someone when they're going through a hard time. But it can be difficult to know what to do or what to say. Hi, I'm Liesel Mertes and this is the Handle with Care podcast, where we talk about empathy at work.

On each episode. I welcome a guest that has lived through a disruptive life event. We cover topics from death to divorce to that scary diagnosis and in each story, we give you actionable tips on what you can do to show empathy and give support as a manager a co-worker or a friend.

01:26- Injury in the workplace

Liesel Mertes

Today we are talking about workplace injuries and the way we treat our co-workers when they don't seem to be pulling their weight my first introduction to workplace injuries was in the pages of Upton Sinclair's classic book, The Jungle. Perhaps you had to read it as required reading in high school as well. The Jungle is set on the fetid floor of the meatpacking industries of Chicago just around the turn of the 20th century. Workers died in alarming numbers while working on the slaughterhouse floor and Jurgas, the Lithuanian protagonist, finds himself thrown out on the street without a job after an injury. And the book continues to devolve from there.

Now, American workplaces have definitely improved from the days of The Jungle where you were thrown out after being injured but there's still ways that companies mishandle their employees.

02:29- Meet Liz Simpson

Liesel Mertes

Today we're talking with Liz Simpson about her injury in the workplace. Liz is a dentist here in Indianapolis.

We sat next to each other at a networking event about a month and a half ago and I was instantly drawn to her quick laugh if we were in high school. I wanted to share a locker with her or a lunch table. She's pretty quick with the story and there's something about her that puts you at ease. After graduating from college Liz worked as a bilingual aide in Indianapolis Public Schools and it was there that she decided to make a career shift

03:10- Why Liz became a dentist

Liz Simpson

A little kid came up to me, I'm pretty sure that's how a little kid came up to me and asked me like, "Who are you?" And they had these little silver teeth that I had never seen before. Yeah. And do you know, the more the school year went on and I would just see kids with these teeth. And finally one day I asked one of my co-workers like what's the deal with this. Yeah. She was like, "Sometimes their teeth get so rotten that they have to get these caps put on." And I found that the whole school year I would think about it a lot, and I had been premed and undergrad and wanted to be a doctor from the time I was three years old. So this wasn't completely out of the realm of what I thought I wanted to do.

And the final straw was that spring. So you know the school year starts in like August 20th. That would have been in 2003 and that spring. I think Miss America was on and I was watching and the next day I was at work and I was talking to my co-workers and we were talking about how they always have that platform and they're like I am a proud sponsor of whatever it is. And I told them, "Man, if I was on Miss America, my platform would be to go to, like, third world countries and like teach kids how to brush their teeth." And when I was driving home that day I was like if I want to teach people to take care of their teeth, maybe I want to be a dentist

04:37- A pivotal conversation

Liesel Mertes

But, at the time, Liz thought that dentistry looked easy and a little gross. However over the course of the year she kept returning to this desire to help kids take care of their teeth through being a dentist and an early conversation with her mom shaped just the sort of dentist she wanted to be.

04:59- A pivotal conversation continued

Liz Simpson

I took my mom out to lunch. I was like, "Well I think I want to be a dentist. I think when applied to dental school" and she said, famously, "Listen, people hate the dentist." And she went on this long tirade about how people don't like dentists about they don't like how the dentist makes you feel better if you are flossing enough. And she went on and on and on and then she stopped and went, "This is great!" And then she starts talking about how good it was and blah blah blah but that was my that was my introduction to telling somebody I want to be a dentist, is the first person I told, I got a negative answer right off the bat. And that was that lunch.

Liesel Mertes

You just said I shall not be.

Liz Simpson

I think I think my mom thinks I'm kidding. And I think patients think I'm kidding but I've told many many patients that when they're scared and I'm like listen this my own mother this is what she said to me when I told her that's what I wanna do. And I was like, I don't I don't take this lightly that people don't like it. So you know I think it I don't know what I would have been like if that hadn't been what somebody first said to me, you know, the person who I came from

06:11- The injury

Liesel Mertes

And it worked, she became that dentist. She loved her work and her patients loved her. And then this last December, her injury occurred.

Liz Simpson

I was washing dishes and I think I was sort of looking up at the TV and I picked up a glass and they didn't really look at it and I stuck my sponge in swoop swoop. And then my fingers felt like it was on fire and I took it out and I had sliced into my left index finger and I'm left handed. And I sort of rinsed it off to see like how deep down in there. It was just like him or was it it felt like it was burning like I had never felt anything burning like that before.

And I don't even think I looked at the glass that I might have looked and there was this huge gash in it that I just didn't see. And my a couple of my friends at the time lived in my apartment and so I called my friend and I was like I cut my finger like something's going on.

And she came over with a little bottle of Neosporin and I was like I don't think I'm going to help this.

07:20- The hospital visit

Liesel Mertes

Yes, this was a job that was much bigger than Neosporin and a Band-Aid. Liz rushed to the hospital where they took an x ray and had to give her numbing medicine. A lot of numbing medicine.

Liz Simpson

He was there, they took an x ray to make sure there was no glass and it got me numb. It took more anesthetic to get me now which I look back at now and I'm like That was sort of indicative that there was a problem and they put some stitches in it. And you know when, when you're a dentist or anything where you work with your hands you it occurs to you if something happens with my hands I won't be able to work and I don't really know that many dentists where something has happened where they haven't been able to work.

And so even you know sitting there in the E.R., before they discharged me and I was texting my mom and she told me to tell the doctors, like, make sure you tell him you're a dentist when he does those stitches and I'm like, OK thank you. And you know, they put the stitches in and I'm looking at it sort of like this is gonna be really uncomfortable. Not really thinking of any more implications than Oh man I'm going to take off a couple days.

08:33- It still hurts

Liesel Mertes

So she did take a couple of days and tried to go back the following week but there was a lingering numbness and this made it really difficult as she tried to handle her instruments.

Liz Simpson

You know we hold our instruments and I'm left handed. It's like everything's resting on this thing that I can't feel it's in someone its mouth. Yeah. And so I ended up being off of work.

