Interview #9: On Grieving and Strength from Unimaginable Loss

In 2014, Jody LaVoie faced the unthinkable. A mother of three in Chicago, she got a call from the news one day that her husband, founder and CEO of the supply chain software company ArrowStream, had been shot — by an employee.

Overnight and in public, Jody had to figure out her next steps — all while being responsible for the business, as well. She became Chairwoman of the company, figuring out a new leadership team and leading it to a successful acquisition in 2017.

She combined her experience as a female executive with her personal journey through grief—along with professional certifications and specialized training—to create Widows in the Workplace, where she works one-on-one with widows to help them navigate and thrive in their professional lives after loss. She also founded The Grief Company, partnering with organizations to provide training and support for grieving employees—a need that affects nearly 25% of the workforce.

Jody is a remarkable, accomplished woman — and also so kind and easy to talk to. I am excited for you to meet her and hear her story today.

Q: What was it like when you first found out the news of what had happened to Steve? Processing everything, and finding out in public?

Oh, my goodness. It was a whirlwind of emotions. First, I got a knock on my door from a local police officer who just told me my husband had been gravely injured. "Can you get a ride downtown?" That's all he said. He wouldn't tell me anything.

After he left, I went inside. Then my phone rang—it was the news. They told me my husband had been shot and asked if I had a comment. I found out what happened from a news reporter before anyone else told me.

Almost immediately, my mind went to "this man shot my husband." I knew who did it before anyone told me. I don't even know why or how I knew. The man that shot my husband—my husband had demoted him three days earlier. That was a difficult conversation. My husband was really concerned about it because they'd known each other for ten years. We'd been to their house—we knew this person.

The company was just at an inflection point. It needed to grow, and it was time for a new leader in that space. But we wanted him to stay because he had great skills.

Q: What was it like having to share it with your children?

How are you supposed to do that? Do you call your kids? I had no rulebook for that one. And I didn't call them, but they knew because they were googling. These news trucks pulled up in front of our house, and my mother was there with the kids. They had to sneak out the back door of my house and go to my mother's because the news camped out in front of our house. They interviewed our neighbors—it was all over the TV.

Everybody was concerned and wanted to be updated, so I would update the Caring Bridge. But of course, the news followed my Facebook and my CaringBridge [a website for people facing medical conditions to share updates with friends and family] . Whatever I posted, I had to be somewhat careful about because there was the business going on, and I had to keep the business going. Our customers, our investors—it was this delicate dance between all of it.

The team at the company was all hands on deck. They loved my husband and were determined to make sure that the company survived. But it could have gone another direction for sure.

Q: Your company ended up having a successful outcome and exit with your leadership. But for everyone there, that must have been such a traumatic experience, especially since it happened because of another employee.

You know, it really was complex on so many levels. There were 65 employees. Large, but not that large. Everybody knew everybody.

People don't really think about this, but the employees are the first responders in this situation. I'm fortunate that I did not have to see the scene and what took place there, but there were people who did. And that is, I'm sure, burned into their memory forever. They had to close down the Loop in Chicago—streets were closed, they had to exit office buildings.

The impact was widespread. Not only for the employees showing up to work—their mom or dad's boss got killed by somebody at work. What if that happens to their dad or mom?

Or the classmates of my children. How do you explain to young children that this dad up the block just got shot at work? Their dads go to work too, and that stuff's not supposed to happen. Overnight, my kids' world was no longer a safe place, especially my young one. You put your kids to bed and say, "I'm always going to be there for you." And I couldn't say that anymore.

Q: How did you ever regain a sense of stability? Did you become paranoid about things like hiring people?

For me personally, I don't have that fear. I could go downtown Chicago and get shot tomorrow—I could, but I don't want to live my life that way.

I didn't realize this until years later, but I was so angry at this man. He took my husband. He almost took the company down. I wasn't going to let him take me down or my kids down or my family down. That underlying anger is what really drove me, and I didn't know it until I was able to sell the business and finally breathe and start to process, because before that I wasn't processing. I was just in execution mode all the time.

Q: How long were you in that mode before you could process things?

