How Much of Our Personal Lives Should We Share with Co-workers?

What we should always try to remember is that it’s very likely that there will always be a person going through a difficult time at work, regardless of whether or not they show it

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

My Dad died earlier this year and it was honestly the worst thing that’s ever happened to me so far in life.

When he passed away, I was in the midst of getting a promotion at work. Ever since starting this job back in 2018, I had been performing extremely well, improving my numbers each quarter, and never letting any external factors — whether it be at work or in my personal life — get in the way of jeopardizing my job performance. On top of that, I had been gaining favorability with my co-workers along with upper management. Overall, you could say that I was in a very strong position to continue moving up in the company.

However, when my Dad died, I wasn’t sure how long I could continue on with the consistently, strong job performance that I had been maintaining over the years.

At one point, there was a part of me that just wanted to quit. I thought to myself, “Why does all of this even matter when I’m going through one of the worst tragedies I’ve ever faced?”

Despite my troubling thoughts, I persisted.

I took the necessary time off of work for bereavement, didn’t check a single email, and never opened my laptop throughout the whole time that I was off. But, when I got back to work, my mission was to be fully back at work. And that’s exactly what I did.

I sucked it up, I shoved my emotions as far down as I could, and held back my tears at work. I put on a smile, avoided talking about my Dad, and continued to work as if nothing happened. It was “business as usual” as they say.

In fact, I actually worked harder than I ever have in past quarter or even past years and I eventually did get that job promotion just a few months after my Dad died. However, it was certainly no walk in the park. It was tormenting and painful and the worst part was that I had no one at work to really talk to about it.