What If Grief Support Lasted A Year

A patient dies quickly, a family can’t agree, a nurse goes home and still can’t turn it off. That ethical weight has a name: moral injury, and it doesn’t belong only to the battlefield.  

We sit down with Kelly Edmondson, a trauma ICU nurse, healthcare executive, certified grief counselor, and founder of Timely Presence, to talk about what COVID looked like from inside hospital walls: constant uncertainty, fear of exposure, rapid loss, and the shock of feeling mistrusted in a profession that’s usually deeply trusted. From there, we get into the quieter, daily moral injuries of critical care and end-of-life decisions, where clinicians are asked to do painful work while wondering if the system is serving the patient, the family, or neither.  

Kelly also shares the story of her son Darius, who died after an epilepsy-related seizure in his sleep, and the moment she realized grief isn’t the notification. Grief is the lived absence that returns on Mother’s Day, birthdays, and holidays. That insight led her to build Timely Presence, a grief aftercare service that helps people show up all year long on the dates that hurt most. We close with concrete guidance for leaders and employers, including her Presence Framework: regulate, respond, remain, plus why bereavement policies often fail the moment an employee returns to work.  

Subscribe for more conversations on moral injury, grief support, and leadership under pressure, and if this resonates, share it with someone who needs language for what they’re carrying and leave us a review.

Learn more at: Timely Presence

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Hi, welcome to the Moral Injury Support Network podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Roberts, President and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated, a 51c3 based out of North Carolina and focusing on helping women veterans recover from trauma that they experience while serving in the military. Today we have a great guest with us, Kelly Edmondson. She is a trauma ICU nurse, healthcare executive, and a certified grief counselor. She is also a BRE mother. Her son Darius died on January 3rd, 2023.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Named to Modern Healthcare's 50 most influential clinical executives in 2026, Kelly founded Timely Presence, a year-round grief aftercare company after living through the kind of loss clinicians spend their careers witnessing in others. Her work bridges the moral weight carried by those in high state careers and the grief carried by families they serve. Welcome to the show, Kelly. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I'm great, Dr. Rowers. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of your network. And I want to thank all of your listeners for their service.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Great. Thank you very much. So you when did you first get into healthcare?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

So I have been a nurse since 2001, which sounds unbelievable, but I've been doing this for 25 years. I have nurses all through my family. My grandmother was a nurse. My mom has a twin sister who's a nurse. Her daughter's a nurse. And so naturally I became one. But my real entry into it was I had a

Why Kelly Became A Nurse

SPEAKER_01 2:20

son very young. I married at 18 and had a son at 19. And he was in a pediatric ICU for several weeks. And the nurses did an amazing job of taking care of him, which is the expectation, right? That's the job. But the way they took care of me and my husband, and one of the most vulnerable periods of my life really encouraged me to chase a career where I could show up for people when they needed it most and make a lasting impact. So that really inspired my entry into uh the career, which has been beyond a gift to me every day. As much as we give, we get so much back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, I've always admired nurses a lot because it's uh I mean, nurses are the ones that really make healthcare work. Um, you know, there's executives that and doctors, they they probably get more money, but it's really the nurses that make things work. Um, because they're the ones that not 90% of the time a patient is seeing a nurse. And they're the ones that are doing like the really difficult work, the the um the dirty work, the dirty jobs, if you will. And they're the ones, I mean, you hit on a great point, it's the nurses that can really make a difference whether a person who's in the hospital or getting health care feels loved and cared for or not. Because a doctor, in most cases, you see for like five, ten minutes, maybe, or twenty minutes, or whatever. It depends on the nature of it, but you see that nurse first, and uh um, you know, and I'm I'm a terrible patient, you know, and a lot of patients are because they come in there, they're in pain, they have to wait often to get seen. And and so nurses have a tough gig because they're already dealing with it's like people at the DMV, right? They're always dealing with people that are in pain, they're suffering, probably scared in many cases, they don't know what's gonna happen, and yet they're expected to be uh, you know, the standard of care, maintain the standard of care, make people feel good, be chipper, all that. I mean, it's a lot to ask, and and nurses do a great job doing that. So I've always respected nurses.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Thank you. It is it's an honor, it's an honor to meet people um in such vulnerable places. And someone told me a long time ago, and I appreciate every member of the healthcare team, we we have to do it together. That's part of the work. But when patients are admitted to a hospital, they come for nursing care, right? That's the reason to be there, with the exception of having a procedure. You're there because you need someone tending to you around the clock. And so that is what we have the gift and privilege of doing every day.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, I appreciate that. And you know, it it became so you were you would have been a nurse, um, of course, during COVID and all that when things were how was that experience for you? Um, you know, because we had limited resources, we had a deadly epidemic going on that there's a lot of fear about that and a lot of unknowns and so on and so forth. How was that time, that two or three years as a nurse for you?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, you know, lived through the bird flu. I was working at a a uh university

