Good Grief?

Content warning: This article discusses death, medical challenges, grief and pet loss.

With changes expected in the way we approach bereavement leave from 2027, thanks to the Employment Rights Act 2025, I've found myself thinking about grief a lot recently.

Not just because of the legislation itself, but because life has a way of reminding you, it is charge. 

The proposed changes are a positive step and one I welcome, recognising that people deserve time and space after losing someone important to them.

However, at the same time, it has also left me wondering whether we're still looking at grief through quite a narrow lens. 

Who decides which relationships count? When does grief actually begin? What happens when the person, or even the life, you're grieving doesn't fit neatly into a policy? 

(Honestly,  this has all come from my seeking permission to grieve)

I have been ruminating on these for the last few weeks, and while I certainly don't have all the answers, I have reflections

Where are we now?

As of 2026, there is no general statutory right to bereavement leave for every employee. Whilst many organisations offer compassionate leave through their own policies, the support somebody receives often depends on where they work, who has died and how that relationship is recognised. 

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is expected to change that from 2027, broadening statutory bereavement leave and offering greater protection to many employees, which is going to be beneficial for many

At the same time, legislation has to draw lines. It has to define relationships, eligibility and entitlement. 

Life isn't always that tidy.

Families look different, dependence looks different, love looks different and grief certainly doesn't follow one predictable path. Rather than seeing this as a criticism of the legislation, 

I've started wondering whether this is also an opportunity for organisations to think beyond minimum legal requirements and ask a much simpler question. What should good support actually look like?

Why I'm writing this

I process through writing I'm no stranger to grief in its varying forms. 

From estrangement to the loss of peers, to grandparents, grief has arrived throughout my life in different ways, and every experience has looked and felt different. 

Another form of grief brought all of this back to the front of my mind a few weeks ago when Jarvis, my beloved pug and the unofficial brand mascot of Parallax Perspectives, went in for what we thought would be a fairly standard dental procedure.

Instead, we were told he had a tumour.

It's funny how one sentence can completely change the direction of your day. 

One minute you're thinking about collection times and aftercare, the next you're hearing words you never expected to hear and suddenly your brain is trying to process a future that, moments earlier, didn't exist.

As the grief and shock immediately washed over me, with difficult ( and yes, I use the word difficult in this context) decisions to make, my world was forever changed. I could no longer sit in the literal and outright denial that he'd somehow live forever. 

Reality slowly chipped away at the foundations of comfort I'd unknowingly built around myself. 

I collected myself just enough to decide to biopsy and type the tumour, desperately seeking all the information I could so I could make an informed decision rather than an emotional one. 

In doing so, I firmly placed myself in a state of limbo, slowly letting go of the illusion that I had any control whilst desperately trying to hold on to the parts I thought I still could.

With a turnaround time of five to seven days, I already knew what was going to happen. I'd have to return to business as usual and somehow carry on whilst waiting for an answer that had the power to change everything.

Looking back, I don't think I appreciated just how challenging that would actually be.

Something felt different. 

Of course, I have my own business and therefore a level of flexibility and control that many employees simply don't have, something I don't take for granted. Even with that flexibility, I found myself back at work in what I can only describe as freeze mode.

My usual superhero persona suddenly felt like the cloak was strangling me. I had training to deliver, clients relying on me and a business that, just entering its second year, couldn't simply stop because life had thrown something unexpected at me. 

I'm also someone who genuinely wants to overdeliver and underpromise, so I found myself asking a question I'd never really considered before.

How could I continue doing that when I had absolutely no idea what the coming days or weeks would look like? It wasn't that I couldn't work.

It was that every webinar, every meeting and every piece of work required so much more emotional energy because my mind was constantly waiting for the next phone call, the next email or the next set of results.

The minute one meeting ended, I was back to wondering whether today would be the day everything changed again.

Eventually, I realised I needed to have some honest conversations. I spoke to my long-term and fractional clients and simply explained what was happening, where we were in the process and what I might need over the coming weeks.

My goodness, it felt vulnerable and a far cry from how I was conditioned growing up (I am not sure if my family gets royalties from 'Keep Calm and Carry On,' but they should). 

Regardless, Jarvis comes first. 

At the same time, I also recognised that whatever happened next wasn't just going to affect me whilst it was happening, it was going to affect me afterwards too. 

For me, it stopped being about whether I could do something and became about whether I should, and whether my clients would actually want me to.

I feel incredibly fortunate because every single one of them responded with compassion, understanding and kindness. That level of trust meant more than I can probably put into words.

Unfortunately, the biopsy confirmed an active cancer and, once again, my information-seeking brain has entered another waiting period whilst we wait to meet the oncologist. Another period of uncertainty.

Another reminder that grief doesn't politely wait until the end before making itself known.

Grief Comes Long Before Bereavement

It's probably obvious when I say it out loud, but I don't think it's something we talk about nearly enough, particularly in the workplace. 

We often think grief begins on the day somebody dies, yet my experience over the last few weeks has been completely different.

It began the moment I heard the word tumour. Since then it's been every appointment booking, every conversation, every wait for results and now waiting for the appointment with the oncologist to understand what comes next.

