Collective Thoughts: Navigating Grief as a Freelancer

Written By Lex Brookman

Alongside all of the additional stress of Autumn & Winter as a freelancer (tax season looming, and being a freelancer in publishing no less) I’m experiencing grief for the first time as an adult, and as a freelancer. And it’s thrown me on a curve, for sure… 

With that in mind, we’re presenting the first article in a series. This is the first article in the Collective Thoughts series, presented (in Tandem) by The Freelance(r) Hub and The Tandem Collective. We’ve pooled our collective thoughts, anecdotes, and coping methods in the hopes that something here will resonate with you or, at the very least, provide support in knowing you are not alone.

This quote stopped me in my tracks, mid-dog walk, with the audiobook for The Third Wife playing over my headphones. It’s bang on.

When you’re working in a PAYE, or ‘normal’ job, and something terrible happens you can let people know, (you should be able to) call off on compassionate leave, and take some time. Your responsibilities become someone else's whilst you deal with the immediate aftermath of your loss.

It’s obviously a different ball-game when you’re a freelancer.

When you’re a freelancer, you’re the business owner - you’ve got the keys, and people are expecting you to take them places, but right now… you can’t even fathom getting yourself breakfast, let alone getting someone else’s TikTok campaign launched. During the darkest periods of my grief, I found myself wishing that I was working in-house. It’s not a real wish, and it was a fleeting feeling, but it’s worth asking why?

It’s the pay thing.The bottom line is, as a freelancer, if I don’t do the hours and complete my contracts, I don’t get paid. 

In my previous PAYE roles, I could take off on compassionate leave, and even upon my return if I wasn’t having a good day, all I had to do was show up, answer an email or two, and I’d get paid for that day's work. Whether I did any work or not was beside the point in that situation. If I was working in an office, physically surrounded by other people, would I feel buoyed by the activity  - physical, walking, talking, laughing reminders that life goes on, and there’s work to do? Or is that the last thing I’d want? 

With that in mind there are huge benefits to being freelance whilst processing grief, which I know some of my Collective colleagues will echo below. 

You don’t have to time-block your processing, as it can feel with compassionate leave, when you’re expected to return bright-eyed and bushy tailed after taking your allotted week off. (This is equal parts a ‘win’ and a frustration for me. As a planner, it would feel easier if I could calendar-block appropriate grieving time, and then tick-box it off.) 

You don’t have to remain in one location to work - if you need to fly out to the States, you can. Home is where the WiFi is afterall, and you can send proposals and pitches from New York.  

You can manage things in a way that matches your own ebb and flow of processing. Feeling good, one day? Great, let’s smash it out, because tomorrow might be a different kind of wave. And that’s okay. (This was one of the more impactful learnings I’d experienced throughout this process. Simply that some days will be fine, others won’t.) 

The scariest thing for me during this process is my lack of motivation or discipline. In our first Freelance(r) Hub newsletter, I wrote a piece about how important those two skills are to being freelance, and now I can’t find them in my toolbox at all. There are moments of brilliant productivity, otherwise there’d be no newsletter (or this subsequent article) for you to be reading, but there are hours of uncertainty and unwillingness.

I don’t have any recommendations.

I don’t have any solutions.

All I do have is the knowledge that grief looks different for every single person, and every single timeline is different. With that in mind, I turned to the amazing collective of people under the Tandem Collective umbrella, and I asked them to share their thoughts on navigating freelance life whilst coping with grief.

Here, Tandem team member Steffi comments on how loss, and experiencing multiple miscarriages in a corporate, PAYE, male-dominated work environment changed her grieving and growth experience dramatically. After returning back to work after two days ‘off with food poisoning’, because it didn’t feel like a space Steffi’s honesty would be welcomed, she  was pulled into a disciplinary meeting.

“I got pulled into a disciplinary meeting for not having updated them as to my whereabouts on that Friday. I quit on the spot, unable to put into words how infuriating I was finding them and their policies when my heart was broken into tiny pieces.

I went on to lose two more babies over the course of a year and a half - and our beloved, ancient rescue Staffy, which was horrendously painful - before our little girl was born. The grief of each loss has, of course, stuck with me, and has made working around other people very hard - fielding "do you want any more kids?" and "is she your first?" after having my daughter was too much for me. 

 When I went freelance, I felt totally free; as if I could grieve in my own time, work in my own time, and not have most days derailed by a throwaway comment. When I feel like I need to burst into tears, I just do it - and my cat, my only co-worker, doesn't mind at all. I'm not making anyone else uncomfortable by taking to my bed for an hour to lie and think, I can talk to people on my terms - whether that's over Whatsapp or email or arranged meetings - and I never, ever need to mask how I'm feeling. The corporate world has a lot to answer for in how it treats people who are grieving - giving them a short period of 'personal leave' in which they're expected to begin, process and finish their grieving then come back to work and crack on is highly unrealistic. While there's no paid leave in the freelance world, I'd choose it a thousand times over, because grief doesn't fit into tidy little scheduled pockets of time. Being freelance lets me work around my grief, to use it to fuel me to do good work when I can, and to sit with it when I can't. The world treats grief as if it's something that we need to get over, when in reality, it's something we have to learn to live alongside - and nobody gets through it unchanged.”

