Every day in our profession, you give.
You give families your compassion, your steadiness, and your full attention in the hardest moments of their lives, and you give your team your patience and often your nights and weekends too.
This World Mental Health Day, on October 10, I want to ask you a question that may be harder to answer than it sounds: what do you have left to give?
Compassion, presence, and calm under pressure are real resources, and they run dry when no one replenishes them. You cannot offer a grieving family a peace you have not found for yourself, or offer your team a steadiness you are borrowing against.
The Weight We Carry Home
In Wake-Up Calls, I write that if you love this work and “feel the capacity in yourself to meet others with compassion without drowning in their grief,” I encourage you to stay with it. That capacity is precious, and it needs protecting.
The pandemic showed us how much our people carry. I think of one funeral director who contracted COVID from a family she served. Her elderly parent, who lived with her, caught it and died soon after, and she had to grieve her own loss while caring for others through theirs. Many are still carrying the effects of those years.
There is a harder truth I need to name. When we speak with each other at meetings, we hear that “we all have been touched by suicide or know someone in funeral service who has died by suicide.” That should stop every one of us in our tracks.
Filling Up Starts with Asking
Replenishing yourself includes asking for help, and that takes real courage. The people who thrive in this work are those “willing to seek support as needed to swim hard through heavy waves and care for yourself at the same time.”
In my coaching work, I helped women build resilience and learn to ask for what they need and deserve. That might mean requesting time off after a string of tragic services, telling a trusted colleague you are struggling, or finding a counselor who understands grief work.
As an author, I feel it’s my responsibility to keep sharing the importance of reaching out for help when you need it, and telling the stories of when I had to do the same.
‘Lead’ Each Other Through the Hard Days
All of you will have hard days, and you can all be leaders in helping bring each other through them. Notice the colleague who has gone quiet, ask how she is really doing, and stay long enough to hear the answer. If you lead a team, remember that your people cannot give families what the workplace has drained from them.
Your Invitation This World Mental Health Day
Take an honest inventory of your reserves this week. Name one thing that refills you and put it on your calendar, one person you trust to call, and one colleague you will check on.
You never have to carry this work alone. I founded Funeral Women Lead to have women who walk beside and support each other, with a membership community, coaching and mentoring, and gatherings like our Leadership and Wellness Summit. This way, women in our profession have a place to belong year-round.
If you or someone you work alongside is struggling, Funeral Professionals Peer Support offers peer-based support for bereavement professionals, and in the United States, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at any time.
The families we serve deserve our very best, and so do you.
Cheering you on, always!
Lisa