COVID Inside The ICU

SPEAKER_01 5:51

hospital at the time, and it was pretty dramatic. I saw really sick people who were really young back then, but COVID was something that was unprecedented. And um the amount of I think there were three things. A, there was fear because we were building the plane as we were flying, right? Every day you would find something new out about the virus, about how to protect yourself, about how to treat the patients, about what was happening with the supply chain. So every day it was like we were like MacGyver. So we were coming in, and you had to figure out with new information, with new supplies, how do we manage these very sick patients? So the unknown was was was unique. Um, the second thing is people died quick. I saw so many people die so quickly. They walked in to the hospitals at the time. Visitation was weird, and you know how how much proximity people could have, and they would walk in, and within a couple of days, they would never see their loved ones again. And that was also unique in the in the mass amount that it came in, right? And these weren't traumat traumas. I was a trauma ICE nurse, I'd seen that all the time. But these were typically some of them were young, healthy people in the middle of their lives. Um, so that was very weird. But the third thing was there was this distrust between information and what the health care providers were giving, which um just created attention. Normally, for 25 years running, nursing has been the most trusted profession in the country, 25 years running. So people love us, they love nurses. They write, they they you the doc comes in, they leave, and then you ask all the questions, right? And then you say, um, is he good? You know, do you like doctors such and such? Right. So people trust nurses, but this was a very unique moment in time where a healthcare profession broadly wasn't trusted. And so um, and some of us didn't trust information that we were getting, right? And so fear, distrust, and then the clinical presentation um uh and the death of people was just so intense. It happened so rapidly and in such rapid succession for months. Um, it really, really, really had a lot of the people that I've trusted and respected for a long time questioning if they could remain in the profession. Um and I've never seen that. I've never seen the exodus from nursing, from medicine, from from all these different healthcare disciplines before and hopefully since that we saw at that time. And so you saw the arise of healthcare entrepreneurs and healthcare people making pivots and moving into uh I know someone who went into banking. Whoa, that's a chance.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

So so it it changed, but what remains, right? So we're three years, I'll say, from the intensity of of COVID, three or four years. What remains is a group of people who are so dedicated to caring for others, who sacrificed time at home with their level very much. Um, you most of us work 12-hour shifts and go home. People spent nights in hospitals and weeks in hospitals and couldn't see families, very much like our service members do. It's not something typical for us. It was it was an atypical experience. And so what's remained, in my opinion, is such a beautiful foundation for building what the future of healthcare looks like. These are people who get it. People who go in now, come in. You have all these nurses who signed up during the pandemic to become a nurse. Uh, and so they just have such a heart for selflessness, for purpose, um, that it's it's it's really impactful to see.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, it's awesome. It's great, it's a great uh attitude, and I appreciate that. It very much does remind me of the military because most people join the military really um or or there's a huge influx of people um in time of war, right? And those people that joined join it specifically for a purpose. Prior to when nothing's going on, a lot of people join for different varieties of reasons a good job, uh, training, college money, whatever. And then um, you know, most don't stay after the first four years, they go, Yeah, it's what really, you know, whatever. But the people that do stay tend to be very dedicated and loyal. They they have found like a sense of I mean, they complain, but we you know, it's part of the gig. But you you have this sense of like uh a purpose to your life, right? And it's also there's also things that are similar to me, like long working hours and uh dedication beyond self, some level of sacrifice of your body, your own health and well-being for the purpose of the greater good of a community, all that. So I see a lot of like um parallels there. Um, but also there's you know, as in the military, it can be a pretty toxic environment at times. And so, you know, this is a moral injury podcast, and and I know you're familiar with that term. So during COVID, did you see what would you what would you term as moral injury happening? Um, and and kind of how to talk us through that, what what you saw or what was the cause of it, what were the different contexts for it?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah, like you know, it's through the pandemic and really throughout

Moral Injury And End Of Life Care

SPEAKER_01 12:03

my career, perfect uh, especially in the ICU environment, there's so much moral injury. So you see people who are languishing for lack of a better word, right? People who have probably no future expectation of a high quality of life.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Um you're talking patience here or okay, okay, yeah, got it, got it.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Um, people who are um in pain and for a variety of reasons. Um, either families are left with the very difficult decision of turning everything off, right? Which is an incredibly that's moral injury, right? Right. You're asking me now to say, mom, it's over, right? Very difficult decision for uh for them. But but but for clinicians who day to day take care of patients who, when they touch them, they moan in pain. They have to move and reposition them to keep them from getting bed sores or all of those things. And you can see the agony um in a patient when you see families that are weddings, weddings and end of life, I'll tell you, you you get to see what a family is built of. You see families that aren't in agreement on decisions, right? And so um the healthcare clinicians are left in the middle, and the ethical choices about whether or not the choice to keep someone alive. 80% of healthcare dollars are spent in the last year of life.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Um, are we doing the right thing for the patient or are we doing it for the people around them? And so you see people that come into work day after day and see people become more frail, more fragile, more vulnerable, and they're unable to make decisions and choices for them. And so how that shows up for clinicians, I think, is very much how it must show up for people in other services, right? You start wondering, does is am I actually doing good?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Right?

