Shereen Sater on: resilience reimagined—from loss to leadership

Hi #griefsense familia!

In this heartfelt episode of #griefsense, host Mimi Gonzalez sits down with her good friend, Shereen Sater, Founder of The Curve Collective and a dedicated advocate for revolutionizing the modern-day workplace. Shereen shares her deeply personal journey through grief, following the sudden and traumatic loss of her beloved Aunt Shereen, her namesake, at a young age. Together, they discuss the complexities of grief, the challenges it brought to her mental health, daily life, and how it shaped her approach to work and relationships. Learn how her own story of grief has catalyzed her mission to advocate for human-centric workplaces and resilient organizational cultures. Don't miss this compelling conversation about the intersection of grief, growth, and leadership.

To get in contact with Shereen, you can follow her on Linkedin. Learn more about The Curve Collective here.

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Transcript

Hey, what's up? Hello, grief sense familia. How we doing today? If you don't already know what the movement is about, it's about normalizing grief sense. What does that mean? That means normalizing conversations around death, and we do that through holding space to talk about loss, confronting our mortality.

And we also do this through the lens of social justice, creative expression, community care, as well as pop culture. So as you interact with these episodes, please reflect on how grief sense shows up in your life. And if you have a story that you'd like to share with us, please feel free to reach out. You can reach us at info@griefsense.com via email now.

With that, hope you enjoy today's conversation.

 Welcome listeners of griefsense I'm your host, Mimi Gonzalez, and I am so happy to have a guest today, one of my good friends, Shereen Sater. She has lots of insights to share with you all today and deeply resonates with the grief sense, message and community.

And so we're gonna start with introductions and then we'll jump right in so you can learn more about her and how she relates to grief sense. I briefly met Shereen about a few months ago. I don't remember how long. I think it was like maybe three or four months ago. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's been forever. It feels, but it feels like I've known you my whole life. We clicked instantly and we met over LinkedIn. And I feel that I'm meeting just the most amazing people off of LinkedIn. Shameless plug. If you're not on LinkedIn, hop on it. Shereen and I both bonded over our love and our passion and dedication to revolutionizing the modern day workplace and future of work because hello, future of work is here.

It's changed, it's shifted ever since the pandemic and all of the things. And we're really trying to help workplaces get ready for Gen Z and prepare their workplaces for Gen Z. And I'm sure she'll talk a little bit about that later on in the episode. But without further ado, I wanted to hand it over to Shereen to introduce herself.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Shereen. I know you wanted me to start with who I am before what I do, but right now my hobbies all include being an entrepreneur slowly reintroducing the things I loved back into my life, like yoga and reading. I went to Pilates today, so we're gonna count that as a win.

I guess I would say avid diy, much to my husband's dismay. Really love jigsaw puzzles. I've got like the hobbies of a 90 year old woman, so love, love it. Yeah. I guess that is a lot of outside of my work life. And then for work, yeah, I do leadership development workshops and I do a lot with getting earlier people earlier in their careers acclimated to the workforce, which I know will spend a great deal talking about because it was certainly shaped by my grief.

So Shereen, every episode we start by honoring our ancestors or honoring loved ones that have passed away. So if you're comfortable, I wanna give you the opportunity to honor someone or multiple someones that have maybe transitioned in your life.

Your life. Yeah. There are multiple, I will stick with the one that we are gonna talk about today. My Aunt Shereen, she is my namesake. I was named after her. She was my mom's younger sister and she passed away in 2005.

So it's been a little, as you know, mine doesn't. Really feel a whole lot. So time does not matter with grief, uh, at all.

Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you so much and I am honored and  just grateful to be in, in community with you and, being able to honor your beautiful aunt. And if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have met you. So grateful to be in community with you. So with that, let's. Jump in if you're comfortable to talk about your grief story.

Feel free to share as much or as little as possible. I definitely wanna put a disclaimer for the listeners out there. We are not by any means certified mental health professionals. However, we know we've been around a block a couple times when it comes to the grief block. We've learned some things along the way.

But I always like to just give my guests an opportunity to share their grief story and how, these experiences has, helped shape their life. 

First of all, thanks for creating this space because I know I mentioned it happened in 2005, but I, there are probably people in my life that are close to me that don't know the story.

And it's certainly shaped how I show up every single day, as with losing someone, definitely with anything trauma related. So I was thinking about it earlier today and I was like, wow, if I have friends who listen to this, it's probably gonna be the first time that they know of this story.

So thank you for having me. Thank you for creating the space. So my. I guess grief story that we're talking about today is about my Aunt Shereen. So when I was 15, I was in Egypt on the North Coast. It's called this area called Sahu, and it's about four or five hours north of Cairo. And we used to go every summer.

My mom started sending me a couple years before so that I could meet my cousins. I got a group of friends there. It was like the coolest experience ever. And then a few years after I started going I, the rest of my family came. So my aunt came, her two little kids who were two and four at the time.

My mom, my sister, my cousin. It was like a whole. Big family thing. And we were at a party one night and it was three o'clock in the morning. We were having like a great time and the music stopped and my aunt, we like, wanted to continue dancing and, partying, whatever. She was 34, she was turning 35, like  four days later.

