All Grieving is Not Created Equal

Dee Bailey, MA, CPCC, Life Transition & Grief Coach, guides and mentors people experiencing grief. She has an illuminating model that she created as a part of her master’s degree work that breaks down the many kinds of grieving.

There are four quadrants, where in the upper left quadrant there is Chosen/Elected Change, in the upper right quadrant there is Visible Change, in the bottom left quadrant there is Not Chosen Change, and the bottom right quadrant there is Invisible Change.

CHOSEN / ELECTED CHANGE	VISIBLE CHANGE
NOT CHOSEN CHANGE	INVISIBLE CHANGE

Dee explained that how we support people who are grieving can vary greatly, depending on where the loss falls in one of more of these quadrants.

Losses that we did not choose, and which are visible and obvious e.g., a death, a job loss, or a spouse asking for divorce, are much easier for others to relate to and support.

When you lose a spouse to an illness or accident, that is a situation that you did not choose and it is very visible. This unplanned, visible event elicits much support from everyone. There are entire books on the topic, Hallmark cards specially designed for this, support groups and more.

In contrast, if we quit a job or leave a relationship, support is often lessened because others may feel the situation is our own doing.

When an executive family makes the conscious choice to relocate (usually for a better opportunity), that falls under the category of invisible loss. It’s the dynamic of choice that changes the reactions of others to the experience. That’s when the grief becomes invisible too. There’s not much sympathy for a loss that you chose.

Dee facilitates grief support groups, and once had a request from a woman who had relocated to join her group. “We moved here because my husband accepted a new position. I’m grieving leaving my home and all my friends out East. No one here understands or supports me. I have no one to share my journey with – no one gets that I’m grieving. “

Good support is a critical factor in healing from losses of any kind, but it’s difficult to grieve losses that cannot be shared. If you are feeling lost in your new community as a result of your relocation, your grief is just as real. Consider finding a local grief support group and get the help you deserve.

Balancing the CEO Family

Some would say there’s a lot of ego and dysfunction in the corporate world, especially among those at high levels. One of my life passions – the reason I do what I do with executive relocation coaching – is to provide a healthy, confidential and structured space for relocating families to process all of the emotions that arise during the transition.

Holistic Relo helps them slow down amidst the race of finding a new home, new schools, new doctors, etc., so that what matters (connection with family, life balance, self-care) doesn’t get lost in the move and never get found again.

Serial relocations can led to permanent disconnections from what really matters in life; the focus can shift to titles and promotions versus relationships and life balance. It’s all too easy to for an imbalance to occur within the individuals and within a marriage.

For example, the first time I met with Gail, the wife of a CEO, she expressed concern about her son’s opinion of her. She was convinced that he didn’t value her role in the family unit, pretty sure that he thought her husband, his dad, contributed more heavily to the family and perhaps even to the world, then she did. “He doesn’t get me,” she said, “he doesn’t value what I do.” Gail generously gave of her time and heart to many organizations in a volunteer capacity and she imagined her son devalued it all.

It took some time and coaching to uncover that the sad truth was that Gail also didn’t value herself and her role in the family and in the marriage. She viewed her husband’s large paycheck as “his” and not a shared accomplishment.

Part of the relocation coaching process involves taking a look at a couple’s communication style and frequency. When I met with Gail and her husband Jeff, we discovered a real lack of understanding on each side.

What the coaching process allowed Gail to access was how incredibly valuable she was to her husband, her son and the world. What an incredibly strong woman she was. Managing three relocations with two small children, virtually on her own (her husband went on ahead each time to begin the new position), allowed her husband to readily accept these new jobs and succeed at higher and higher levels. While he focused on professional performance, she maintained life balance at home.  A simple reset of the shared contributions to the family really helped.

While it took time to fully accept the promotion, embracing the CEO within herself allowed Gail to equally weigh her role to that of her husband’s. The coaching process and tools, and a willingness to dedicate time to use them, opened their eyes in new ways and rebalanced their family.

A Relocation State of Mind

An astonishing 35.9 million U.S. residents relocated between 2012 and 2013, according to U.S. Census Bureau reports. That’s 11.7 percent of all Americans!

United Van Lines' Annual Migration Study tracks the states its customers move to and from during the course of the year. After four straight years as runner-up, in 2013 Oregon finally made it to the winner’s circle as the top moving destination of 2013. And after 16 consecutive years as one of the top states people left, Michigan now shows much more balanced numbers.

As interesting as these statistics may be as you compare your own moves (for example, I just moved out of the #2 most-exited state in the country – Illinois), these external results are not what I’m most concerned with.