SPEAKER_01 14:14

I'm here to serve, am I actually doing good? Um, you start to worry about, you begin to place yourself in those situations, right? And so with COVID, I remember a nurse stopping me in the hallway. I was a healthcare executive by then. I I oversaw nursing for an entire hospital. And she stopped me and she told me at night she'd had the same dream every night for nine days. She'd go to sleep, and she was a patient would die as she was zipping them up in the body bag, and she got to the face, it was a different one of her co-workers. Oh, wow. Now we had lost two people that worked on our team just prior to that, right? And so she couldn't get it out of her mind. It was interrupting her sleep, right? Every day people are going into the room, so we're not sure if we're keeping ourselves safe or not. Right. Right. And so you see this, this this uh fear of self or you know, fill of fear of herself being in here. The question's whether or not I'm doing the right thing, and then the inability to leave that at work when you go home.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah. Yeah, it's huge. Um, and I I I have a chaplain friend, he's he's not a hospital, he's not hospital chaplain now, but he was a hospital chaplain for years. And he he had um, we talk about what you mentioned that so much healthcare dollars being spent on, you know, and and in the difficulty of families making decisions, and you know, most people don't have a living will, probably, and that makes it challenging, and and so on. And and he he said a similar thing. He said, you know, people are making uh decisions about keeping a family alive member alive for themselves, not for the family member, right? Because they can't they can't accept that they won't have them. And my own observation is there's a lot of guilt involved with um I should have spent more time with this person, I should have, and so like once they're gone, there's no way to make up for that, right? And so people are afraid of of that kind of guilt, which is also a moral injury, and so um, but you know, and and there are many in the healthcare field, and and he was a proponent of having a committee, um, or at least the idea of a committee making the decisions which would really, really upset tons of people, but it's just you know, you're asking family members to to make such a hard decision, and so there are no easy answers in all that, and and it and it and again, it's it's like one of those moral injury, one of the components or or one of the situations where moral injury can occur is when there doesn't seem to be a right answer, like you're making a decision between two crappy answers, and the outcomes are gonna be like there's you know, no matter what, somebody's gonna suffer, somebody's gonna, somebody's gonna, you know, die or be in pain or whatever. And so you have to live, it's somebody somewhere has to to make those decisions and live with them. In the in the military, it's commanders, uh, but in healthcare, you know, right? Nurses or maybe a doctor sometimes have to make like tough decisions, families, all that, right? There's a lot of no easy answers, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

That's right. At the end of the day, nobody wins with these decisions, right? Somebody, there's a patient or family or a team that is suffering, and generally it's all three.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Right. Now, so as a as a healthcare executive, and and it's your your job to oversee nurses, it's not just about standards of care, right? Because you're a deeply caring, I can tell just by meeting you in a few minutes, you're a deeply caring, compassionate person. So you can feel you can empathize with those nurses and what they're going through because you've been through it for one. Like you weren't, you're not a Harvard grad person that just got dropped in, right? You right, you did all that work. How do you help people? How do you help them work through

Leading By Staying Close To Patients

SPEAKER_00 18:45

this, these moral injurious uh situations, events, and decisions?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Yeah, you know, I think you brought up a good point. And one of the things that I think is so important is the further you get away from where the work happens, right, the more your perspective perspective can change. And so um, when I moved into my the newest role that I have, um I decided to go out and just shadow nurses, go spend time in the units with them, understanding the work. And I went to our trauma burn step down unit. So we do a lot of care. Burns are um awful, they're just incredibly painful. They they they have a psychological component to them, they change the function, um, they're they're very, very painful. And so I went and spent some time in our our trauma burn ICU. I followed a nurse for eight hours. And uh I had done it as an ICU nurse years before, but not in the units right outside of the ICU. And so I went and spent time there. And I did two dressing changes with the nurse I followed that day. One was two and a half hours. The other the other was almost four. Wow. Almost the entire eight hours I spent with this nurse in the room with one patient um with heat lamps because uh right, you are undressing them, um, they don't have skin, um, very painful. You're continuing to manage pain, you're talking the patient through things, you're assessing how the wound, it is complex work. And um, you're calling the doc in so he can take a look. And what I realize continually from that, it's been a continual reminder, is that I can never get so far away from where hands touch patients that I can't make decisions that matter. And so going out and I call it feet to street and learning about what happens. You know, I'm a trauma ICU nurse. I never delivered a baby except for the ones that I personally burned.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Yeah, okay, right.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