08:58- The first day back

Liesel Mertes

Can I ask you a little bit about that day so you go back? And, you think, "I'm here, I'm ready. But, you're in the workplace and suddenly you're realizing, oh my gosh this is more than I bargained for

Liz Simpson

And that's why I was crying.

Liesel Mertes

Right. So you started crying.

Liz Simpson

Oh I was sobbing.

Liesel Mertes

Tell me more about how that played itself out. Did you go? Was it in between patients? Did you cry after? Was there anyone there for you?

Liz Simpson

So, at the time, we had dental students from the dental school that rotated through our clinic. So fortunately I was able to have one of them see the patient that we were working on when I realized how bad it was. And so I went out and told my manager who happened to be there that day. And I was just like this numb it hurts.

I was like I can't even because of where the Band-Aid was and I still had the stitches and at that point I couldn't even really get my gloves on correctly. And it's like OK well do I wear a bigger glove. Well then I can't hold things because the gloves. And it was just it was a big ordeal.

10:01- Feeling overwhelmed at the office

Liz Simpson

And I do tend to blow things out of proportion. So it's like I'm never going to work again. This is it for me. And you know I'm sure there's many people that in the same situation would be like, What if this is like this forever? Right?

And it's very hard to calm down and say OK this was six days ago.

Liesel Mertes

It's this cascade of emotion because you don't know. You've never, you've never lacerated your finger. You don't know

Liz Simpson

Right. And even if it had been my right hand you know the glove part would have been frustrating but just knowing like and even you know I like to paint I have other things I like to do and it's like everything I like to do. I need this to be working I need this to be 100 percent. So it was sort of this moment of what is my life gonna be like now. And so that was that was scary

10:55- Judgment of co-workers

Liesel Mertes

So, Liz is feeling all of these emotions at work wondering about implications for the rest of her life. And this is where I'd like to take a brief divergence from the flow of Liz's story. We'll get back to the tale of her recovery I promise. Because if you've been in an office setting before you know how these things go when a co-worker is out there the logistics of having to pick up their workload. But there's also the office talk the wondering, does this person really need to be off of work? Is it really as bad as they're saying it is? Now, maybe you've never had those kind of thoughts, but Liz certainly had.

Liz Simpson

I think a lot of times because I've been in positions at a job where somebody has something happen and you're like they're exaggerating and I'm sure I had a job a while ago where somebody and I mean I hate to say supposedly because I had something happen but slipped and fell on some ice and then was off for a really long time with back pain and I remember we all were sort of like yeah right whatever. And so then and you know I feel like I'm a Christian so I feel like God the Universe whoever you believe in puts you in these situations and for me I think it's really helped me be a lot more empathetic because I remember so many days thinking back to that co-worker and thinking, Man I feel so bad and I never I think, I probably reached out at some point but, do you know, for a very long time it was, yeah right. And now I was like, yeah, I'm in this position and

Liesel Mertes

You're worried, perhaps in that moment, based on your own experience, how are other people perceiving me? Which is its own thing to carry.

Liz Simpson

And its not like I had a big cast on I had some stitches and a Band-Aid and all you can do is tell people like this is how it feels

13:03- Still out of work

Liesel Mertes

And how it feels is not good. Liz tries to go back in January. It's still a no go: really painful. And at this point she's coordinating with doctors and specialists and physical therapists doing exercises to try to stimulate these nerves and injuries working to show the feeling of vibrating instruments and build up a tolerance. She wants to get back to work.

13:32- Back and forth with HR

Liz Simpson

Because they had had to cancel patients a lot because they'd be like OK I think I can work next week and leave them off then I'd be like What's the doctor. They wrote me out. So it was this thing where I was like I guess I could never I could never give an amount of time how long I would be off work which listen that's not fun for me. I don't like having to call my doctor every few days and I like having to drive out to get a doctor's note.

I don't like my body not being right like this is not some fun, Oh, hahaha like I'm still off work. I don't know. And I like my job. You know I like doing good work. I've had...and this isn't to brag, I've had so many patients that are like, "You're the best dentist I've ever had." Or I give them a shot and they're like, "I didn't feel that at all." This is what I wanted for myself. That's what my mom wanted for me and to be in this place, and listen I've been working, I've been working seven years total. I've been six years here do you know, I'm a young dentist, you know. This isn't the end of my career. It's not like, you know, let's just pack it up. This is the beginning. And to have this thing where it's like what is this going to be like, this is really, really hard.

14:50- Poor response from the boss

Liz SImpson

I can remember when it was but at one point I e-mailed I think my manager and my boss and I had been texting emailing all along the way like I've got another doctor's letter. And so, there was a point when I think they said, make sure you let so-and-so and H.R. know. And so I would email her and tell my manager well then my manager sort of stopped responding. So then it ended up just being me communicating with H.R. lady and at one point she said make sure you let my boss know.

And so I emailed him something, and, and this made me so mad because keep in mind this was now maybe February and the email was something like, "Oh thanks for letting me know. I was a physical therapist before I was a dentist. And so if you have any questions let me know I could be of some help" and bubble bubble blah and I almost lost my mind because it was like first of all I've been seeing my doctor a hand surgeon an occupational therapist who focuses on hand issues I've already been seeing her we've been doing things through my hand please like don't give me a break like and if you really felt concerned three months ago why didn't you say anything.

That was the I was the only time I heard from him when I texted my manager and my boss December 4th or 5th or whatever day was say, "Hey I'm headed to the E.R." when I text them when I got out and was like, "Hey I'm gonna be off tomorrow you know with my because I have to keep my bandage dry for 24 hours" and I think when he wrote back that day like thanks for letting us know. I didn't hear from him again until February. In that email, and this is a person who's a fellow dentist, this person is my colleague, even if we never work again we're colleagues we have the same degree...and the very idea that you couldn't ever reach out on your own, not responding to something that I've sent to explain, like, I'm still off with another doctor's letter...not that, but just as a fellow human being as my colleague to say, "Hope you're getting better...never."

It was something where...and I do need to add in that the company that I worked for they were sort of relocating where I was working and so they had given me my notice that I was going to be done with them from the day that they told me I was given six more months there. So, then it was very awkward to have like this last six months and then be off and part of it. But I don't know it was just it was always the shock..