Alexis, a member of our team whose family predominantly reside in America, speaks here about the flexibility that being freelance granted her during the toughest times of her own grief. Alexis had pre-warned her clients that she knew her godmother's life was being measured in months rather than years, and that she would need to be on-call for that, but that timeline changed when her godmother took a drastic turn…

 “Not even one week after I sent that email, my godmother took a drastic turn, and we knew she had only days, rather than months left. I was lucky not to have any projects that were very urgent at the time, and even luckier to have a team that was so understanding. I booked my flight to New York, and in the days that followed experienced waves of wanting desperately to work to distract myself, feeling incapacitated by fear and grief, and consumed by existential crises prompted by these mindsets. Through it all, my team respected my alternating desire to work or be given space. My pod leader (manager) graciously filled in other colleagues so I wouldn't have to explain the grim situation over and over again. 

 Due to their support and the flexibility of working freelance, I was able to travel on short notice to be with my godmother and support her family during her last days. Financially, it was a bit challenging because I had just begun working after a year of university, and as a freelancer there is no compassionate leave or paid time off. However, the tradeoff was the immense emotional and administrative support from my team and the flexibility that allowed me to say goodbye to my godmother; entirely worth the financial hurdle. Three months after her passing, I am now back in New York again, this time for my godmother's memorial. Time has begun its work of blunting the sharp edges of my grief, but the thoughtfulness and empathy of my team bolstered me through this process and helped me banish any productivity guilt during this time. 

I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had finished university classes and started a PAYE job in June, and then had to take 2 weeks off in both June and October of this year. If I had to guess, I'd think such a situation would have made me feel insecure about my employment, and worried I would be seen as needy and ungrateful for the opportunity.

This experience has also provided valuable perspective about the freedom of working as a freelancer. Living in London, I am a costly 8-hour flight away from my family, and my parents aren't getting any younger. Part of the grieving process, at least for me, dredges up unpleasant truths that those we love won't always be with us. Being a freelancer affords me the opportunity to work from anywhere, so I can prioritise time with my family without jeopardising my job or feeling pressured to rush back to London to work. Though I am committed to living in London for the time being, it is comforting to know that I won't have to uproot my entire career if and when I decide to move closer to them.

Grief is never pleasant, but I am so grateful to have found myself working as a freelancer with this wonderful collective over the last four months as I've navigated the process.” 

Project manager Lucy, speaks about the beauty of not having to perform, or wear a mask during her own periods of loss. 

“Working through grief as a freelancer can be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is having complete control over your day; as we all know, grief doesn't follow a specific pattern and can be completely unpredictable, so having the autonomy to decide when you work without having to "update" or answer to anyone during a difficult time in your life is a massive advantage.

I went through a difficult period of loss across the summer and for me, working provided me with a purpose and a distraction that I needed away from my own thoughts and sadness. I would work a few hours here and there, at my own pace, and could stop for a rest or to lay down and cry when I felt it was needed.

 The flexibility that being freelance offers in this respect was incredibly helpful, and something I am so grateful for. It sounds like a cliché but it is so important to listen and be gentle with yourself whenever you are grieving. Of course, the disadvantage of grief when freelancer is the acute awareness that time literally equals money, so there is often a nagging voice in the back of your head that you can't completely fall apart and  not work at all, otherwise next month as well as continuing to process your grief you'll also be coping with a much smaller invoice to live off. 

I think this is where "listening" to yourself and only doing what you feel up to doing is so important. For my personal situation, I was happy to continue working here and there as it did serve as a welcome distraction, but I needed a bit of time away from video calls and meetings. Another word to describe grief is "exhausting", and sometimes I just didn't have the strength to be "On" and putting on a front to other people during a video call. A few days away from this did give me the space and time that I needed, but I think it's so important to keep checking in with yourself and make sure you don't push yourself too hard. 

It has been said that freelance life can sometimes be lonely, which is why reaching out to other friends or contacts you feel comfortable opening up to is really key when you are grieving. 

I recently talked to a freelance friend who had lost someone very close to her and we both had a chat (and a mutual cry!) over Zoom while talking through our respective losses. I'm not sure how much help I was to her but I hope it made her grief feel ever so slightly less isolating. 

(Note from Lex: I can confirm as said ‘Freelance Friend’ from Lucy’s comment that our mutual Zoom cry was incredibly beneficial and was a huge reminder that though I might work-from-home, with a miniature Jack Russell called Polly as my only company for 80% of my week, I am not alone.)

Aurora, Tandem team member who’s based in Spain, speaks here about the unique experience of being aware that ‘something’ is coming that’s going to require more mental peace and careful handling and the benefit of being able to set aside time in our freelance lives to spend with those who may not be with us much longer.

“I haven't been working as a freelancer for long but something I have realised is that being able to work flexible hours is giving me more mental peace. My Grandma is quite sick with dementia, and she doesn't recognise me anymore. Even though I hope she stays with us for much longer, we all know that it is possible she may leave us any minute.

Since working as a freelancer, every time I get emotional thinking about her or I know she is having a hard day, I just take time to go and stay with her. Something I couldn't do when I worked 8,5 hours a day in London. Being able to spend more quality time with her has calmed me and made my life so much more beautiful in so many ways.”

Lex Brookman
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