This isn't something I'm reflecting on with the benefit of hindsight. I'm still living it.

The uncertainty is exhausting in ways I hadn't expected. 

There are moments where life feels completely normal, followed by moments where everything stops because my mind races ahead to questions nobody can answer yet.

As someone who naturally solve problems, I've realised this is one of those situations where there isn't a checklist or a plan that can make everything okay.

Sometimes all you can do is wait, and waiting can be one of the hardest parts.

The more I thought about that feeling, the more I realised it wasn't entirely new.

It brought me back to my grandad and the time I spent helping to provide palliative and end-of-life care.

It was emotionally exhausting, incredibly difficult and something I wouldn't wish on anyone, yet if I had to make that decision again, I wouldn't hesitate. 

I'm grateful for every conversation, every moment and every opportunity I had to simply be there with him.

Looking back now, I can see that my grief didn't begin the day he died either. It had already been building through hospital stays, changing routines, difficult conversations and slowly coming to terms with what we all knew was happening. 

At the time, I don't think I would have described it as grief, it was life.

What I wasn't expecting was for Jarvis' diagnosis to bring so much of that back.

The uncertainty feels familiar. The waiting feels familiar. 

The feeling of trying to prepare yourself for something whilst desperately hoping it won't happen feels familiar. It reminded me that grief doesn't always stay neatly in the past. 

Sometimes a new experience reconnects us with an older one, and before you know it, you're not only navigating today's uncertainty, you're also revisiting feelings you thought had settled years ago.

That made me wonder how many people are carrying exactly that whilst continuing to show up for work every day.

Simply because life doesn't stop whilst we're waiting for answers.

Beyond the Policy

That's where my thoughts came back to the proposed changes to bereavement leave.

Recognising that people need protected time following a bereavement is an important step forward, and one that I hope will make a meaningful difference for many people.

At the same time, I found myself wondering whether this conversation should become even bigger for orginsations internally

Legislation has to define eligibility. It has to draw lines around who qualifies, which relationships are recognised and when entitlement begins. That's exactly what law is designed to do.

People don't experience grief like that.

Relationships and the feelings that come with them don't fit neatly into legal definitions.

For some people, the person they would grieve most deeply is a lifelong friend.

For others, it's somebody who became family despite sharing no biological connection. For others, grief begins long before someone dies because they're caring for a loved one whose health is changing day by day.

Within disabled communities, peer relationships can become incredibly significant because they're built on shared experiences, understanding and mutual support. 

Sadly, peer loss is also something many disabled people experience more frequently than society perhaps realises. 

Moreover experiencing disablement can lead to periods of grief that need to be processed over and over

Different cultures also experience caring, death and mourning in very different ways. The more I thought about it, the more I realised organisations will never be able to write a policy that reflects every meaningful relationship or every version of grief.

Perhaps what people need most isn't a policy that predicts every possible circumstance, but a culture that allows managers to respond with trust, compassion and humanity when life becomes complicated and has the appropriate guidance to enable them to do so

The Grief We Don't Always Acknowledge

I also nearly didn't write this.

If you've followed my work for a while, you'll know I believe lived experience has an important place in shaping conversations about inclusion.

I hesitated because I worried people would think, "It's only a dog." (even though I know I shouldn’t) or someone not wanting  to reach out to me for work in the coming months please do 

I worried that talking about Jarvis might somehow diminish somebody else's grief.

Then I realised that's exactly what grief encourages us to do.

We compare it.

We question whether our loss is significant enough.

We wonder whether we're entitled to feel the way we do because somebody else has experienced something worse.

Image ID: Line drawing of Rox in wheelchair alongside their three dog including Jarvis the pug

The reality is that grief has never been a competition and more importantly a policy should never make us feel like it is

Jarvis has been beside me through some of the biggest moments of my adult life. 

Through unhealthy relationships, breakups, and mental health challenges

Through redundancy. Through building Parallax Perspectives.

Through the uncertainty, the excitement, the long days and the quiet tears that nobody else ever sees.

The relationship I have with him might not be recognised in legislation, but that doesn't make the love or the uncertainty I feel today any less real.

You’re not alone

I don't have all the answers.

I'm also very aware that I'm writing this whilst still in the middle of the experience. We haven't seen the oncologist yet, we don't know what treatment will look like and I don't know what the next few months are going to bring. 

Perhaps that's exactly why I wanted to write this now rather than waiting until there was a neat ending. Grief isn't always something we reflect on afterwards. Sometimes we're living it whilst still trying to carry on with everyday life.

If someone reading this feels able to have a conversation they didn't think they could have, or if one manager pauses before asking, "Do they qualify?" and instead asks, "How can I support them?", then perhaps sharing something so personal has been worthwhile.

Grief has reminded me that loss doesn't always begin with bereavement, and it doesn't always end there either. It changes shape, it resurfaces when we least expect it and, and sometimes, it quietly reconnects us with people and moments we thought we'd already said goodbye to.

Perhaps that's why grief can never have a one-size-fits-all response.

After all, love never has.