And she, we were waiting for the music to start again and she stopped and she leaned back on this sign and she was like, oh my God. Oh my god. And her friend was with us and she reached out for her and she turned to me and she was like, she's being electrocuted. And she immediately fell over. This was like on the beach.

And she passed away pretty much, immediately. They didn't have a defibrillator or anything, they, yeah, I ran back from there, called my mom. She was like hanging out somewhere else at the party. She ran over and at that point, like this whole party was surrounding her. And they put her on the, on a table in the back of a pickup truck and took her to this like deserted hospital.

And by the time we got there, my uncle and cousin were like in the driveway. There was no one at the hospital. It was literally just like an empty building. And they were in the driveway and we knew that she didn't make it. And yeah, that was, yeah, obviously a very traumatic incident for my family.

And she was my mom's younger sister, so you know, her baby sister and. Just really traumatic and horrible and. Yeah. 

First and foremost, I like, I have goosebumps and, and even though I know some aspect of this story, hearing it and just hearing you describe it in this way, I just can't imagine.

It gives me goosebumps. It makes me just like I'm on the verge of trying to hold my tears back. And I'm sure we both relate to that right now. But I just wanna thank you for sharing that and for being open and vulnerable. And I do think that for the listeners that are able to hear this they'll definitely, certainly learn more about you for sure.

But how you have really been able to just be the person who you are today is honestly a miracle in my eyes. You are just such an amazing, inspirational person to me and just. For someone to go through that and how you show up today. It's just mind boggling to me. So thank you for Thank you sharing.

And so with that, you touched a bit about your grief story, your unfortunate initiation, I call it, into grief, right? We all don't know when it will happen, but we all experience it in different ways. How would you say, and I know this is probably a loaded question so take your time, but how would you say this has.

Impacted you over the years. You were really young, I think you said you were about 15, so that's such a transformative time to be going through something like that, on top of puberty, on top of trying to get ready for college. I can only just imagine. So maybe you can talk about your experience then, as a teen, right?

We're probably gonna have some young listeners that can relate. And then of course, how has it impacted you as you got older to leading to where you are today? 

Yeah, definitely loaded question. So loaded response coming through. Guess like a, I'll take you through I'm talking to think, but it was definitely hard.

At 15 I think, that's like prime high school. We definitely were not having conversations at that time about like depression and anxiety and I think I always had a little bit of anxiety, but I think anyone who's gone through trauma knows I guess I say this, there's like a BC and an AD, and like everything in your life is like before that happened and then after that happened.

And I just feel like that was like a defining moment of my life. And at the time, one, it was hard to, first of all, it was even just hard to talk about. And it's, I don't know, grief is such a weird thing. Like sometimes I think about that story and I will like,  bawl my eyes out and can't keep my, you know, what together.

And other times, even just now it's like I feel it, like I feel this heaviness, but it feels almost like I'm telling you a story about a movie and not necessarily my own life and I don't really know. Yeah. At what point it's going to feel like what? But definitely, obviously right after it happened, such horrible trauma, closed my eyes, could see it happening.

 At that time too, I had friends that were obviously didn't understand that wanted to be very supportive. I could barely talk about it. I went away for a summer and came back and was like a completely different human being. Um, And then I think, honestly it impacted everything.

I used to love music. I used, I mean, I still love music, but would love going to like concerts and then she died at a concert. So it just changed everything for me. And I feel like it just gave it, it had this shift of the world is not a safe place. Like something bad can happen anywhere you go.

And that honestly shaped my life for, probably. I don't know, like 15 years. Just in the sense of like having massive anxiety. Like everywhere I went I would have to plan if we were going to a restaurant, I had to know how far away from home it was. If, I needed to know what was on the menu because God forbid I sit there and think about it, that's wasted time somewhere when like I could be at home.

And those things were like super hard for me to articulate as I was getting older. As I started dating dating my now husband, I'm like jumping all around. But I think that was the first time to me that I was like, oh, I'm really missing out on life by the way that I'm living.

It sort of was this mirror to me that I was like, oh, planning every single second of your life is not normal. Um, And yeah, I just felt like honestly a caged bird for so long. And then I would say at some point, and I don't, I don't know if other, I mean I'm sure other people resonate with this, but like something would trigger me and I would go like as soon as my anxiety was getting better, something would trigger me and I would go back into a horrible place unable to just honestly even function.

Like I, on the weekends there was a period at where I was working and on the weekends I would go home and literally not do anything for 48 hours. And then, I'd be talking to coworkers like, how was your weekend? I'd be like, oh, it was great when in reality I didn't do anything. And then probably in 2017 ish it got so bad that I had to tell my boss and her boss what had happened.

And I was like, I don't know what triggered it. I just got really bad anxiety again. I literally like debilitating. And yeah, that was like a lot of very unfinished thoughts, but that's how it's unfolded and, manifested. And I think now I'm I'm on the up and up. I will say I'm also on Prozac.

So I do, anytime I can do anything that's not the norm for me. Like when I went to Lala for the first time, Lollapalooza, we were like, this is sponsored by Prozac and didn't have a panic attack at my wedding. We were like, this is sponsored by Prozac. But a lot of therapy and we did therapy for years.