So I I I need to go to labor and delivery and see what's it like when you know you're you're calling the midwife in because maybe there's something that doesn't look quite right, or you've got family dynamics that make it difficult. We have to know that. So then when I'm making decisions on what we do with education or what we do with supplies or where we spend budget monies that I am informed. And to me, um, the best show on TV to me has ever been Undercover Ross. Because there's so much that you learn from the people who you are entrusting to do the work, right? And so um, for years I nursed patients. That was my job. My new job is to nurse the nurses that nurse the patients. And to do that, I have to understand their work. I have to meet them where they are. It keeps me relevant, it keeps me humble, um, it makes me approachable. But the bottom line is it makes me better. It makes me a better nurse, a better leader, and in reality, a better human.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah, I love that. And you know, it's it's the old thing you you learn it, any kind of leadership. Course you've ever taken, manual. I mean, you don't get far into it before you learn the leadership by walking around principle. And um yet most people don't do it, like they get busy doing the administrative stuff. And some people I've I've met plenty of military leaders who are far more comfortable doing administrative stuff. And but one of the things, and I recently wrote an article about military leadership and ethics. Um, and as I was like thinking through this, uh, because you know, I was thinking uh in a similar vein, like what about those decisions where everyone is painful, especially when you're talking combat, and this is very similar in law enforcement, other kind of high stakes, medical, wherever there's a high-stakes profession, even the legal field, um, where no matter what decision I make, somebody's gonna be hurt. You still have to make a decision, though, somebody has to make that decision. And as I was thinking through it, it really occurred to me that what where leaders really fail in this endeavor, and where they really harm their troops, because the the troops know these decisions have to be made, and they and they really sign up for it in many cases, so they get it. Like cops know there's gonna be stuff that happens, you know, ENT, whatever it is, right? They know where leaders often fail is they don't have enough of a relationship with their followers, um, that when they have to make those decisions, the followers can know for certain, hey, they made the best decision they could, right? And I think what you're talking about lends to that. When you're out there with people, you're getting to know them, you're building relationships with those nurses. They know that when a tough decision has to be made, they know you well enough, they go, Kelly's gonna make the best decision possible, and it makes a huge difference. The other thing I wrote was that after those decisions are made, circling back with the folks and saying, Hey, let's let's debrief about this, let's talk about it, why I made that decision. And if you're able to say, let's talk about, you know, let's give people a chance to say, Well, why couldn't we done this? Why couldn't we have done that? But that's another opportunity to circle back with people and say, Hey, I know this was painful, here's why we did it, here's the decision I made. Even if they don't agree with it, they can say, hey, the transparency in itself is so valuable and goes a long way towards uh mitigating moral injury, you know, it's often the absence of knowledge about these decisions, and people are left to assume things. Um and uh often their assumption is gonna be wrong or negative, and it depends on their mindset and all this stuff, but uh without clear information, people are gonna think whatever, and if they don't know you um they also have no reason to trust you, and so it's basic leadership 101, but it's like people don't do it, and is is in in your in your position as an executive, is it challenging to be able to find the time to get away from things to go spend time with the folks?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Or it's not accidental, right? This is it's it has to be incredibly purposeful. And um, in fact, um the HR executive and I have now made a pact, and we are spending three Fridays a month um from eight to noon doing exactly that together, right? Because there's this clinical component, there's this, but there's this people component. And together we can look at what's working, what's working for our patients, what's working for our team, and what's not. And so it is blocked. My assistant knows that, my team knows that. It is every Friday, three Fridays a month, dedicated to feet to street work. And it is so meaningful. Um you know, we have we have 25 hospitals, and so um that's a lot of ground to cover, and there's no way to do it if you don't decide that it's a priority. And the reality is when you're the boss, there's some things that you get to make a priority and some things you know, but but if you don't plan it, right, other things move around it. And I've certainly been a victim of that, and so I've taken more control over the intentionality of having it scheduled on my calendar.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah, no, I love that. You gotta build in your calendar. One of the things I love about Calendly, and I first was first against using it, I want to control my own calendar, but then one of the benefits of giving my calendar link out to people, they can schedule it because it forces me to block time in my calendar. Um, and then and then because people are finding space my calendar to put themselves in, I can't compromise on stuff I blocked in and say, well, you know, because before it's like, hey, what about this day? You're back and forth, back and forth. One, it's really inefficient, but but you're also back and forth on well, this, and then you go, Well, I can move that, let me just move that, and then pretty soon, you know, I still there's still things that sometimes I move on my calendar, but there's a lot less of that. Uh, me compromising on things, and just like I just say, hey, here's my link schedule. It may not schedule for a month, but that's fine. You know, if it's really important, I'll say, Hey, if you can't find a space, let me know. So I can move something, but in general, it does help a lot. One of the one of the failures that I had, I would say my last position, I was a retired sergeant major, and I was largely responsible for uh all the religious affairs NCOs in the Army Reserve. And because I had grown up, I knew so many of them, and I and I had a lot of them that that were really, you know, we had a good relationship, strong relationship, and so on. Um so I was sort of comfortable with that, but

Trust, Transparency, And Hard Decisions

SPEAKER_00 29:13

there were some that that really hated my guts, and I could sort of find out. I found out through other people, and and there were there were a lot of false ideas about me, right? Um and and one of the mistakes I made was I didn't lean into that enough. I didn't try hard enough to win those people over, you know. Um I I sort of like I sort of like hunkered down on on this concept of hey, a true lead when you're a true leader, people are gonna throw tomatoes at you. Some people are gonna hate the decisions you make, you can't do anything about it, and so on. And to a degree that's true, right? But I could have tried a lot harder to say, hey, you know, and maybe I would have never win those won those people over all of them. But what happened was um, you know, for those that were sort of outside of of that relationship, that that had you know never really that never built a relationship over the years or whatever, they were able to generate a lot of there was a lot of false ideas about me, and it was just like there was no one to give them the truth, except for people in sort of in my circle that would say, but I mean, I wouldn't expect them to defend me because you're not gonna, you know, if if the pe like the per person that hates me is also a friend of yours, you're not gonna exist, but and I'm a friend also, you're probably not gonna say, Hey, you're wrong about you're just gonna be like, Okay, well, I I don't I don't know that that's true, but okay, you're gonna move on, right? You're not gonna get in a so I missed an opportunity um to to like win some of those people over and and you know change the narrative about me now uh again like part of it was uh you know I could sit there and make excuses all day why it didn't happen, and I don't I don't like carry a lot of shame for it or guilt for it, but just looking back on that's that's sort of that challenge of leadership where uh it's one to like like I was doing a good job building relationships with many people, but you know, how much better of a leader could I've been if I would have said, okay, these really tough people who have false ideas about me who who you know kind of love to hate me right now, could they be one to my side? Because I still need them to do their job, right? And I still have to make decisions about them. Um, and I try to be fair about everybody, but what I think is fair and what they believe is fair may be two different things, and I I missed, you know, so I missed some opportunities to to really work that piece. And I would say, you know, for others, the only reason I share that is not is just you know, for others who might be listening, uh that's an important part too. Like those who are who are maybe not in your corner who don't understand the decision you're making or why things have to be a certain way or whatever, um you know, are we are we talking to those people and working with those people? Um you know, um, so I wanna I want to switch just a little bit. Um you mentioned that your son Darius passed away in 2023. Can you give us the story on that?