18:02- They don't care

Liz Simpson

And then there's part of you that's sort of like, they don't care that I'm really scared. They don't care that I'm scared. They don't care that this, and I mean it wasn't, thank God, I've since gone back to work. This could have been career ending and they don't care.

Liesel Mertes

This is a theme that list comes back to you a few times in the interview. This lack of empathy and engagement: what would it cost her employer to have reached out? Why would you not extend yourself to someone who's in such obvious pain? Liz offered some of her thoughts on the matter.

18:46- How to show empathy

Liz Simpson

Be the bigger person. Just put that out in the atmosphere that you are concerned about this person and let the chips fall where they may. Do you know, if they're lying, something will happen and they may not even realize whatever, whatever happens, happens something will happen that they are paid back. But you will be rewarded too. Like what loss would it have been for my boss to be like, "Hey, man," like, months ago, not in response to an email that I've sent on your own, to just say, "Hey, hope you're getting better." What would that have cost him? You know?

Liesel Mertes

What I hear in what you're saying...even you said a few minutes ago: "I've never been a manager. I've never run a practice", but you do bring to it, right, you've been a human being for a couple of decades right? And even even on the playground you know, when you're young like my kids, they realize what it means when somebody's skins their knee to come over and say, "Are you okay? Can I get the teacher? And when there are all these levels of bureaucracy or process our own hang ups that we get we get distanced from that very human impulse to say, so somebody's skinned their knees or lacerated their finger. You should, you should pause, you should intersect.

20:19- The impact of empathy

Liz Simpson

And you know, I think it's really hard. In the couple of years that I worked this particular job, one of my co-workers was going through a divorce and you know we're not supposed to be our phones at work. And if she listens to this she knows I love her. She would be on the phone all the time, all the time, and there would be many days when I would sit there, but be just listening to her, waiting for her to get off the phone to set up so that we can get started on something.

And sometimes I would sit there and think, "What is this going to hurt next week, In the next, I mean maybe our schedule get behind. We'll fix it. But what is this going to hurt if for this season I've got to let her do this? What is it going to hurt?

21:26- You can't turn off your emotions

Liz SImpson

We have this idea that you should be able to go to work and turn that off. And I think it's very American that it's like you're going to go to work and you're going to shut that off and you're going to take care listen produced for the night you're going to be produced for the next eight hours. And then when you hit the door you can then turn those emotions back on. And that is not real life for many people. There are people that can do that. Good for them. I'm not one of them and there's people who they get to work when they can getting engrossed and everything in they are OK. But at some point we have to say there are people who are going to be at work and may need to step up and cry about something or are going to have to be on the phone dealing with stuff the work will get done. And I think if you've taken the care to choose good people you won't have people that will take advantage of that.

Liesel Mertes

And what it can do on the other side, also, you mentioned this friend going through a divorce, is that you're still good friends. When you extend care to someone at their moment of need...you know, how much different how would the story have felt different for you if you had been so supported along the way felt reached out to you felt cared for? There still might have been perhaps a work transition but you would be telling a different story.

22:57- A story of showing care

Liz Simpson

I wouldn't be here. And even you know I look at my co-worker that was divorced and just how I tried to support her in my own way. You know, not as her boss because that's not how it's set up when you work for a system. But I remember, I had a family friend who's a doctor and one time I was visiting her at work and one of her assistants made her coffee for her. And I was like my assistants have never made coffee for me.

And it was so funny because one day I had gone to like see a patient or something. I came back in my office and my coffee was sitting there and my assistant she had made it for me and I just remember thinking like, "oh, my god, I've reached that point" you know? And I think she knows I cared about her. So it wasn't this servant thing or as I call me Dr. Simpson's coffee or she's going to get mad at me. It was this thing where it was like she cares about me I care about her. Let me go ahead and just make this coffee really quick. And I just thought it was such a sweet sign that she saw that I cared about her and so she was willing to do that.

24:11- How does the story end?

Liesel Mertes

How does the story end? Well, Liz continues to improve and has returned to work, although not with this employer. After feeling mishandled and overlooked in her work, Liz decided to cut ties early with her workplace. Moving on to another dental practice and reflecting on her experience, Liz offers these closing thoughts.

24:35- Liz's reflections

Liz Simpson

You're at work more waking hours than you're at home. What are you going to do with the people that have been put there with you? What are you going to do with this? What are you going to make of it for people? Are you going to make people where they don't want to come in an hour? I mean I've had many days where I was when I, as this kept going on, there were so many days and I was like, "Oh thank god I cut my finger! No I don't have to deal with them!" That's crazy! It's like, is this what you want for your the people you've hired? Or do you want people who feel like this coworker was a godsend. You know, this person was there for me when I needed them.

25:23- Action #1, communication matters

Liesel Mertes

Here's some closing action points after our conversation. Number one: communication matters. As a manager or a co-worker or friend, your silence can speak volumes. Reach out with a call, a text, an email.

25:44- Action #2, be aware and sensitive to emotions

Liesel Mertes

Two: be sensitive to the emotions that an injured person might be feeling. Liz felt scared, worried about when and if she would ever recover. In showing that you're aware of their feelings, try offering a simple observation: "This seems really hard. I imagine that it might be scary or overwhelming or sad..." When you say something like that, it gives the person a chance to respond or not to respond and shows that you are considering their feelings in the midst of an injury.

26:24- Action #3, reflect on your assumptions about workplace injury

Liesel Mertes

Three: just a closing question. What assumptions do you make about people that are off work for injury? Do you believe them? Or, are you suddenly judging them? Wondering if they're making it up? Liz spoke about how hurtful these assumptions can be. Are you making them?

26:49- Outro

Thanks for listening to the Handle with Care podcast. Handle with Care is produced by Brian Wheat at Village Recording studios. Original music is composed by the talented musical pairing, Duo Futur.

If you like what you hear. Please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the show. It helps other people find us. Thanks for listening. This is a Liesel Mertes and I will be back next time as we build empathy at work.