I still go to therapy. I don't know, maybe I'll have Prozac for life. I think this is just something that's always gonna shape me. And the Prozac has really helped. 

I just don't wanna, you know, act like I'm. Not into medicine. 'cause I tried it all and like, you know, I needed it and I need it.

. Yes, no. And I, listen, I am just so grateful for everything that you just shared. It's so real and it's so authentic and this, everything you shared is exactly why I am holding space to have these types of conversations because I don't think people understand the undertaking the toll that grief takes on you.

And even if you lose one person, if you lose a pet, it doesn't matter like the way. It impacts people differently, and with that, you will never be the same person again after you experience or, are exposed to a loss, especially a traumatic loss like that. Yeah. And something I always say is, we've somehow, some way figured out a way to integrate our lives with our grief instead of working against it.

And to me that's really powerful and inspiring because this does make or break you. It really has. And that's on a spectrum, right? There are moments where we are broken deep down there's a hole in our heart. And that's never gonna be filled. But I say, the fact that there's a hole in our heart, for me that's still so beautiful because that hole in, in the heart is carved for a very special someone, or multiple someones that have passed.

And sometimes with grief, as traumatic and as painful as it is, it's sometimes the only connection that we share with those who have transitioned. And I love how you're still honoring her and how beautiful is it that it is your namesake? 

 You shared multiple things that my, of course, my thoughts were going everywhere. But having experienced this at such a young age, you've had to really confront mortality and what that means.

When you think about mortality, when you think about grief sense, even, what comes to mind to you? What about mortality do you think people need to really understand and think about, even if they have, especially if they haven't experienced a loss or a traumatic loss.

.Yeah, it's funny, not funny. As funny as grief can be, gotta find a new saying for that. I think there's a really big difference in, in I hope I'm prefacing this, that this is my experience and I'm not trying to like ruffle any feathers, but I think there's a really big difference in people who have experienced unexpected loss versus people who have experienced.

And I'm, not downplaying it, but when you lose a grandparent that's like an expected Yep. Way of life, right? Like those who are older pass. And of course it's really sad and it's really hard and but I think, I guess I shouldn't say, but, and I think there's just something very different about losing somebody unexpectedly or losing somebody who still has so much life to live.

And I think for me, and I said my anxiety manifested in multiple ways. I felt oh my God, I, and like at 15 it's, I, it's I knew 34 was young, but I don't think I like fully grasped actually how young it is. And now at 33 I'm like, oh my God, like that is one more year, I think that's what like gave me anxiety for so long too, is like I have to do so much in this time that I have, and oof, I said I felt like a caged bird before, and now I'm like on the other side of it, whether that be like the therapy, the Prozac, all of the, the yoga, the reading, all the processing.

That sort of got me to this point where I'm like, okay, all I can do is every day try to have a positive day, try to make connections, try to have positive interactions. I think I, I had to deal with this a lot at work. I didn't really. Love my job, but would, was able to say okay, a bad day at work is not a bad day in life.

And and I think that you can see that difference, I think in people who have lost somebody like young or unexpectedly. I think that they have a different just view of life of it's not that serious and we don't have to be mad at everything. And, for me, I'd probably take that to a whole nother level.

Someone cuts me off on the freeway, I'll make a whole story about them rushing to the hospital and lending me, maybe lending people more grace than like they actually need. But I do think that is I think that if there's somebody who's listening who has not dealt with that type of loss or unexpected loss, like I.

Yeah. Enjoying being present, finding a way to not, nothing is ever gonna go the way that we 100% plan or want. Like how do we learn to roll with the punches? How do we learn to not stress ourselves out? How do we learn to, like, how do we learn to like who we are? I think is also just, with, I think with grief, there's a lot of shame.

I felt a lot of shame in sharing my story. Like I said, a lot of people probably have never heard this story before. And I think about it, what, 50 times a day. Even just in a quick passing thought. I saw a rainbow yesterday. I thought about her. Just little things that you the perfume she wears.

If somebody walks by it just like, I don't know, just that like snap back to reality. Like it's not that serious,

yes. Oh my goodness. You again, I love talking to you every time because we just connect on so many deep levels you said something so powerful just now about, and even just taking Gen Z and even Gen Alpha, right?

Like coming up right now. I hate that Gen Z's kind of been branded as, the school shooting generation, right? But unfortunately like this has just been amplified on a global scale, but especially right here in the us and. I just think that younger folks are just more privy to these types of conversations, but more in the sense of it's so in our face, but we still don't have the right tools, the right forums, the right mediums, and how to talk about these things.

And so it's one thing to go through something unexpected like this something traumatic like this, but it's another, if you have the tools and the language before something unexpected and traumatic happens, not that it's gonna lessen the blow any, anymore. It was like, it definitely will not. Um, If you have the tool, it's like, you know, the birds and the bees talk or like when the parents have the talk.

Or even in a lot of black families, there's the talk where young black men and women have to like, Hey, this is what you do when you have an interaction with the police officer. There's different forms of the talks and I think mm-hmm. that talking about death and normalizing these types of conversations should be right in those categories about the talks.