About three years.

Q: How would you describe those years when some time had passed but you were now leading the company?

In those early years, I was navigating completely uncharted territory. I reached out to my college classmates and joined a professional group because, quite frankly, I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed a network—people I could turn to and ask, “What did you do in this situation?” That support was invaluable.

I was a very active chairman because probably about 70% of our money was also in the company. If it went down, we would have been hurt really hard. And we had friends and family as our investors. If the company failed, they would get let down.

Employees had shares too, and they would get let down. Employees had jobs, and they would lose their jobs. There was all this pressure—I didn't want it to fail. So we internally moved some people around to different roles.

When this happened to my husband, I wasn't thinking about the business at first. The next morning I woke up and thought, "Oh, crap." There's the business—what do I do? My first thought was, I have to hire a new CEO. Who do I know? Who do I call? What do I do?

So we looked at what we had and how we could reorganize. The leadership team was wonderful.

Q: You’ve been open about your story, sharing it in interviews, podcasts, etc. What allows you to be public about something that was so painful?

Well, first of all, it was so public that so many people knew my story already. Being able to put my voice to the story versus what the news outlets and everybody else put to my story was helpful for me. It felt like I was taking back control of my story.

And I like helping people. If something in my story resonates with people and they can take just one nugget away, I am thrilled.

We don't talk about grief in our society. People think we've just got to buck it up, be strong, don't cry. Crying makes people feel uncomfortable, so you have to push down all your emotions as much as possible. We've been taught that, and it's so far from the truth and not helpful in healing.

Q: That's so true about our culture—we're always rushing. How does that affect our ability to support each other?

In our culture, everybody's rush, rush all the time. Our to-do lists are overwhelming. So if somebody comes to you, a good friend, to share a poignant moment, something emotional they went through, it's hard for us to quiet our minds of "I've got to be here, I've got to do this," and to pull ourselves out of wherever we were going to focus on this person. That ability to be really present with somebody doesn't happen all that frequently, and that's unfortunate.

Q: That's really interesting. I've thought about how we move so fast in this day and age, but I never connected that to grief specifically. But that sounds so simple—we can help others by genuinely listening to somebody. Though it can be hard in this day and age if your mind is racing and you have so many other things to do.

It is simple. And it's not something we're used to doing because it also makes us uncomfortable. If you're sitting on the couch with your friend and they're crying, you immediately want to make them feel better. You want to do something—"It's okay, what can I do?" And they may just need to cry, and that's okay. But as observers or people that are a part of that, it just makes us uncomfortable.

Q: Before going through this experience of losing Steve, do you feel like you had those same cultural beliefs about grief?

Before experiencing a grief like this? I hadn't really had anybody close to me die. Of course, my grandparents did and older people, but I didn't know how to handle it either. I didn't know what grieving people really needed. I felt uncomfortable. What am I supposed to say to them? And even, "I'm sorry for your loss"—check, done. Now I don't need to say anything else.

My tendency is to resolve. "I can help you with a plan for that. We can fix that." And that's taking away from listening and acknowledging and validating that they're having something rough going on and they just need someone to listen.

Q: How did loss change your perspective?

People don't realize this, but because I work with a lot of widows and grieving people, friendships that you had prior to a loss may no longer serve you. Or the friends that you had don't know how to be with you as this new entity, whatever that is—if it's a single person or someone who lost a child—they just can't relate. Often friendships really change. And you don't expect that.

When I work with ladies, they're surprised by this. It's not immediate because everybody's there and helping at first. But in time, the calls kind of ease off, the invitations kind of ease off, and you're there going, "Where is everybody?"

The people that are supporting you don't realize that you still need support because they look at you and go, "Well, wow, she's going out to work. She's out to dinner with a friend. And I see them smiling. They must be doing really good." And that's not the case.

There is some obligation on the grieving person to tell people how you feel and what you need, which at the beginning, no grieving person knows. You're just trying to figure all that out. But in time, as you get a little bit more used to where you are, you're able to say, "Hey, I'd like to start going out, but all my friends are couples."