How do you pick up the pieces after the unexpected death of a parent? Julie Kratz shares the powerful story of Nancy, a much-loved mother. Julie also speaks about the timely, impactful encouragement of her manager, the pain of the holidays, and how to connect to the memory of someone who is absent but not lost.

A cancer diagnosis is scary and totalizing. Hospital visits, financial stress, and lingering uncertainty affect the entire family unit. Brad Grammer shares about learning to cry, stupid stuff people say, and the importance of counseling. Along the way, lessons emerge on how to support families well as they grapple with cancer.

00:04- Opening quote by Brad Grammer

Brad Grammer

Spend more time just asking questions and listening just to find out what that person really would be encouraged and benefited by. Maybe they don't get encouraged at all by giving advice about how to deal with your cancer. They just want you to listen and have somebody to cry with, you know.

00:24- Intro

I think he's been sick. She just seems sad all the time. I think something happened at home. What should we do?

You want to help someone when they're going through a hard time. But it can be difficult to know what to do or what to say. Hi, I'm Liesel Mertes and this is the Handle with Care podcast, where we talk about empathy at work.

On each episode. I welcome a guest that has lived through a disruptive life event. We cover topics from death to divorce to that scary diagnosis and in each story, we give you actionable tips on what you can do to show empathy and give support as a manager a co-worker or a friend.

1. Thanks.

01:18– Meet Brad Grammer

Liesel Mertes

Today's guest is Brad Grammer. Brad is an old friend of our family and he's been around at some really important moments. For example, when Moses, my youngest son, was preparing for his first open heart surgery, Brad was sitting in the waiting room with us. Also, as we prepared for Moses' open heart surgery, we had this event called Mohawks with Moses where we gave Mo a mohawk and there were a lot of young boys like 4 and 6 year olds that joined in. And Brad was one of the few adults that actually opted, in a show of solidarity, to get a mohawk as well.

Brad himself is no stranger to grief. And today he's speaking about his wife Laura and her journey with an aggressive form of leukemia. But first, before we dive into our conversation, let me offer a little bit of background. As I mentioned, Brad is married to Laura and he is the father of two grown sons. Brad and Laura love adventurous foods.

Brad Grammer

Something told us about a Mexican restaurant that serves a big huge meat platter for like 30 bucks and you could easily feed a family of five or six just from that one plate.

Liesel Mertes

They love travel and watching sports.

Brad Grammer

And sometimes we just sit and relax and don't do anything watch sports. My wife's a big sports fan. So is she. Oh yes yes. For football's special teams local and national international. We're talking about soccer.

Liesel Mertes

She's even watching cricket.

Brad Grammer

Yeah exactly. Yes. Yes.

Liesel Mertes

Brad also loves taking long evening walks. These evening walks are helpful to decompress because of Brad's role as a social worker, which can take a particular toll.

03:09- Life as a social worker

Brad Grammer

For the past two years, I've been a foster care case manager and my job is the foster children are my clients. So my job is to see them each week, engage with them, identify what are the kind of, understand that their backgrounds and what their traumas are. And we've had some training in things like fair play and trust based relational interventions so we like practice these playful activities and engagement with them to help them learn how to develop trust with an adult after they've gone through their own traumas their own betrayal.

03:45- A litany of hard things

Liesel Mertes

While Brad is going to be speaking primarily about his wife, Laura's, cancer diagnosis, her cancer is just one part of a decade of disruption.

Brad Grammer

It probably began about 11 years ago with my wife getting was diagnosed with leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is a bad form of leukemia you get as an adult. And that set off a whole year of treatments. That was intense and very difficult. It's a very difficult cancer to fight and deal with and many people die not because of the leukemia itself but because of the treatment plan the treatment plan is so harsh and intense that it can damage so many things like different organs that all of a sudden give out.

And so there's that in and of itself is just kind of a crazy year of all kinds of things that happen. And that was followed by the death of both of my parents, the loss of relationship with my younger brother the loss of my job. Individuals who we had committed to be in a relationship for life, you know, working together on our lives together and experiencing betrayal with them and losing relationships with several people that I thought we were gonna be friends forever. And I lived in a very urban environment where lots of things happened.

So I'm experiencing regular traumas of, you know, just having an 18 year old shot and killed in front of my house and having my own friend, a pastor friend, shot and killed in his church...seeing his blood and his flesh all over the steps of his church and trying to help his church walk through the grieving process of that. Having people in my own congregation when I was a pastor, people that I loved, commit suicide or die from some other kind of some kind of addictive behavior or trauma in their life. So this is just an ongoing thing that happened for ten eleven years and things still happen to this day.

But it's just there doesn't seem to be as intense as during those 10-11 years where it just seemed like that it was one month to the next month to the next month. Something was happening every month that was just all these different tragedies and traumas and feeling completely unprepared initially facing these things. How do I deal with this? What, how do I survive? At that point, you're just talking survival you're not even talking about dealing with it well. You're just like, how do I even survive? How do I even know that I'm going to be able to get up the next day and still breathe going through all of this?

That was it was quite overwhelming. And and then kind of looking back on those years, be able to see how how do you not only survive it but then how do you process it in a way that that you're not just a dysfunctional adult, now you can't do anything and can't function at all because there is definitely period of time where I thought I wasn't gonna be able to function anymore as an adult and would I be able to keep a job, would I be able to stay in relationship with anybody? Because I just wasn't handling that trauma well and figuring out how to be come healthy and how to heal from those things was a very lengthy process.

07:11– The diagnosis of Laura's cancer

Liesel Mertes

There's so many pieces of that story that I want to touch on. Let's...let's begin: you commented on those early stages of trying to find any sort of equilibrium, the shock, the sense of that. Which brings us to where we began in 2007. What was your life stage with Laura and what did it look like in those first couple of months of reckoning with the news of this very aggressive cancer and how that was affecting your life roles and your position? Tell us a little bit of that.

