Bounded Grief at Work: Working and Caring for Children with Chronic Illness

Abstract

This article highlights the problem of bounded grief in our workplaces. The article commences by making the case that grief does exist at work—both grief from our personal lives brought to work, and grief emanating from workplace experiences. Then, I present a qualitative analysis that demonstrates grief that can exist in and around our workplaces; the grief of women who are in paid full time work while caring for a child with chronic illness. The findings reinforce that “there's always grief in the room.” For these women, their grief is ongoing, recurring and multiple-sourced. Often we don't recognise grief experienced at work or how to best to respond to it in a workplace setting. Some suggestions are made as to how individuals might best respond to the grief experienced in the work setting.