As many as 1 of every 4 women experience a miscarriage or infant loss - which means it is already affecting your workplace. 
 
“It felt like a silent scream.  I was just screaming and screaming on the inside but no one could see me or hear me.”  - a working mother told me, just a few weeks after her miscarriage

Recommend people generously, speak about their strengths.  Go onto their LinkedIn page and leave a glowing recommendation.  Mention them in a room full of opportunities.

Tearing ideas and people down is cheap and easy work. Be a builder.

When the news cycle feels heavy,

When the loudest voices are angry and full of blame,

It can feel hard/lonely/overwhelming to care for yourself, let alone to care for others.

You can lose energy and lose hope.

But the world needs us - it needs men and women who are commited to empathy and to care and to making our small areas of influence places where people thrive.

So, this week, I am highlighting a few of my current favorite things to give you a bit of a boost.

When the news is bad and I feel small, I feel myself tipping into despair:  the problem is too big and that the people with the power can't or won't do what matters.

But the truth is that no small goodness is insignificant.  And despair robs the world of the incremental grace that I can offer.

I'd rather write about the helpers.  I'm reminded of a quote from my favorite neighbor-and-sage, Mr. Rogers:

If you look for the helpers, you will know there is hope.

There are problems that are way beyond my pay grade (and yours) - I will probably not do some big, epic thing in the world that will suddenly snap all that is broken back into focus.

But I can do a good work, right where I am planted, caring for my family and coworkers, reaching out when it matters, giving my money to meaningful causes, delighting in beauty and practicing gratitude.  I can do a good work of willing the good for everyone that I encounter.

Lake Superior always right-sizes me.  When I am near her, I am awestruck by a force that makes me small.

This is an important truth:  I am significant, but I am small.

Because the churn of work can make everything BIG.

What research, best practices, and personal experience show, again and again, is that one of the best ways to get a person regulated/back to a stable place is not by telling them that they aren't sad or admonishing them to just get over their feelings.

Acknowledgment is powerful.  People want to feel seen and heard.  When our emotions are witnessed, it helps us to move to a different state in freedom instead of pushing down our feelings, pretending that they aren't there, or hiding from a place of shame.

If you are in a leadership position, refuse to tolerate bad behavior.

Yes, their numbers might be through the roof, they might be a savant in Excel or dazzle shareholders, but bad behavior takes a toll, it communicates to the entire organization that your values/handbook don't apply equally to everyone.

Perhaps the person needs to go - or they need to receive some remedial training in how to play better with others.

As I have been meeting with organizations of all sizes throughout the country this year, it's absolutely clear that people are in crisis. And when surveying the teams that I'm working with, I'm seeing some concerning trends.

At Handle w/ Care, we want to share some leading-edge data with you, as well as some actionable tips to help your people, clients, and culture emerge from 2025 more unified and engaged than ever.
 

Creating replicable templates for care is an organizational game-changer.  Most companies rely on a patchwork of episodic support.  Some teams or individuals are big-hearted, gifted organizers that show up with care when it matters most.

But true growth comes from taking those best-practices and making them into standard operating procedures.

Why does loneliness matter?
Your lonely employees are more likely to get sick, more likely to tune out, and more likely to leave your organization.  This is a cost to both your hiring and your retention as well as to your health insurance premiums.

Your coworkers are not family members, but this same cycle of overwhelm and negativity can happen at work.  We find ourselves hyper-aware of all that is going wrong, keeping mental tallies of all the ways that coworkers and clients are dropping the ball.

Or, when that mental accounting becomes too exhausting, we go numb, merely going through the motions of to-do lists.  

There is a better way.