Brad Grammer

Yeah my wife at that time was working in a school; she was dean of the school she was working in and I was a pastor of a small Sunday evening congregation at that time and we had two young boys: ten and eleven years old. And so here we are really liking our roles, enjoying our jobs and, and all of a sudden get slammed with this news. My wife had become very ill in October; we thought she was just having like flu symptoms and would go to the emergency room because she was just really in this intense pain. And then they kind of misdiagnosed her as maybe having rheumatoid arthritis and sent her home but after she went to her doctor about a week or two later and got blood tests, they found that she had leukemia.

08:33- Immediate hospitalization

Brad Grammer

I think part of the shock of that is you don't get any time to think about it. Within two hours of being told we were in the hospital, you started treatment in the hospital. They told her she'd be there for 30 days that she wouldn't be able to work for a year. And me being the person who runs the finances of the home, I'm thinking I'm gonna have to sell my house because she made two thirds of the income. And we kind of live we need her income to be able to survive.

So we're gonna have to sell the house. So for the first couple weeks I think she was in shock, just being jarred with this news and having to be thrown into treatment immediately because if she didn't receive treatment immediately she could die within a week or two. So it was like, it had to be quick. It had to start right away. And for me I'd have to go home and cry myself to sleep for a couple weeks. Fortunately I was somebody who already understood the value of having a therapist in your life, somebody that you can trust to go to and talk. And so I hadn't been to him in a while so I'm like well this is the time to go. So I went to him.

09:37- The importance of counseling

Brad Grammer

It's time to back on the couch exactly because I learned, as an adult, an adult skill and many adults haven't learned this. But when you hit an area or a season of time that you don't know what to do, you ask for help just like what we teach our kids. If you don't know how to do this one task, then ask the adult to help you. Well, that's what we do as adults. Ideally, we should be asking for help when we're hitting a difficult season of life. So that's what I did.

10:06- Be the hope

Brad Grammer

I went to him and and he asked me why I was cried myself to sleep at night and I was thinking about her dying, my wife, and how my kids are going to be affected. And so he said, "Well do you want her to die?" "No!" I was offended that you asked that. Please clarify. "Well, you know Brad, she's alive today and you have her today so each day you can just take one day at a time and face the day and know that as long as she is alive, there is hope and you keep engaging and you never have to tell your boys about the possibility of dying even though she was getting a 20 percent chance to live."

We just don't share that information with them; it's too much for kids to handle. It's hard enough for me as an adult to handle that. So, I took his advice. It was invaluable advice just to, because I didn't realize, I think...I don't know if it's an American way of living, but I didn't realize how much I'm living in the future before it comes. I was thinking, planning, what's coming next. And that experience forced me to face the moment, live in the moment today. And that helped me to be the hope that my wife needed when she was overwhelmed and shocked by all this in this treatment because her body's being thrown into this chaos as well as just emotionally dealing with like, "Am I gonna live or die?"

In my response I'm not saying that I did it all well. You know, you make a lot of mistakes when you're going through it, especially because I, like most adults, are unprepared for when things like this happen. And so we're kind of learning as you go along. So I learned that it was important that I be the hope when she felt despairing and to always believe that she was going to live unless there was absolutely no evidence to show that she was going to live. That I needed to be the one to keep hoping and that until her last breath went away, I was not going to believe that she was going to die.

And that's what my counselor encouraged me, like you don't need to think about her dying. It's like, if it happens, then you can deal with it. But until then, you don't have to be thinking about that and all your focus is: she's alive today. How can I be there with her present today? If I was thinking about the future, that would weigh my heart down so much, it would it would prevent me from hearing her from seeing her, from knowing what does she need each day as she was going through this process.

I think sometimes I can be so hopeful that I wasn't able to like just sit and grieve with her about what was happening. And I think that's sometimes why I've missed it with her, as just being attentive to her. I'm just feeling sorrow, feeling pain, comforting her with this hugs and then just being with her. Sometimes, I was so, I was on so much adrenaline trying to attend to the needs of my job, my kids and her and trying to balance all this out but sometimes I feel like I did neglect what she was feeling and just trying to pay attention to that.

So I vacillated between being good at being present and hopeful and encouraging and then missing her sometimes because I was too busy trying to keep it all together.

13:30– Feeling hopeless and what to do about it

Liesel Mertes

Where did you feel hopeless? And what actually spoke into those feelings as you walked with that?

Brad Grammer

I think that, for me, the hopelessness was that I, I don't think I can get through this and I don't have what it takes. And how, how am I going to recover from this? Whether it's even after my wife had this treatment for a year and we had just a beautiful gift that somebody gave us to go away and travel and do this trip and just and she was able to travel. The doctors at that time weren't sure if she was gonna relapse, there's a 50 percent chance of relapse the first year after treatment. So it's like, he was kind of saying like, "Hey, if there's anything you want to do in life, this is the time to do it."

So we asked him if we can travel to this one place in this one country. And he said Yeah and somebody had just given us this gift, so it didn't cost us anything. And I remember, just while my wife is having a great time, I was having this, basically a breakdown, an emotional breakdown. I was crying every day and then...I actually think that when I feel hopeless and despairing, it's important to remember to cry because that is part of what my heart feels. And that's one of the ways that you take care of your heart is that you need to plan in time to cry. It's very important because something bad has happened. There's something really sad that has gone on and it's very important to not try and act like I can handle this.

You know the American mentality. I can pull myself by my own bootstraps and I can, I can, I can still make it. That's really important to like allow yourself to be weak and to cry and invite people into that life. There's got to be at least a couple people that you can invite into that. For some people who maybe don't have those kind of relationships, what they find is having a support group for whether you've like, there's a there's a support group for people with leukemia and lymphoma and there for people with the disease as well as those that are caretakers.

They were, I didn't go for very long, but I just remember the great piece of advice that they gave us, like get away, take a break, go on a retreat by yourself. And I just couldn't do it because I was like, "But what if my wife dies while I'm away?" like I would just think. And they were just saying, you got to do it anyway. And they were like, at that moment it was a great piece of advice, I needed to get away.