Because if this was more normalized I don't know, I just feel like we would have better language and tools on how to process this even though there's not one way to process grief. I just think it would help a little bit. 

I think that people unfortunately wait for really bad things to happen, to prepare for them. And I think it's just really important to not be reactive and try to be as proactive as possible. Because it's here, it's happening. And if the pandemic or the pendejo, like I always call it Spanish,  if the pendejo taught us anything, okay, if it taught us anything, it's like we can't have a plan for how our life is gonna go.

And then it's completely uprooted and changed in a snap of a finger. So much loss, so much trauma, so much change happened in the pandemic and. I don't know about you, but it was like the first time I've seen people really forced to come to terms with this reality that you and I knew way back when, and how many other young people knew already.

So I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? Have you seen some things from the pandemic and just a shift in people's awareness around, confronting mortality, if you will? 

Yeah, it's so interesting because I feel like, going back to it being like one of the talks of something that we should be having a conversation about.

I think even just first of all, any loss in general. Let's just, away from death for a second. Somebody like their coworker being laid off, right? Like people don't even know how to have those conversations, right? They don't even know how to reach out to somebody and say Hey, I'm thinking of you, or what can I do?

Then we get to a topic, like grief, like somebody's, I don't know, someone in their family I like, don't even wanna say it 'cause I'm like superstitious about that. But like someone in their family passing away, and they don't know how to have those conversations and then time goes on and said, person who's impacted is that person doesn't care about me.

And the other person is actually just didn't know what to say. And and I think, part of it is that, is like when somebody is going through something, how do we react? And I don't think anybody is going to remember. What it is that you said, but how, how you made them feel.

That's probably a conversation we should be having earlier and not just about, even, not even just death, but just like loss in general. Like how do we show people that we're there for them? How do we have language around those things? And then we get to loss, like our grief and, actually losing somebody and  the grieving process.

I don't think it does not start immediately, it like when my aunt passed away, my cousin my two best friends who. I literally sat by my bed in Egypt for three days, their two sisters. That took shifts, and then I got back to Michigan. She was buried in Egypt, but I got back to Michigan.

We had a memorial. She was a teacher at an elementary school. So we did a memorial there. They have put this thing up to honor her, it had family over all the time coming to pay their condolences, all of that. And then it just stops and everyone else's life goes on. And yours is yours has stopped spinning, right?

And I think that's the hardest part because it's when people don't know how to approach it well, you also don't have the language to reach out to somebody and say Hey, I'm, I'm thinking about my aunt and I'm really like, I'm hurting. And I even do that now, and it's been 18 years, like I'll say to my husband I'm having, I don't know what it is.

I don't know what triggered me, but I'll be in bed bawling my eyes out, and I'm like, I don't know why. I don't know what it is. But for some reason it's just, it's really hurting today. And I just don't think that we, I have somebody, I have a support group now, I have a support system.

There was a point in high school where I had to tell two of my best girlfriends sometimes it hurts, and I don't know why, and I don't know when it's gonna happen. And I like, need somebody to be able to say those things to and they were wonderful. They didn't, they hadn't experienced anything similar, but I don't know what I would've done if it wasn't for that, and I got to the point where I was like, I have to find something or I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I think just even lending that to, reaching out to somebody months after it happens, I think people are like, oh, I don't wanna remind them. It's trust me, they're, if you text me today and you were like, I'm thinking about you, your aunt crossed my mind.

I wouldn't be like, oh, I hadn't been thinking about that. Thanks for bringing it up. It's yeah, it's always there, yeah. 

Wow. I love everything you just said too, because so I've, I've lost quite a few folks. And honestly around the same time as you, around 15, I had like really traumatic loss with one of my best friends who unfortunately took her life and that was traumatic, just being in high school and trying to experience.

Life. And that turned me into a very angry child. Sorry, mom and dad because I knew, I just, I became very angry. I started to rebel. My grades started to go down. And if it wasn't for, I. Dr. Slater at my high school that I went to, I would not be here today because I remember trying to take my own life because of the pain and just the unresolved answers.

You're just constantly asking why? And then you just never get those answers. You never get those answers. But then you just learn how to cope with the pain. It's more like pain management than anything. Yeah. Like I don't if you ever truly become healed, but you do find healthy habits that can help you with the healing.

But with that, it got to the point where people just kept dying in my life, unfortunately, where my friends and my family, I think were just used to me being the strong one and didn't really check up on me as much. And I'm just like, man, there's a lot of people. I wish my friends remembered the days, my dad's anniversary or, and different birthdays or things.

And some have, I'm not saying that they haven't, but I just wish it was like a regular practice because it's hard to navigate life on its own. And then sometimes you have the grief days that you so clearly, described where you just can't get out of bed some days. And I'm just like, how many times have I worked on really big projects at work, but no one knew?

What was going on with me and vice versa. Like you never know what anyone is dealing with when they show up at work, yeah. Maybe in places of worship at the grocery store, just any daily interaction, you never know what someone is going through. But I think that, you and I definitely relate to the fact that because we have experienced such deep loss and traumatic experiences like that, we have like that sixth sense to just be kind naturally.

