A recent CNN article explains the grief journey of Barry Kluger who lost his daughter to an automobile accident when she was 18. Unfortunately, parts of his journey are all too familiar for those who have lost a child; and for those still younger who have lost a parent or a sibling. Now, there is something we all can do to help change the journey.
Kluger, struggling and dealing with his own grief, was able to take as much time away from work as he needed having owned his own business. However, most are not afforded the same opportunity. According to Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, a researcher at Arizona State University and the founder of the MISS Foundation, the average bereavement leave for a person who loses a child is three days. Three days!
Given this, in January 2011, Kluger partnered with another grieving father, Kelly Farley, to draft a proposed amendment to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Then, in the summer of 2011, Sen. John Tester (D-Montana) proposed the Parental Bereavement Act, to incorporate extended, job-protected leave for the loss of a child.
Cacciatore tells CNN that while a person can take extra time off for mental health reasons, such as grieving, it creates an ethical dilemma. If someone needs to mourn, having to declare depression for time off work is an unnecessary label that could also affect future employment opportunities.
Researchers at the Grief Recovery Institute, a nonprofit foundation, measured how situations like death affect U.S. businesses. According to Russell Friedman, executive director of the institute, he tells CNN that the current estimated annual loss due to reduced productivity as an effect of grief is around $225 billion.
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Would you like to share your story? Please get in touch with Kate's Club! KC has free grief support with grief resources, grief counseling resources, grief training, and volunteer work in Atlanta and surrounding places in Georgia. Kate's Club is a growing nonprofit in Atlanta with grief specialists for kids and young adults going through bereavement. Our goal is to make a world where it is okay to grieve.