16:01- The importance of 2 AM friends

Brad Grammer

And that's part of what helped me turn me up in the time where I was just like hopeless and having, for me I did have friends who are like, "You call me at 2:00 in the morning if that's when you're you need to call," because, sometimes your pain and grief, it's not convenient time wise. It does happen in the middle of the night. So I had a couple of friends I could call anytime of the day or night. That's very important when you feel weak and hopeless. That's again, the adult skill. That's when you asked for help. That's when you let people know. I remember one time I was just crying in the hospital my brother in law and sister in law just, you know, held me and cried with me, you know, and that is hugely encouraging for me. That may not be for other people you know but for me that helped gird me, to know that I wasn't in that pain alone. Somebody was willing to feel the pain with me they weren't afraid of the pain and they're willing to feel it with me. So those are the kind of things; I think it was more than a human contact, more personal connection, is what strengthened me at that time where I just felt like I couldn't go on and where I felt hopeless. For me, it was just purely relationship.

17:18– Practical ways to help: meals, rides, gifts, and health insurance

Liesel Mertes

On top of this human care and interaction, there were some really practical tasks that people assisted Brad and Lara with that were especially meaningful.

Brad Grammer

It was really beautiful because both of our workplaces were jarred quite a bit by this. Because our work communities loved us and cared about us as a family as well as individuals. And so, one thing that they did, it was just so amazing, is that both my wife's workplace and my workplace appointed, they had an appointed person and so if I needed anything, I called one of those people and said hey I need this. And that's all I had to do and they would set off and contact people to do whatever, whether and they set up a meal plan. And this is a meal plan for a whole year wasn't just for two weeks when you're set up for a whole year.

Liesel Mertes

And so you said, "Please, I prefer ethnic food."

[Brad Grammer

Exactly. That's all I want more than anything. But that was, so meal plans were all set up. I sometimes, I, my wife she needed, she had to be either in the hospital every day or go to the hospital every day. So if she wasn't, if she was at home then she needed a ride to the hospital. A lot of times, I could do it. But there are times I just couldn't right and Laura needs a ride. And that's a particular need and the fact that she just doesn't want anybody because she wants somebody that's comfortable with her throwing up in their car.

So, and you know, you want to feel comfortable with this person to some degree in order to throw up in their car.

Liesel Mertes

It's like benchmarks of intimacy.

Brad Grammer

Right. Exactly. Throwing up as a little bit more intimate issue than just getting a general ride and you know my boys needed rides at school, sometime needed to be watched.

Some ladies were so beautiful, they just would come and just clean my house. They didn't even ask me. They said, they would just say, "Hey, we're coming over this day and we're gonna come clean your house." It even, just, during the Christmas holiday season I had somebody just offer to do this and I said of course and they just took the boys Christmas shopping for us as their parents. It felt so thoughtful.

One of the most amazing things this one person did is a lady that said, I don't, "I'm trying to figure out what I can do to support you. I thought I'm going to do what I'm good at." So she normally is in H.R. and businesses and she said let me just handle all your medical bills. So I would give all my medical bills to her, because unfortunately, you know insurance companies would deny a certain percentage naturally just because they're trying to not pay for everything. And so, they would deny bills that are meant to be covered by the insurance companies. So she would handle all that problem and all she would do is, that like she'd hand me a bill and say pay this bill.

And you know I had a stack maybe six inches or more tall of bills that, there are bills where like a million dollars from that year. And fortunately, we had insurance. So very grateful for that. But that was such a huge gift something I would never have thought about. Like I just thought that was something I would have to be responsible for but that was such an amazing gift. Just to take that detail that really was quite burdensome and to manage it all and just all I had to do is just pay the bill whatever she gave me.

Liesel Mertes

As someone who has lost so many hours of my life to talking on the phone to figuring out those insurance bills, crying on the phone, I listen to that and I go, oh my gosh, yes, that was like a priceless gift. Huge!

Brad Grammer

Yes. That's, you, yeah, I mean, it was something that you just don't normally think about. But that was the best way to serve.

21:01- Learning to ask for help

Brad Grammer

You know, one thing I was thinking about is that I would communicate to people is what a friend of mine who actually is going through cancer treatment at that time...he was a pastor himself and told me to be sure and just tell people what you want. Anything. It doesn't have to be even a legitimate thing. If you want a gift card to Starbucks, just say so. You know, so like, I would ask for, you know gas cards because we were driving in the hospital all the time and they're quite far away from home. And then, or I just ask for Starbucks cards. I was set for Starbucks for a year. I was set up, I got Starbucks

Liesel Mertes

Sometimes there's nothing that communicates comfort like a latte!

Brad Grammer

For me getting up in the morning and sitting in the hospital room, sometimes that was just the best part of my day, was just to have a nice latte while I'm just waking up with my wife. You know, and she's dealing with another day of treatment and I was just thinking, like that was so amazing. Because not only would people do that gladly and happily, that it showed just the support, the level of support. I got a gift card from Thailand from people who live in Thailand, a Starbucks gift card. And I was like, What? But just to show that people were thinking of you all over the world was a huge encouragement, just to get those little things.

So, I remember just that's an important thing to tell people be sure and just let people...people want to do things for you. And people, they're walking through this with you and they feel helpless. So when you say little things like that, if they feel like they can do something and this is their way of supporting you, and that's a huge thing. To make sure that people, because some people, my wife is one of these people, she was pretty independent, pretty self-sufficient. She can handle her life pretty much and so she wasn't used to asking for help. I think I tend to be the weaker one; I ask for help more so it was easy for me to ask. But, I know for some people, it might be hard because they're just not used to doing that. But, just to remind them that people really do want to support you and help you. And that's one way you can do is just, something even simple and easy.

23:16 – Stupid advice, comments, and small talk

Liesel Mertes

In many ways Brad was well supported but he was also missed. As you think about this arc of what happened, whether it was Laura's diagnosis or the death of your parents or, you know, this trauma. What are some things that rise to the fore where you go, this was really painful in how this individual responded or I was so missed here.

Brad Grammer

There was, I think when my wife was sick with cancer, people come up with all kinds of things like, well you know you read that, like, if you just didn't drink too much milk...this will really help with the, you know, that cancer diminishing cancer cells and stuff. So people come up with all kinds of ideas and and they will offer that information without thinking, like maybe the person doesn't want to hear that information or maybe their information is very inaccurate and not helpful at all. And so, that can be kind of discouraging, just to have people kind of throw information at you without checking to see if you even want to hear it.