Because you really never know what someone is juggling with, and it's just it's, you said that earlier if someone on the freeway is just driving super fast, it's like my father passed on a motorcycle, my biological father, Passed on a motorcycle accident. And I'm not gonna lie, sometimes people on motorcycles are pure assholes on the highway because they're like weaving in between cars and I'm here in my car.

I'm like, please be safe. Don't crash this person. Just make sure they're okay. Make sure they get home safe because that, is my experience. So it's just so interesting to hear another fellow griever share the same things that I go through. And I ha you really think you're the only one kind of like dealing with some of these things.

And the beauty, or at least the hope that I have with grief sense, is that we just continue to build this community of people to share these stories that we're not alone. And even though we have kind of unique inductions to the grief world, if you will, we all experience very similar things and we don't have to consider.

Extreme things like taking our lives or getting into really deep depressions and all of the things, they're very real, they're very valid, they're very normal. But I just think it'd be a little easier on the healing journey if we find community.

I had a question for you regarding your career choice, and I know you alluded to that earlier.

Would you be able to briefly describe maybe how your grief story or  the impact of your grief and loss has maybe shaped, your career choices today and why you're doing what you are doing today? Yeah.

First of all, thanks for sharing everything that you just shared because that was, that's, thank you a lot and a lot to process and deal with and obviously can't like totally empathize, but I understand those feelings that, like anger being angry at the world.

And I think about that time and for me, obviously, I needed to go through it and I'm like, how much time I wasted being angry and upset and for things that I couldn't change, and so yeah, I just, I thank you for sharing that. 'cause I think that it's a really. I think that it'll resonate with a lot of people and I think that there's a lot of things that we're afraid to talk about.

And there too was a moment in my life where I was like, I don't want this. Like I, this pain is so unbearable. I remember I was at home, we had a trampoline. I was laying outside, mean I was in high school and I took my books out there and I just had a full blown mental breakdown. And I just remember being like, I don't have anyone to call.

Not that I didn't have people that I could turn to, but I, same thing. People weren't reaching out actively and I think that they cared. I think it's just more so they didn't know I wasn't gonna reach out to somebody and be like, I'm having a mental breakdown. Would you mind coming over when you're like 15?

And like I said, we didn't have language for it. And obviously even then it was better for us than, better than when our parents were growing up or whatever it is. But yeah yeah, it was it's really hard. And I think, one of the things that we've always talked about too, and I'll get to your question in a second, is just if anyone is listening, like honoring people's anniversaries, if I see that somebody has I try to be really mindful and remember the important.

Anniversaries of like my, you know, anyone in my friends' lives. And even just something simple like sending a $5 Starbucks gift card and just saying Hey, I, I know it's the anniversary of X, Y, and z. I'm thinking of you I hope you get to take a moment to yourself and find some peace and grab a coffee on me.

And, even just acquaintances, like I feel like, I've I have done that for a couple of people and it has opened up such a, Conversation of like, how did you know that's what I needed? What type of grief have you gone through? That I needed to acknowledge that. And for us, even like counting down the anniversary of my aunt's death, like I won't do anything on that day.

'cause I'm like, who the hell knows how I'm gonna be feeling when I wake up that day? So yes. I think just little things, remembering that it doesn't have to be like some grand gesture. You don't have to send flowers. Even just saying, reaching out to a friend and saying Hey, I know the anniversary is near, or it's the anniversary month, or, it's Mother's Day or it's Father's Day, or whatever it is.

Do you have a story you wanna share with me? I'm always here if you wanna share a story, if you wanna share a picture I think, I know it feels can feel so weird and like trite in that moment, but it just means so much to the person on the other end that like there's, I mean there are no words, literally, 

Yeah, my career choice, God, it's so hard. I think at 15 to even tease apart what I like how I ended up here. It just, like I said, it feels like BC and AD, right? I think part of it is like just being more human, just like having more human interactions at work. I think that was like one of the things that I.

I wasn't seeing, I had one workplace that I would say was a little bit toxic. Another one that was maybe more subtly toxic, not out, I don't know. But yeah, I think just we're, like how do we treat people with, like, how do we treat people? Like people Like that is somebody's sibling, that is somebody's mom, that is somebody's, whatever.

And I think, after I had been working about, I don't know, maybe like eight, seven years, I was out to drinks with a friend. I was complaining, I feel like no one at work really like listens or has like relationships and blah, blah blah. And she was like, you should look into this program at Northwestern.

It's a change management program. And really it's like, how do we think about workplaces as places. Like of people, which really is what it is, right? And I talk about this all the time with change management. Like the reason that change is hard in a, in an organization is because people are resisting.

And so you have to know that every single person is like bringing, like they're bringing their shit with them, right? And they're like resisting whatever the change is for that reason. If we can have more human interactions, if we can say Hey, I see you, we could get so much more done. And so she was telling me about this program.

I went into it graduated from it and really decided that I, like I said, I had really bad anxiety at one point in the workplace. Go home straight after work. Would not leave the house on the weekends. I literally don't think anyone knows this. And that was probably for a year and I was living in Chicago, like in my prime, and I felt like my anxiety was even worse because I feel like organizations don't really set, I.