SPEAKER_01 33:01

And so um Darius was um a super vivacious kid, super vivacious. Uh there's not a room that he didn't walk in and come in. And that is the truth since he was born. Um and at 18, he was diagnosed with epilepsy suddenly. Younger son called me at work, said, Darius won't really wake up. Um

Losing Darius And Learning Grief

SPEAKER_01 33:28

what do you mean? He just keeps moaning. We can't really get him to wake up. Then he called back and said he was foaming at the mouth. This is within minutes. So I was I was on my way, but I said, call the squad. Um, met them at the ED and um newly diagnosed with epilepsy. So tough time. This was just after he graduated high school. Um, really tough time to have a chronic diagnosis that requires doctors' visits and medical management, prescriptions, right? It really kind of disrupted life for a few years. So he fell behind his cohort and college and all of those things because we had so much to get ready. Uh but gosh, was this kid resilient? And so uh without the ability to drive, um, while needing to be cognizant of his surroundings and who's around me because I don't know when I'm gonna go out, he finished college, he became a realtor, um, he lived in the state of Ohio. We're from Ohio, and so in negative temperatures, this kid was riding a city bus to go meet clients to sell homes. I mean, he was just so resilient. And on January 2nd, he had spent uh the evening. This is everyone's still celebrating the new year. He had spent time um at his father's house um uh with a family gathering and celebration. Went home to go to work, never showed up. And so uh my current husband and I were actually on a cruise at the time. We were uh my youngest son had just moved out, so we were empty nest empty nestering. Um and he called and he kept calling, which was really strange. And so um I finally saw it. I called back and I knew something was wrong right away. He said Darius died last night, and might have delivered that news to hundreds of people, hundreds of people. Um and I instantly understood in a way that I couldn't before, um, what it was like to be the recipient of that news. And so um he had seized in his sleep, aspirated, and died. Um didn't show up to work the next day. Um his girlfriend went over and found him. Um and that really just started a cascade of of a whole different life for me. Um, I had lived on the edge of life and death since 2001. Right. Um but uh being inside it, there's so many things that you know that are new. Like I thought when I was giving the nerd the news to people they were grieving. What I've learned is they were saddened, they were shocked, they were hurt. Um that's not grief. Grief is when you begin to understand what the absence of this person, this thing, this identity, whatever it is that you've lost, what the absence of that in your life is, right? So that is two months later when you realize when I realized I can't call my son, right? That was four months later, the first Mother's Day that he wouldn't be around for. His birthday's Christmas Day. That's leading up to the first holiday season. Born on Christmas, died January 3rd. The entire holiday season is covered. Um, when people are singing carols and hanging lights, which they should. It's it's my favorite time of year, and it's different now than it ever was. That's grief. Grief is not the knowledge, grief is the feeling, it's it's what it's the lived experience of what that knowledge is. And so I went on this journey of learning what grief is, and you know, there's this this of this this traumatic event that occurs, and you're like, am I safe? Can I can I move on? And then grief is what do I how do I live forward with this information? And so um I've spent the last three and a half years really exploring that and understanding it and understanding how grief shows up in all kinds of things. It's it's the loss of a marriage, it's the end of a career, right? It's it's so many things and it's disruptive, and you must pay attention to it because there can be another side of it where you're learning to walk with it, and so many people get stuck in it for far too long. And so I I'm really on a quest to help people learn how to manage through and carry uh their grief, their loss, their love with them.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

Yeah, it's really profound because uh I love the way you put that is the sort of grief is the actual absence of of that person in your life. And um, you know, it's uh within our own family, we've had some, you know, Christmas was uh uh it is a sort of time where you know that's when our some family members pass away too, close ones. So so I understand that um you know that that's sort of like it's supposed to be the happy time and the Christmas carols and all that, but for a whole a whole lot of people, it it can be a stark reminder of who's not there, um, especially around a time when it is about family. I mean, if you take the the uh commercialization out of it and say it is about family, it is about joy, it is about all this, um, and life and so on. Uh, but for many people, like there's a that that element and so uh of grief because of of lost ones, even if they didn't pass away around that time, still you miss them there. And with my my wife's family, that you know we would have her family lived nearby. So at Christmas, there was often a lot of togetherness, and many of them have passed on now. So so Christmas changed dramatically in terms of how it how it was, you know, how it sort of lived out. And my wife still struggles with that because she she has a lot of fond memories of all the in-laws and outlaws gathered around, you know, to for for Christmas meals and and Thanksgiving's another one. So um is that where is that where timely presents came in that the products that you do, that service you do? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Yeah, so that that first Mother's Day. Um, you want to talk about commercial. Oh my goodness, you have no idea until until Mother's Day's Mother's Day is painful. You have no idea how commercial it is. But oh, there's so the banners that you can't walk into a store, there's pop-ups on your phone, it's everywhere. Right. And so this was four months later, and I was electing to opt out of Mother's Day, right? I told my husband, uh, like you tell the kids, like, I'm not interested. So don't come over with balloons and and