As Audrey McCollum found while doing research for her one-of-a-kind book, The Trauma of Moving, “Moving was viewed from the exterior. There seemed a dearth of material exploring moving from the interior; that is, moving as subjectively experienced by the mover while it was being lived.”

Since moving is such an emotional experience, it’s important for those who are relocated to feel justified in their grief or stressful feelings. Just because our culture has not yet given credence to this dynamic, does not make it unimportant.

In my own upcoming book, We’re Moving Where? Hit the Ground Running in the Board Room and Family Room, I am striving to educate on topics beyond moving and geography.

As I look at the migration study results, I wonder how many of these moves were a conscious choice, versus a corporate relocation that dictated your new zip code with no input from you. If you’ve had to move to a state you didn’t embrace, my congratulations to you for making it through and finding a way to call it home.

Moving In

The top inbound states of 2013 were:

1. Oregon


2. South Carolina


3. North Carolina


4. District of Columbia


5. South Dakota


6. Nevada


7. Texas


8. Colorado

Moving Out 

The top outbound states for 2013 were:

1. New Jersey


2. Illinois


3. New York


4. West Virginia


5. Connecticut


6. Utah


7. Kentucky


8. Massachusetts


9. New Mexico

Emotional Intelligence in Relocation

More and more, external executive hires are failing, and not for the obvious reasons. Some recent research sheds light on what has been previously overlooked in the hiring process.

“Outside hires take twice as long to ramp up as a leader promoted from within. Astoundingly, C-suite executives report that only one out of five executives hired from outside are viewed as high performers at the end of their first year in house. And ultimately, of the 40% of leaders who are hired from outside each year, nearly half fail within the first 18 months. The direct and indirect costs of the failures are staggering, far exceeding the cost of the search that found the executive.” – "For Senior Leaders, Fit Matters More than Skill,” Harvard Business Review.

As an executive relocation coach, my goal is to help the relocation stick and it’s important to understand the facts behind the failures. Steve McKinney, president of McKinney Consulting, Inc., recently shared this info from a three-year study of 5,247 hiring managers from 312 public, private, business and healthcare organizations:

“The study found that 26% of new hires fail because they can’t accept feedback [coachability], 23% because they’re unable to understand and manage emotions [emotional intelligence], 17% because they lack the necessary motivation to excel [motivation], 15% because they have the wrong temperament for the job [temperament], and only 11% because they lack key skills [technical competence.” – “Why New Hires Fail,” McKinney Consulting, Inc.

I agree with the next statement McKinney makes, “The failure of new hires should not be a surprise because hiring managers’ focus very little on the emotional aspect of the candidate. More time is spent on evaluating the technical skills of the candidate.”

23 % is significant. When an executive is worried about the assimilation of his family to the new environment where they moved to support his career, emotional intelligence is a valuable skill to cultivate. Not just in managing his own emotions around the job change, the new team, the new systems, but as said above, in “accurately assessing” the emotions of his family and spouse so that he is available to help.


My job as an executive relocation coach is to help the executive and the spouse of the executive assimilate into their new home and geographic environment. We aim to develop their emotional skills by planning for the issues we can predict, and to build emotional intelligence and resilience to deal with what we cannot predict.

Present Moment Awareness in Relocation

Most of us struggle with living in the present moment. Thoughts of the future or the past tend to occupy more of our mind than they should. If this is a common dynamic in regular activities, can you imagine what it is like during a relocation?

When you are moving from one city to another and one home to another, you are often holding two separate locations in your mind at the same time; you are not fully present in either one. As you are packing your current home, you’re visioning furniture placement in the new one. This is a time when, if you are not careful, you can be really scattered.


The two circles in the Holistic Relo logo (pictured below) signify this dynamic of being in two places at one time – straddling two environments. The arc between the two circles symbolizes the need for a fluid connection to the present moment as you navigate these two worlds.



When working with clients, I remind them to be very mindful of their feet. This may sound overly simplistic, but often in the midst of emotional transitions, we have a tendency to rush. And when we rush, accidents happen.

Being aware of our feet not only helps keep us grounded in the present moment, it helps us remain stable. When driving, it keeps us focused on when to gas and when to brake. All too often I receive a call from a client who has injured themselves or had a minor car accident while in the midst of a move.

If you can maintain a connection with the here and now, it will not only allow you to be more productive, it will help you manage the fast pace. Research has proven that living in the present moment leads to decreased stress levels, lower blood pressure and an overall boost to well-being – all things that are critical for a relocation.

Here are five quick ways to achieve present moment awareness in relocation:

1)   Use your breath – Inhale as you silently say “I am…” Exhale as you silently say “right here.”