Younger talent up for success. Like they start investing in talent way later. Yes. And so I already had like horrible anxiety, probably more than the average human being, but who knows? 'cause we don't talk about it. And I was like, yeah. Managing or running a book of business and did not know like how I was supposed to be behaving.

What type of social skills how do I problem solve? How do I make decisions? How do I communicate decisions, whatever it is. And so when I graduated I was like, I'm gonna start doing this. I'm gonna start going into organizations and focusing on, I know I've told you like the pyramid, like we really, there's a lot of investment at the top right?

When you're about to become a VP or an S V P or an executive title or whatever it is. But what about the people at the bottom? And those are like the habits that you then take with you. And so if you have never been, we've all worked with people who have never had professional development and then they get to the top, there's no incentive for you to change.

You like, have gotten to the top for a reason. And I just remember thinking like, I am spending so much time swirling and having major anxiety about the work that I produce and how I'm perceived and the type of, and I'm like pretty good at building relationships and I was stressed about how are people viewing me and making up all these stories in my head?

And so much of that could have been mitigated by just having development at work. It's so personal to me. And I think even in managing change and culture changes, like we as an, as an organization, we're just very focused on like, how do we remain positive? And we don't wanna tell anyone that anything is bad.

And so we have this toxic positivity and it's The people at the bottom are the ones being impacted. Have we asked them? No. If we ask them, then there's gonna, they're gonna know something is wrong. And I'm like, did you hire smart people? Yeah. Okay, then they're gonna figure it out Anyway, so basically everything when I started was like, course correct from what I wish I had, when we do culture assessments, we will not do a culture assessment if we don't have access to the entire organization because we might not be solving the problem.

And so a lot of times people are like, I shouldn't say a lot of times, but they're like, we don't wanna send it to like our frontline. I'm like, then we're not the company for you. That's right. You, if you don't wanna hear from people on the, at the bottom of the pyramid so to speak, then we're probably not the right partner for you.

I'm sure you can find another one. But I felt decisions were being made that impacted me and I wasn't really consulted.

 I think too, what's so important, like there are several organizations, I guess more in the corporate sector, they have leadership development programs for, early in career talent that just, graduated college or zero to three years of experience and things.

But even with those development programs, because I participated in one and I applied for one, I applied for two before the one I got accepted in and they told me I was overqualified. Mind you. I just wanna put it out there that just because there's leadership development programs doesn't mean they're equitable.

And a lot of these programs that do exist are like on an equality basis. Everyone gets the fair treatment, right? Everyone gets the same treatment regardless of their circumstance, regardless of their needs. And that's exactly how I know it will never work. Because if you are designing your workplace decisions, your workplace development programs no matter the person you're designing it for, whether it's an exec, whether it's you know, mid to senior level directors or early in career talent, like whatever it is you need to make sure you're doing it in an equitable way and doing it to accommodate their needs.

And something that I think you and I can both relate to is being so young, might be maybe even being the youngest person on the team, we only woman on the team. The only woman you know of a different cultural background on the team. And having to constantly, describe or prove your worth or because, they see that you're a certain age, but you might not have the years of experience that you need.

But it's dude, I can do this in my sleep. You just think that I need 10, 15, whatever, plus years of experience because that's what you had to go through. But literally the nature of work is changing. And so literally in my career, I've gotten a lot of what, higher level titles at a very early in my career.

Like I became Chief of Staff to a C-Suite leader at 24 years old, but that's because. I love what you said. It just about humanizing the workplace, humanizing our daily interactions. And something my mom always instilled in me ever since I was young, is if you share your story, you give permission to other people to share theirs.

I am an open book and I know that's probably a trauma response that I learned from my mom, that she learned probably from her mom and so on and so forth, but with that, with that toxic behavior, I've learned a lot from it. Where if we are open to sharing and we are open to being vulnerable and sharing our experiences, it does bring that, humanity to any interaction, whether it's in the workplace or not. And so I feel my people or in like in my community, the experiences that.

I've endured, like there's been some trauma, there's been some real heavy shit that no one would talk about. And it's just like, why aren't we talking about it? Why aren't we doing anything about it? And so I. After I shared, one of my best friends, passing away at 15, her death actually inspired me to get involved in community organizing.

I took on a whole like, my mom kind of saw that I was like really struggling in high school. And so we put together like a suicide prevention campaign and we raised about a thousand dollars. But I wouldn't have done that without Dr. Slater because he bought the wristbands for us and we sold them.

It said, life is worth living on the wristbands. Oh my God. And we sold them for a dollar a piece, so that talking in front of my whole school in the cafeteria Hey, you shouldn't take your life. Not to make a joke about it, but like we were just, I was getting out of my comfort zone talking about the importance of suicide prevention and that just, It just continued growing and evolving from there, being in my community and just openly sharing these traumatic experiences.

And of course it evolved in my career and now with this podcast. But I see it also in your experience as well. Like no matter how long it takes to open up about something, the fact that you did it and you have the courage to today oh my gosh, I just went, you're in Chicago, I'm in Connecticut. I just wanna give you the biggest hug ever.