Turning Dreaded Dates Into Rituals

SPEAKER_01 41:05

I am uninterested. And you know, I was telling my sister that and she said, I'm coming, and mom is coming, and her daughter's coming, and we don't have to do anything, but we're coming. You're not going through this first Mother's Day alone, and so they did, and ultimately there were six of us, and we spent the weekend uh really living in the light and the love and the remembrance of Darius. And so um, I mean, we talked about the loss, it's part of the story. Right, but there's so much joy in the other part of the story that we spent so much of our time and who he was and how he showed up and how we loved him. And everyone brought memorabilia memorabilia of him. And it had taken this day that I had spent a couple of months dreading, I mean days and days of dread, and turned it into what was like a celebration of love and life. And it was so profound to me. Like this day, this day's gonna come anyway, right? The day is coming. Um I can reframe the rituals around it and make it land better for me. And so my neighbor had lost her husband of 50 years a couple of months after Darius died, and his birthday was in June. So I decided to create that for her for June. And then their anniversary was July, and I decided to do it in July, and the way she responded to it, how much how much gratitude she had because Mike had died in April. By July, there were no more calls, right? Nobody's called. And so the intentional recognition that this day mattered, it was important, and and I know that you're still grieving, made the load lighter for her that day. And so I just started doing it for people because it's kind of like when you buy a car and suddenly I bought a Genesis, and now every car I see is a Genesis.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Yeah, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

When you experience loss, you suddenly are become acutely aware of how often people die. It's it's it's a very universal human experience. And so I started doing it for people. And the response was always the same. You remembered. He showed up. This is this is this day, his birthday, his his this father's day, whatever it was, was intentional and crafted for their relationship. And it felt like a thing. And so I was literally, you'll appreciate this, um, starting my dissertation. And I dropped out of my PhD program and enrolled in an MBA for entrepreneurial studies and built timely presence through it. So um, you know, our goal, our intent, our whole intent is to make sustained grief support the standard and not the exception. And so we make it easy for people who love someone, who care, who want to be there, but are busy in the logistics of their life because life goes on, right? You you go back to living and we're celebrating Father's Day. It's hard for you to recall that your friend's Father's Day feels different, right? And so, you know, for the cost of a beautiful floral arrangement. We provide heirloom quality gifts that arrive on the dates that matter most all year long through that first year of grief. Um, our last gift comes on the one-year anniversary of the lost. And every one of the gifts is tailor-made. It's they're customized and personalized to the person that we're remembering. They come on the dates that matter and they reflect love. Um they they honor the love while holding the loss. And so that that's that's what we do all year long for people. And it has been um beautiful, not only for the recipients, but the gift givers. I love getting messages from them that say, thank you for standing in the gap for me, right? Um so that's that's timely presence in what we do.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Yeah, that's amazing. Uh I love that. And so how does how does how does it work? Do they like how do you get this information about you know, to be able to customize and do all that? How how does the the process work?

SPEAKER_01 45:37

So we we have a website. When someone purchases a gift, we just ask for a few pieces of information. We know by the package that you select what the relationship is. And so some dates are default. Um, and we'll ask for a few things date of birth, date of death. Um, if it's a spouse, we'll ask for a wedding anniversary if you can get that. If not, we'll use Valentine's Day. And then we just go with the calendar. We go,

How Timely Presence Works

SPEAKER_01 46:02

we did send something right after the funeral. Um, and all of the gifts have been selected intentionally. The first gift that we send is an engraved wooden memory box. And so um, we send that. It's got your person's name and date. It's got a beautiful quote on it. We sent that because after the funeral, you have all these things. You've got obituary, you've got charts, all these things, and nowhere honorable to store them. And so we wanted to keep a place that was easy to get to pictures or memories that you wanted to look at um, you know, instantly. And so we have that for the birthday. We send a web chime. It's my favorite gift. It's interactive, right? So I need to feel close to Darius. I go sit out on the deck and he talks to me all the time, sometimes too much. Well, what is the message, kid? What's the message? Um, but we were really intentional. And so, you know, from those few pieces of information, we ask for one uploaded picture. Um, we send out this calendar, these these gifts on the emotional calendar, and we send you an email that just says, Hey Dave, don't forget um Kelly's son's birthday is next week, the one times on the way. Just so if you want to have a more um intimate encounter, you're able to do that. And so um, yeah, one interaction, one submission, and we take care of the year.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