You know, I think, probably one of the things I would really encourage people to do is spend more time just asking questions and listening, just to find out what that person really would be encouraged by or benefited by. Maybe they don't get encouraged at all by giving advice about how to deal with your cancer. They just want you to listen and have somebody to cry with, you know. I remember one guy and I think it was kind of a trigger for me. I was just livid with him. He came up and asked me, "Have you been able to get enough time to exercise?" I'm like, exercise?!?! Inside, I was going, to exercise. I'm like, I'm going to the hospital everyday, I'm taking care of my kids, I'm doing my job. I don't have time to breathe and I'm getting five hours of sleep a night. Maybe I don't have time to do anything.

And, but from his perspective, he was thinking and I and I do remember kind of going off on him in a little bit and he responded by saying exercise helped him when he's really stressed. Exercise is a great stress reliever. Well part of that is just his ignorance about knowing what my life was like, how every day was just full and very intense and difficult. And you know, there's some things that just you have to put to the wayside. And he just unaware because he'd never gone through something like this before so he was only reverting to what was familiar to him.

So, it would have been good and important for him to be able to ask me questions first to see what my daily life was like and that would help him to see, like, oh I shouldn't make this kind of comment, you know. And it doesn't have to be a hurtful comment, like you said, it was just a pretty innocent thing. He was asking about, it was such a trigger for me because it signified, like, you have no idea what I'm going through then you don't care because you didn't even ask what my life is like.

26:12- The importance of listening

Brad Grammer

And so, I think just really listening and hearing what a person's life is like each day can be way more valuable than giving any advice or asking questions like that. That's, I think, for me where people most miss. They assume, maybe, that you're, you're dealing with it better than you are and there's an assumption that, that you could have just a normal conversation when, in actuality, it's hard for you to even have a normal conversation. And the best thing you could do is just ask questions and listen.

26:50- Words of insight

Liesel Mertes

You mentioned the importance of learning how to walk with these experiences and integrate them into your life in a way that allowed you to be a healthy version of yourself instead of someone who had just endured something or gotten through and, how, what were, what are the things that you would offer to someone who is walking in the year, the two years, the three years after something like this has happened that have been important for you as you move beyond that immediate stage of loss and tragedy and what's it like?

27:31- Tell your story

Brad Grammer

There's quite a few things. I was actually thinking even just this conversation with you this morning is healing because even though there's so many things that have been years later, just to be able to look back and talk about it is very encouraging. It's part of life. I think you're probably well aware of this as you've been talking about people and what they're going through, how important is to reprocess your story again, talk about it again. Because sometimes when you, something else will come to you and you realize, Oh I think I think I maybe need to that or you know, so like right regularly revisiting your story with somebody that you trust, just to be able to, can help, just to be able to not only remind yourself of things that you've learned that have been a good thing that help you to continue moving forward so that you know what to do. If you just don't talk about it then it's a lot harder to identify what do you need to be healthy in doing this.

28:36- Let yourself cry

Brad Grammer

I think regularly grieving is a good thing for the long term. Like that's I know, I have a friend who when he first started facing his sexual abuse, I think just giving him permission to hurt over that was a big important step. But when he started crying, he cried every day for three months and it was really intense crying. Sometimes, he would lose his hearing when he would cry. It was a hard crying. I think a lot of people are afraid of that and part of the reason they're afraid of that is that they feel like they'll never stop crying and that it will kill them. I mean, it's, it's an irrational fear but that's part of what they feel. But your heart really needs it. And so, like then, just to encourage people, you won't die and you will make it through it and you will stop crying. So, just giving yourself permission to cry as much as you need to and eventually you will, you will stop crying, you will start to feel healthier, you start to feel stronger.

29:41- General tips on anxiety and self-care

Brad Grammer

There's lots of things I've been doing, just little things. Because after a lot of trauma I've been through, one of the things that was hard for me is just to be out in public. I would get anxiety attacks and I never understood that before and, even me helping people. But now I understand it. It's a, it's a really irrational thing. It doesn't always make sense but it feels like impending doom. It feels like you're not, something that, really bad is going to happen. And so I understand those attacks now. So I'd be one to know, like how much time I need to be alone and be away from people is real important. Regularly reading things, like fun reading but also like reading that talks about the specific aspects of what I've been through, whether it's the grief, depression, sorrow. But doing what I can to learn to help myself and getting exercise was an important part of

Liesel Mertes

Screw that guy!

Brad Grammer

I know exactly, it's like, I hate that he said that but I, but I think it still is important, like as I'm in the healing path, it's real important that I do even just if all I can do is walk. Like, even through my own cancer treatment. I was so exhausted by it all but if I could just walk that was still something good, good for me to be able to.

31:06- Spirituality and community

Brad Grammer

You know, I'm a spiritual person. I identify as a Christian so praying was really important to, say to regularly pray and read the Bible. So I would get so much encouragement just from what I would read. And what I would pray and then praying with other people and visiting with people who will, who will really hear you and really know you. Like it's important to spend time not just with people but with those people you know who who do feed you, who do build into you, who are a strength for you.

So that means sometimes I would really limit a lot of my social involvement and I would just be restricted to those important people. All those components together were part of the healing process and part of helping me to be able to be stronger to handle the next tragedy that's going to happen.

31:58- It takes time to heal

Brad Grammer

And also not putting a time limit on when I need to heal. I think that stresses some people out as they feel like they need to be healed within three to six months or something. And sometimes it takes years to recover from something and that's OK. I mean, our culture does not have patience for people and does not respect that. But to honor being a human being you must respect the fact that there are some things that just take a long time to heal from and it's OK. Yeah. You don't have to shame yourself for that.

32:35- The perils of small talk

Brad Grammer

Because we don't really have any guidance or education on these things. People don't know how to handle it. And so they every time somebody sees you they'll ask you how are things going. And some days that'll just trigger, you know, like I feel horrible. I feel like I'm going to die and I want to punch you right now.

Liesel Mertes

Or, you know, you just feel it, the compulsion to default to: fine.