This is huge. This is life changing. Yeah. And we're gonna be able to impact so many others just with you sharing your story and like people don't realize this literally saves lives. Yeah. It really truly does. Yeah. 

And I think there's  a lot of I don't know, beauty that came from it in the sense, as a manager, I tried to be like really in tune with.

The people on my team. And for a while I would say I would message them, once a week or randomly, multiple times a week. And I would just say, how's your mental health on a scale of one to 10? And they knew, we had a conversation about it. You don't ever have to explain to me if you say it's a one today, you don't have to tell me why.

I don't care. Like I know my, mental health, like I can be having a good day and my mental health can be like in the toilet, right? Yeah. And so how's your mental health? And then how's your bandwidth? And we created like a little, community of. Thankfully, like I think we had built a lot of trust, if somebody's mental health was bad and their bandwidth was high or whatever it was, we could always offer support.

And I had a team member once say I'm, it's really bad. I'm really like, I'm, today I'm struggling. And we took a team break and we didn't tell anyone who, I just was like, we've been working. We all need like 20 minutes. Let's just all take a 20 minute breather. I sent a picture, it was happened to have been visiting a friend at the time, sent a picture on the balcony.

I was like, my computer's nowhere in sight. I'm reading a book. I was in Miami. Here's a, here's my view. I don't have my computer. We will regroup at one or whatever time, take the 20 minutes that you need and you don't have to tell me what it is. I don't care what it is. I can recognize that people are struggling with things that they don't have to talk about.

And like those little moments of kindness of, and I was able to do that because I had a manager in my, at my previous company that just. She had dealt with a lot of stuff. She had extended so much. Like human, not even, I don't even like, like compassion, but really, like when I think about what it was about her versus other people, it's like she was a human being who treated me like a human being.

It was like I see you. And that was the first time I was like, oh, this is what it means to like, be a manager. This is what it actually means to be like a, not a manager, but a leader. Like some I still am in touch with her constantly 'cause I just think she's changed my life and, obviously she had dealt with stuff and.

Never asked me about mine in, in any sort of like invasive way, but just, recognized, held space for it before we knew that like holding sp, you know, had language for holding space 

I think about the people who were like sitting next to me, who, who I work with, who are good friends of mine, who have never heard that story before.

And it's like you're sitting next to this person or you're really good friend at work and I. They don't even listen to this thing that they've been through. This is, I'd be at work and like I would, hear something that made me think of her or whatever it is. And it's just I'm good.

I'm, everything's fine. So just, yeah, being human, having those conversations. I'm not saying go to work and trauma dump and share all your things, but you can extend grace and like human compassion for people without having to like unload or unpack or even ask them, like whatever they wanna do is great.

Absolutely. No, a hundred thousand percent. Ugh. Oh my goodness. Also, while we're talking side note, I just have to shout out our backgrounds because I really love your background. I just love that you have what, it's two skeletons I think embracing here. Yes. Oh my goodness. It's, I love that. And I don't know.

You can't, thank you. See, mine can see the, it's a skull. Yeah, it's a skull. We're both rocking it, but it's, I think it's great to bring this up now because, I often say in my grief sense world, that every day is dia de los muertos.  And it's really acknowledging, honoring our people every single day.

Like I'm sure there's people in the world that think I have lost my mind because I talk to myself every day, but am I talking to myself? Or I, I say I'm talking to spirit, or I'm talking to, my loved ones that have passed. Like they know everything and everything that has happened.

I had a meeting earlier today that I was preparing for and I was like, yo daddy help your girl out. Hopefully this leads to a potential client or something, and it's just, that's how I normalize my day. But no one will know that if, if I didn't ever share that.

But it's just I just love your background. So all that to say, I love your background. Thank you. Yeah. You're you make me like laugh in the sense of how open you are with your grief. 'cause the first conversation we had talked about it and that was like, We got on the phone to talk about work stuff and somehow, which is great, we ended up like down this path.

But I am like, you were like, I know what I wanna play at my funeral. And I was like, I'm right now. I'm living forever. So don't I have not thought about those things. But with the spirits, I'm always like I do not I'm like scared of everything. So I'm like, if you're here, you can stay, but don't show me you're here.

And Enjoy. Yep. Enjoy your time. But I don't want any light SS flickering. I don't You're welcome to stay, but please do not engage with me in any, I hope distance. Yeah, I welcome you, but I wanna have no idea that you're here to be welcomed. Hey, engage though. That is akay. I am pretty open about it.

Like sometimes I forget how open I am about my grief and yeah, I'm sure it can make other people uncomfortable, but like I am that person on a first date. That's like after of course we get through the basic conversations like, where are you from? What's your family like? So do you wanna give her, and you're like, what's your death story?

That exactly. What song do you want like at your funeral? These things are just so normal for me that it's, I just wanna normalize it for other people. But yeah, it's also been a reality check for me that not everyone is, I don't even wanna say far along on their grief journey, because it's not linear.

It's not, yeah, it's a spectrum thing, but like just more in tune with it. I wanna help people be more comfortable in accepting it and not being afraid of it, and in everything that entails because it's inevitable. It's something that's gonna happen to all of us and our loved ones. And I feel like if we just spend more time talking about it and preparing for it, the more.