2)   Find your feet – Press firmly into your feet and feel the ground beneath them. A yoga pose that is a perfect embodiment of this concept is Tadasana, or Mountion Pose.

3)   Choose your words – When asked how you are doing during the relocation, affirm what you want, not what you do not want. For example, “ There is plenty of time to get everything done. I am living in this moment.”

4)   Notice your environment – In the midst of the packing, organizing, and signing of documents, pause and take in something from nature – look out the window, or listen to the song of a bird. When we are focused only on thoughts of future or past, this kind of activity is invisible.

5)   Be thankful – Express gratitude for something present in your life right now, e.g., the friend who listened compassionately, or the health of your body.

Thich Nhat Hanh states, “Your true home is in the here and the now,” and I believe that no matter how many moments we have left in our current home or how many moments left until we close on the new home, each moment is precious and deserves our full attention.

Moving a Middle Schooler

An experienced relocator, my client Ruth (not her real name) thought move #4 would be easy.

Not so much.

This move contained an element not present before – a middle-school girl. The first three moves took place before her daughter had started kindergarten. That fact negated all prior learnings. In fact, it made this move harder for her than any before, and any since.

What made it especially tragic was that her daughter, let’s call her Jenny, had just hit her stride.  She’d always been a very reserved girl, and it took her over a year to find her group in middle school. Halfway through 6^th grade, she was happy on all levels – had a solid, good circle of friends, a dance studio she loved, was able to babysit neighborhood kids, and was experiencing independence for the first time.

Ruth dreaded sharing the news, and put it off for probably longer than she should, but had to tell Jenny unexpectedly one day right after school. An announcement had been printed in the city paper regarding her Dad’s leaving the local company, and Ruth did not want anyone else telling her.

(In hindsight, Ruth realizes her husband should have come home to be part of this conversation. See this post for more relocation communication tips.)

Ruth counts this day as one of her saddest as a mother. She tried to do it right, choosing the most peaceful room in the house. She asked Jenny to join her there as soon as she came in from school. When she told her that they were moving, Ruth reports literally sensing a part of her daughter’s soul slip out the windows. Ruth herself remembers going numb, not thawing out until roughly a full year after the move.

Jenny, in typical 13-year-old girl fashion, cried and raged and slammed the door so hard that a picture fell off the wall, shattering glass everywhere. Ruth keeps that picture unframed to always remind her to be grateful for how her daughter has grown in independence as a result of the relocations.

Having done this before, Ruth was skilled at creating closure with her friends. Ruth used this experience to do her best to create middle school closure – sleepovers, a special quilt with all the girls pictures in the squares, ice cream, cakes, presents, poems, scrapbooks, videos and more. However, no amount of preparation could prevent the pain that was destined to come.

While she expected her daughter to grieve, she was not prepared for how much significant grieving would take place AFTER the move. Unlike adults, 13 year olds typically live in the moment and don’t have an ability to anticipate what is coming. The only way to get through something like this is to go through it – together.

Saying Goodbye to Your Home

Though a home is not a person, very similar feelings can come up when parting from a place you’ve loved for years. Also, when you are leaving one home and not yet officially in the other, you are in a transition space that can feel very unsettling. Our home is one of the things that keep us grounded.

While you will naturally be engaged in the future thinking process of searching for a new home, cultivate the fine art of present moment awareness while you are closing up your old one.

The temptation to multi-task really increases when selling one home and buying another, yet accidents happen more often when attention is divided. It’s not unusual for people in transition to experience falls or accidents. It’s almost as if your feet are in two homes at one time. I always advise my clients to be especially careful during this time of relocation. Try to slow down and not rush. Try to be fully present. Focus on the here and now. Be particularly aware of your surroundings when you are driving.

It’s also valuable to create closure as you leave your home. Lots of grief can be present that gets ignored if you are not able to stop and feel the feelings. One of my clients taught me the value of releasing and blessing a home with a ritual. Before leaving their home of 10 years, Susan and her husband methodically and intentionally walked through each room. They stopped and spoke out loud all of the good memories they experienced in each room.

Another couple once shared a funny story about leaving a home. The husband was living in another state while the kids and wife stayed behind for the kids to finish school. The husband wondered why the house was sitting on the market for so long (this was years ago, when the housing market was good). It turns out that the family was removing the For Sale sign from the lawn as soon as he headed back to his temporary house after each visit.

While this was a funny “conspiracy” that a family committed together, the truth is that if you really do not want to move, or if you haven’t had sufficient closure, you may sabotage the sale of your house by not releasing it emotionally.