Brad Grammer

Yeah. Exactly. Just, just to get him out of your face because you just don't even want to deal with it. And I remember I was going through, funny enough, I was going through a Starbucks drive through and getting, with my gift card and I just remember, I was just feeling so horrible inside because my wife was just doing so poorly and I'm just really struggling. I was not in a good space and, and I was just being honest with the guy and he does that to me like, "So how are you doing today?" I said, "I'm doing really shitty." And he goes like, "Why? Are you having a bad day?". And I lost it. I'm like, "I don't have the luxury of having a bad day. My wife has cancer!" and he was like, "Oh I'm so sorry." He's like, panicking,

Liesel Mertes

Now, was this in person or through the drive window?

Brad Grammer

Through the drive thru window. And he was like, "Here's your coffee, goodbye."

Liesel Mertes

He should have comped you that drink.

Brad Grammer

I was sat there thinking, like, I wish I could go back and just ask forgiveness for that because I lost it with him and he had nothing to do with it at all. He was just doing like the motions of the social niceties, you know. But I think like those social niceties like, like if somebody knows that I'm going through a hard time I'm probably not the best question to ask is, "How are you doing?"

Liesel Mertes

The social niceties, which are really just meant to kind of grease an interaction become painful

34:20– Learn to ask better good questions

Brad Grammer

Exactly and like, and be able to equip people with different kinds of questions is, is important on a social interaction. But we don't, where did we learn that skill? It's not like you really have somebody who will teach you that. But ideally, it would be great if, if there's somebody that could teach us like, OK when somebody with a really hard time, these questions are actually better, yeah, than the social niceties that don't work. Like the social niceties, what they come across as is belittling the person's life and making it seem like it's manageable when that person feels like my life is not manageable. I am our of control. I feel horrible and not feeling that they're free to say that. And because it's not acceptable to be honest in many places, maybe the work environment in particular, it's like it's OK, to say like, I'm having a rough day but that's it. OK let's stop right there.

Liesel Mertes

But it certainly won't affect my productivity...

Brad Grammer

Right exactly. I will of course be the most the best employee ever as a result of my trauma.

Liesel Mertes

As you look back at the younger version of yourself, if there were words that you could offer to that, you know, still finding his equilibrium Brad or someone who's going through something similar. You've had a lot to offer, but just, as a sense, what would you say to that younger version of yourself?

35:47- Get a therapist and go to a support group

Brad Grammer

I would say definitely go to a therapist or go to a support group for the thing that you're going through. You don't realize how important that is, just to have a listening ear, a compassionate response, somebody who can say, "Oh me too I'm going through the same thing," how invaluable that is. Because a lot of times, maybe we can work out the details of like you know how we're going to do dinner who's going to give a ride or...but it's that emotional support is typically where we are unprepared emotionally to handle the trauma that we're going through or the tragedies.

36:23- Ask people for help

Brad Grammer

So it's really important to always pursue people ask for help. Don't try and be the independent, I can handle this myself. That will not get you through this time at all. It'll only create problems for you later if not immediately. So always seek out help. Oh, and if you're not a person who normally is used to asking for that kind of support, it may be difficult to push through it. You will always benefit from it. And I would also remind myself that people make mistakes. So we have to be ready to offer forgiveness at some point for people who make mistakes. But to always remember that they they are trying to care for you and they are trying to show, in their awkward and sometimes childish way, they are trying to offer something.

37:14- You won't be perfect

Brad Grammer

And so to get to, to not feel like I have to have this pressure to act perfectly and give them grace and just be this perfect person, but that just, at some point to know that, lik,e you know, people are really ill equipped to handle these things in life.

Liesel Mertes

Thank you Brad for joining us.

Brad Grammer

Like I said, thank you for even asking and having me here. Like that, there's a healing element that happens, Just having somebody pursue and ask questions. It's a beautiful thing.

37:55 – Closing thoughts

Liesel Mertes

Brad is a teacher at heart and he certainly gave us a lot of actionable tips that he wove throughout this story of his journey with Laura towards healing. Here are three closing thoughts.

38:07- #1, find support networks and the Cancer Support Community

Liesel Mertes

One if you or someone you love is going through cancer. Reach out to available support networks. Find a counselor or a support group. And if you don't know where to start, a great resource for those of you in Indianapolis is the Cancer Support Community. I was just at their building today. They're located off of 71 Street near Eagle Creek. And the Cancer Support Community offers free resources to those with cancer as well as their caregivers. There's a yoga studio, community gardens, cooking classes and one on one counseling available. The Cancer Support Community can be found online at cancersupportindy.org

38:52- #2, there are many ways to help, find one!

Liesel Mertes

Number two, if someone in your office or community is journeying with cancer, there are so many ways to help. Organized meals, offer rides, give Starbucks gift cards or help to process those medical bills. Reach out and offer what is in your power to give.

39:16- #3, beware of social niceties

Liesel Mertes

And finally, number three, be wary of those easy social niceties. We so often default to easy clichés or trite phrases or giving advice when it's not actually wanted. Take more time to actually listen and weigh your words before offering canned comfort.

39:44- Outro

Thanks for listening to the Handle with Care podcast. Handle with Care is produced by Brian Wheat at Village Recording studios. Original music is composed by the talented musical pairing, Duo Futur.

If you like what you hear. Please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the show. It helps other people find us. Thanks for listening. This is a Liesel Mertes and I will be back next time. As we build empathy at work.

Today, I share my "why". Why I am starting this podcast and why I believe it is so essential to build empathy at work.

We look at the numbers: what is the cost of mishandling employees that experience hard times? I also share some of my story, how the death of my young daughter (Mercy) and the ongoing cardiac care of my son (Moses) have powerfully shaped my vocational journey.

Disruptive life events are already affecting your workplace. The question is whether you are acting proactively to help stabilize employees or whether you are always playing catch-up.

If you want to become a better manager, a better co-worker, a better friend, this podcast is for you. If you have lived through something awful, if you have struggled to put words to what you want or what you need, this podcast is also for you. Through the stories that are shared and the lessons that we learn together, lets live out empathy at work.