That is so amazing. It's such a great um concept. And I think one of the things I love about where technology is at now uh with AI and uh uh other technologies is that we're able to do these sort of things uh better than ever. Because we have we have access to information at our fingertips. And so just to be able to to have this idea, technology really helps, you know, on the back end and the front end, but aside from the technology, because that's just a small part, is the heart of what you're doing, and that is so incredible. Uh, that you would it's such a great idea. I mean, this is uh um I'm telling you know, it's sort of like related to you stop your dissertation to take an MBA. Well, I I recently decided, you know, with our nonprofit, um, I decided the the biggest weakness we have is marketing. We don't have a marketing expert, you can't afford to pay one right now, and so so we have marketing interns and blah blah blah, but it's really me that's deciding, and I'm not the trained marketer, I don't know very little about marketing. And surprisingly, the army doesn't teach you anything about that, right? So, you know, spending almost my entire adult life in the army didn't help me with that. So I I started taking a graduate certificate program in digital marketing from Wake Forest University because I said somebody has to know how to do this, and I can't just I can't afford to pay an expert who can tell me what to do with marketing. So I started, but it's really cool. I'm learning a lot, and I'm finding this is really interesting stuff, and and so we're studying different, you know, part of the case studies we're doing is on companies that are that are able to um do this kind of uh thing that you're but customization that you're that you're that you're talking about and how much technology now really enables that for any industry. And so, but it's not about the technology. Um, you got to know how to use it, and I'm certainly learning how to take advantage of it to find our niche and get the word out to people and stuff. But but but behind it, what's never changed is the heart of the leadership and what they're trying to do for people, um, not get money from people, you know. So so so I love this heart. I think it is such a unique um way to provide a really meaningful service to someone that that lasts, um, that has some real long-term um you know benefit to it because they'll always have that wind chime, and every time they hear it, it's a special memory. Um, and all those gifts are are something that goes beyond the year that you provide it, you know, during that time. It's that's right, it's really amazing. And I I would love um I really hope that that uh you just get millions of people um taking advantage of that service because it it does sound amazing.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

Yeah, thank you. My son lives on.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So um just kind of wrapping it up here, um where do they find these products? How do they sign up for them? So on and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

So our website is the timelypresence.com, the timelypresence.com. Um, but also we have a really active social media presence. And so on here, we're teaching, we have lessons for the bereaved. You know, how what's it what's it mean to get from here to there, right? Um we have messages for those who love someone who's grieving to help them show up better. Um, and increasingly we're giving messages to employers um because this is a very important point that we didn't talk about. Um, employers have a responsibility to show up and meet their employees where they are. And an employee that's in pain, in crisis, and grief and trauma needs different support than when they aren't. And so we are helping employers become more grief competent to show up, to have the the words, the skills, the adaptation to be able to support somebody the day they come back after their wife died. Um what's week two look like when I've returned to work after the death of my son? Um, it matters. And so um our social media presence, we're on Facebook and Instagram. Instagram's the timely presence, Facebook is Timely Presence, and I, Kelly Edmondson, do a lot of teaching on LinkedIn. So um just um important free resources for people on how to show up better and how to manage your own burden um easier. Um, and the timelypresence.com for the gifting service.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Okay, great. Well, we'll have we'll have links like for people who watch this on YouTube or or watch it on their computer, we'll have those links and stuff. But uh thank you for that. I do want to talk for a minute. You brought up a great point. Uh I don't want to skip by that where you talk about employees employers' responsibility. Um, that is huge, and I find uh probably very few employers do that well. Um and I actually think they've gotten worse at it over time. Uh, but just for a couple minutes, talk about that part of it, how you see that as an employer, as an executive.

Employers And The Presence Framework

SPEAKER_01 53:44

Yeah, you know, I think there's two things. So when we have a policy problem here in the US, um, the average bereavement day allotted is 3.5 days, regardless of relationship, right? So I get 3.5 days for my 92-year-old grandpa and 3.5 days for a seven-year-old son. So they're different. They're different, right? And so um, A, we have we have a policy problem. Um, but B, even if um you you manage through that, right? You're you're able to use PTO or or there's donation policies or what have you. Um when you return back to work, uh, leaders don't know what to say. And so we have built a framework. It's called the presence framework. It's eight pillars, but really based in three categories. Three things to do to support somebody who you are leaving who's grieving. And it's the three R's. The first is regulate. And that means have some emotional regulation when you start these conversations, right? I can't tell you the number of times someone approached me after Darius died and I ended up consoling them in the conversation. Not helpful.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