And that makes me really uncomfortable now because I feel like the third wheel, or it feels like they're just doing it out of sympathy for me. It's hard. There's so much change and figuring out your new identity, because you do have a new identity.

I'll speak from a widow's perspective. I was a unit with my husband. We were together. We were a couple. We grew up and raised our girls. Not long enough, unfortunately, but as you grow as a couple, with age and experience, you're growing together. And my late husband Steve is always and forever in my heart.

Q: You started The Grief Company, which works with companies, as well as Widows in the Workplaces, to provide coaching for widows. What is it like doing both?

Before launching either, I went back to school, earned my coaching certification, and completed specialized training in grief support. Widows in the Workplace came first—I began working one-on-one with widows over Zoom, helping them navigate their identity after loss, heal, and move forward.

While I continue that work, I knew I wanted to make an even broader impact beyond just widows. The answer? Companies—because we spend most of our waking hours at work.

Grief is more than just death. It's divorce, moving, acquisition at your company, your boss leaving, a breakup with a significant other, pets. Grief touches so many parts of our lives, and one in four people are experiencing grief at any one time. That's a lot of people.

Going back to our earlier conversation, nobody knows how to talk about grief or support grief. And then you layer on top of it—you're supposed to show up and perform at work and you've got all this riding on you. If I tell my boss that I can't think straight because I've got this brain fog from grief, I might lose my job.

And you have all these other responsibilities you have to deal with, whether you're settling an estate for a parent that passed away or somebody that you're an executor for, or now you're solo parenting. It's hard.

Having a very grief-aware workplace means employees know what grief is, how it shows up in your body, how it shows up in your mind, and that you're not over it in a year. What can they do about it? And specifically, what if somebody on your team experienced a loss? What should you do when they come back to the office? Do you talk about it? Do you not talk about it?

What if they're in a team meeting and they start crying? What do you do? What do they do? How much do you ask them about it?

I think only about 30% of employees even know what their bereavement policy is. This means most managers don't really know what it is either, and they're often the first people to get the call when something happens. So for them to be able to know what to say, know where to direct their team members, know how to follow up with them—that would be really helpful.

Company policies are usually like, "Well, you have to have a very close family member"—so if it's an aunt, forget it because that's not close enough. You get three to five days off of work. You just got back from the funeral, and now you've got to get back to work. We'll give you a couple of EAP visits. And that's typically it.

That does sound very harsh, when you put it that way.

It is. Grief falls under mental health. Employers are starting to pay greater attention to how to better support their employees' mental health. And remember, grief is part of that—it's so important.

There are many options out there to support employees. I provide training, but there are also other companies like Help Text that provide text-based support. If you experience a loss, you can enter your profile and what the loss was, and twice a week they will send you scientific evidence-based treatment and healing tips, articles, or motivational quotes just when you need to hear them.

That's part of what I do—I like to open the eyes of the companies I train to start thinking about it differently. It's a bereavement support plan instead of a policy. How are we going to support people?

Q: What would be your advice to anyone who is grieving?

There's no right or wrong way to go about grief. Sometimes when you're grieving, you might put all this pressure on yourself—"I should be further along. I shouldn't be crying all the time." Release those "shoulds"—put them out the window because they're not helpful.

It's going to take some time, and that's okay. Get help and support in whatever way that looks like for you, whether that's attending a local support group or continuing to reach out to friends and family or hiring a coach or a therapist. There are so many options out there, including virtual online free options.

Grief is about connection. And connection comes in so many different forms, but it's about truly, deeply connecting with someone who is experiencing a major life transition of some sort.

We've lost some of our ability to connect, to really listen, to take the time and follow up. To understand that grief isn't done in a year or sometimes two years or three years or five years. I still cry sometimes. It's been 10 years, and that's okay.

Being comfortable with emotions, understanding emotions, and being able to be present around them—that's what we need.

Widows seeking guidance or companies looking to modernize their approach to grief support can learn more or connect with Jody here.

Thank you so much for reading — what did you take away from Jody’s story? Comment below, and stay tuned for the reflections piece next time.