Present we can be in our lives. And it will still hurt, of course, when people transition. But I think when you spend the quality time, the intentional and thoughtful time with your loved ones, preparing and planning for end of life, transitioning, it's really beautiful bonding moments too, even though you're talking about something that's, really hard.

Yeah. But in the spirit of that, at the end of every episode on the podcast, I have a creative prompt that I have my guests answer to maybe help them confront their mortality or their grief in a way they may never had before.

So my question to you, is can you describe maybe a book, movie, song, or artwork that has impacted you and maybe has helped you process your grief? 

Yeah, I have two. One is I think a lot of people like resonate with, music that reminds 'em of somebody. But I think, speaking of our grief being a non-linear process there is a song that I heard this year and I think it came out this year, I don't really know.

It's called Orange Juice by Noah Kahan. Noah Kain. K a h a n. You're like into really upbeat stuff. I like to cry, so that's my mo I'm like, if this song is gonna make me cry, that's like my thing. You're like into dancing and all that. I'm like, I'm trying to cry over here.

It's a weird, it's like a, it's a strange title once you hear it. It's it's really good. But there's a line in there that says I've been waiting so long for you to come home that I didn't think to ask you where you've been. And I just was like, heard that song, probably two months ago and was bawling.

And I think it was more so for me, like I felt like I was gone for so long from who I was, from like dealing with the grief or like suppressing it or whatever it was. That I I read that as like a me, like I didn't, I had been gone for so long that I like, I was finally coming home.

So when I heard that song I was like, mental breakdown. Yeah. And I was like trying to explain to my husband and I was like, whatever, it's, I'm not even, I think, I don't even know if he like grasped what I was saying 'cause it was like incoherent, but. Regardless. It's so good. 10 out of 10 recommend.

And then my, the book is this, which I like, never gets enough credit. The Sound of Gravel. Have you heard of this? Never heard of recommendations. We're getting the sound of I don't wanna tell you what happens, but I resonated a lot with the story and my, I think I was dating, I must have been dating my husband at the time.

I don't think we were married. I finished the book and he was not home. And I was like, mental breakdown is mental breakdown has begun. And oh, we had, I think we had just gotten engaged because there's a dude in here. But he reached out to the author and she sent me a copy of the book. Yeah. He like, wrote her this really personal message and she wrote me she sent me the book and she inscribed it and it says, Dear Shereen, I thank you for letting me share my story with you.

Wishing you love and peace on your feeling journey. Warmly, Ruthie. It was like, I know, started crying again. So I will lend like almost all of my books out, but I'm like, no one can touch. It's in like pristine condition. Like no one can touch this. This is like my, but I think, it's a story about like loss and life and it was the first time I saw myself like in somebody who's who has carried on?

And I don't know, it's just, it's profound. So 10 outta 10 recommend if anyone is looking for a phenomenal memoir. Wow. A very depressing, phenomenal memoir. Those are sometimes the best. So I have some homework. I'm going to listen to the song right after we end our episode. Yeah. Text me when you're crying.

I You're gonna be like, what is this? It's and it's funny you say it's all upbeat. 'cause I do have, I have a playlist for everything. I currently have 107 playlists that I've created in my, that's one of my hobbies. And yeah. So if you have an upcoming event, I got you. I'll make a playlist for you.

I got you. Yeah. But one of the playlists that I have is my grief playlist. So I call it Grief Feels, and it has like a whole bunch of songs in there. And, but there's one song that I dedicate to my friend Megan that passed when we were younger. And it's Incubus the band. Wish You Were Here. Anytime that plays, like I get, oh my gosh, I can't I really can't.

I get emotional thinking about it now. And the song from my father that I have is, I'll Be Missing You with P Diddy and Faith Evans, which is like a remake I think of Sting Song or whatever. Who can even listen to that song? Literally it, and it happens all the time. If it comes on in my car or if I'm like in a cafe and it comes on the radio, like the original version, like I cry instantly.

I'm like, I feel like, bye. What do you want me to do? What's the message coming through today? And  I think music and just different forms of, creative expression are just definitely good ways to connect with our loved ones, of course, also for us to just process our grief. So I really thank you for sharing that and being so open, so courageous today. 

  So definitely wanna see if you have any closing thoughts before we end the session today. I do not, but thank you so much for having me and like I said, I haven't shared this before, so it'll be interesting to see what happens when this comes out. But yes, I thank you for creating the space for it 'cause it is so important and I wish I had something like this, honestly far before it ever happened, but definitely as I was grieving.

Thank you so much for being a guest on the show and I can't wait for listeners, listeners to hear your story. And with that, thank you. See you next time. 

 griefsense familia That wraps up another episode of The Grief Sense Podcast. If this resonated with you, please feel free to share with someone who will appreciate it and tell a friend to tell a friend. Also, I'm a firm believer that feedback is a gift, so you know, I'm just saying. I won't be mad if you decide to leave a review and a rating of your experience on the podcast so far.

Also, let's help each other find community and grief, and let's amplify these stories far and wide. Thank you for tuning in in solidarity, Mimi.