Yeah, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Right. Part of this is because we don't attend to grief, and so people are bringing their own grief into these conversations. Right. But get some emotional regulation. Um, be be strong enough to be able to engage the conversation and don't do things like minimize a loss, encourage them to move on too quickly, right? Regulate yourself. Number two is to respond. And so that is do something. Something. So many people do nothing because they don't know what to do, so they do nothing. Something is um not how are you today? It is tell me how this first week back went, right? It is a listening and exchange that's more than okay. It is asking the questions, right? Does this schedule still work for you? It is intentionally thinking that Thanksgiving is coming and your mother's gone. So it's gonna look different. So I am going to intentionally say to you, I'm thinking of you this Thanksgiving. Um, I I know it's gonna be tough. It's not a solution, it's not a fix, it's not advice, it is recognition and acknowledgement that your person is going through something. So respond in some way, do something. And number three is remain. And that means don't do something once. Grief is a journey, it is ongoing. And so when they come back and you have a brave conversation week too, you need to have a brave conversation month too. You need to check in with them on their birthday. I know it's different this year. Um, I'm just thinking about right, you you've got to have some intentionality and to planned touch points that just say, I'm still thinking of you. I know this still isn't easy, and you're still not alone. That's it. Three things. They're not complex. Yeah, uh, we give people tools and tips for it, but treat people if you if you've lived three, if you know, you know, right? If you've lived through, um, those things matter. They're small, they're simple, and they're significant, simple but not simplistic.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Yeah, no, I I love that. And I I think um where what I've tried to do is um when people ask me, because cause I worked in the chaplaincy for 20 plus years in the army, so I don't know what to say. What should I do? It's really not about what you say, it's about listening well and just acknowledging uh that what they're going if you don't know, you don't know. I mean, if you've never had that experience, you don't you don't need to fake it. You just need to you know listen to them ask about how they're doing and and what they're feeling, and just listen and acknowledge, you know, even in acknowledgement that must be really hard for you. Um how can I help? How can I help? And and that just you know um and then do what they ask you to do if you're able, and those little things, it doesn't have to be big, you don't have to, you know, that you're not gonna necessarily make them feel good because they are suffering loss, but it's that knowing that you genuinely care enough to spend some time listening to them, no matter how long they take, you know, and you can get people that once they really open up, they really trust you, they'll talk to you for an hour. And that's okay. I mean, there's nothing else more important you can possibly be doing at that time. So um, and even you know, I would get in trouble sometimes with uh higher uh like the command sergeant major of the whole army reserve, he wasn't happy with me one time because right before this meeting I was supposed to have it was with other sergeant majors too, and it was sort of a big meeting right before it, someone came to my office and they were really hurting, and so I didn't go to the meeting, I just listened to them and the whole time I didn't want to go to the meeting anyway, but that person was there, and so he called me afterwards and he said, Hey, you weren't at my meeting, and I told him what happened, he didn't love it, but he really couldn't argue with it, you know. And I told him, Sir Major, that when somebody's in my office and they're hurting, they're my priority. Not that you're not important, but they're my priority, and so we got when people when you treat people that way, they know it, they can feel the difference. They don't expect that you can solve their grief problem because you can't, they just need to know that you care in a real like a real way, other than hey, you know, like I you're willing to spend time listening to them and all that. So so I love that it's simple because these are you know, most people are not grief trained, they're not chaplains, they're not whatever. They're they're they're trying to run a business, they're trying to run a team, they got all kinds of pressures and stuff, and so you know, you don't expect them to be experts on it, they don't need to be, they just need some easy ideas that show genuine caring. Um, and and like you said, policies that are one of the things I we're running a little over, but this is this is uh passionate for me. One of the things when you talk about policy is and I've and I've tried to uh teach this to my bosses when I was still in in the army because the army military is all about efficiency and effectiveness getting the job done, even though we're not very efficient, really. But but I would say, look, you're gonna have to sacrifice something. You don't get to have maximum efficiency, efficiency, effectiveness, and caring for people at the same time. Like you don't get all that.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

There are times that the business efficiency, like those metrics, might need to suffer to give a person the time off they really need, to give that person um, and you know I had a soldier that she was a single mom, she was uh dealing with a an abusive uh spouse that she was trying to get away from and going through divorce, and she had all she had uh some real challenges, um and and so being a single mom and having two young kids and doctors all the time and this and that, and you know, sometimes the bosses were getting a little impatient, like where is you know, sergeant so-and-so? She's got this, she's got that, and it's like, hey, look, I I know you care, boss. I know you care, and you're gonna have to sacrifice a little efficiency and effectiveness because you care, like you, you know, does that make sense? We're we get we're so we're very much like with all the with all the training and all the education and all the and leadership courses because I've taken a million of them about stakeholders, and it's more than just stockholders, it's more than just making money. In reality, in practice, we're still very much in the 1910 industrial kind of like where it re the only thing that really matters is stockholders, profit line, metrics, and all this other stuff, and it's very hard to get leaders to back away from that a little bit and say the person matters more than that, it's just they want to, but being willing to sacrifice those things is tough for people to do. But you have to if you're gonna say you care, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

That's all right. And we've got a new generation that expects it, absolutely right. They expect it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

That's absolutely right. My kids are 21 and 17, 20 and 17. I don't know, give or take. But they they teach me like dad, you'd never know our birthday is. Yes, I do. It's uh but anyway, yeah, they absolutely do not um uh accept that they don't matter. That's right, or that they're just a cog in the machine.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

That's tough they think of what's good for them.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:41

Yeah, I mean my son's a marine, and you and there is no no like greater machine that that forces that narrative, and he just it only goes so far with him. And he's a good marine, he's a very good marine, but he just doesn't buy, he's just a cog in the machine, just an expendable he just doesn't buy that. And I think I'd love that too. So okay, Kelly. I uh would love to talk to you more, but uh we are out of time, but we'll we'll have this whole thing up on YouTube and all our different platforms. Uh, it's been a real joy having you, and uh I appreciate all that you're doing for people. Such a powerful service. Uh, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

Thank you for the invite and the opportunity. I appreciate you.