If you love, you experience loss.

Looking back over the last few years, who or what have you lost? A loved one, a friendship, a relationship, a pet, a job, your health, your community? Something else?

Have you had time to reflect on and grieve your losses and find meaning and sense in all you experienced?

And how do you talk about your losses with those around you, if at all?

We cannot engineer the experience of grief out of our lives, but many try, at a significant cost, to their well-being, their relationships, and their ability to function, connect, and lead.

Grief will always do its job regardless of our response to grief’s presence. And the more we try to avoid the heartbreak, mess, awkwardness, outrage, and vulnerability, the more we disconnect from our humanity and those around us.

So, the question for us is: How will we respond when grief comes knocking in our personal lives, work, and world?

Joon ‘J.S.’ Park is a hospital chaplain, former atheist/agnostic, sixth-degree black belt, suicide survivor, and Korean-American, a person of faith and valuer of all.

He is the author of As Long As You Need: Permission to Grieve, part hospital chaplain experience and memoir, and The Voices We Carry: Finding Your One True Voice in a World of Clamor and Noise.

J.S. currently serves at a top-ranked, 1,000+ bed hospital and was a chaplain for three years at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the unhoused on the East Coast.

Content note: This conversation covers topics around sexual abuse, suicide, and experiences of racism. Joon’s message and heart feel healing and gracious as he shares some tender issues. But please take care of yourself as you move through this beautiful conversation.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The physical toll of unacknowledged accumulated grief that J.S. took on through his chaplaincy training
• How contending with pervasive and severe suffering daily challenged and reshaped J.S.’s faith
• How he began to grapple with his experiences of abuse, racism and internalized shame
• Why we need to learn to engage with a range of grief and validate our responses to it to heal
• What we can learn about others when they use clichés and platitudes in response to grief
• How working closely with grief has changed J.S.’s concept of what it means to be successful

Learn more about J.S. Park:

• Instagram: @jspark3000
• Facebook: @jspark3000
• As Long As You Need: Permission to Grieve
• The Voices We Carry: Finding Your One True Voice in a World of Clamor and Noise

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Meditations of the Heart, Howard Thurman
• What We Kept to Ourselves, Nancy Jooyoun Kim
• The Last Story of Mina Lee, Nancy Jooyoun Kim
• Departures
• Andor
• Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes

Are you aware of all the expectations you hold yourself to?

The day-to-day buzzing of our inner life can feel relentless, can't it? We're all too familiar with the bombardment of 'shoulds' about how we should act, dress, talk, move, etc. It's a struggle that resonates with each one of us, making us feel understood in our shared experiences.

We carry so many shoulds from our family of origin, culture, difficult life experiences, work experiences, people we respect, and people who we want to respect us.

But the shoulds that mess with us the most and lead to the heaviest burdens are the stealth shoulds around what we should and should not feel.

Today’s guest, Dr. Alison Cook, returns for the third time to share her transformative new book. This isn't just a guide that addresses these 'shoulds ', it's an empowering invitation to unpack our stealth expectations of ourselves and our world. It's an invitation to approach the 'shoulds' that show up in our lives with curiosity and compassion, paving the way for personal growth and self-improvement.

Dr. Alison Cook is a psychologist and teacher who has spent two decades helping individuals name what's hard and take brave steps to transform their lives. She is also a best-selling author, teacher, and host of The Best of You podcast. She co-authored Boundaries for Your Soul and is the author of The Best of You, and I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. Alison is also a certified Internal Family Systems therapist, a dear friend, and a trusted colleague.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The internal tension and disorientation Alison experienced when she couldn’t accomplish what she “should” have
• How following her system’s lead led Alison to make a surprising connection to another pivotal transition in her life
• Unpacking the familial and cultural origins of our shoulds around work and success
• The high personal and social stakes of not making space to name what we’re feeling
• Why it’s vital to be able to discern who can best support you in processing what you’re going through
• How to cultivate space for yourself to witness the hard things, rather than bypassing from naming to fixing

Learn more about Alison Cook, PhD:

• Website
• The Best of You Podcast
• Instagram: @dralisoncook
• I Shouldn’t Feel This Way

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Ep 50: Embracing the Hot Mess: A Special Anniversary Episode with Alison Cook, PhD
• EP 25: The Boundary Barriers of Leadership with Psychologist and Author Alison Cook, PhD
• Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person, Hugh Prather
• Daily Affirmation: Valentine's Day - Saturday Night Live
• Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons, Jan Richardson
• Bob Marley & The Wailers - Redemption Song
• Bob Marley: One Love
• Friends
• Pretty in Pink

Many of us are familiar with the kind of person who easily earns the moniker ‘toxic’ and instills fear, rage, and frustration in those around them.

What do you do when you work with a toxic leader?

How do you feel when toxic leaders continue to get promoted and receive accolades?

And what do you do when others make excuses for these toxic leaders, like saying their skill set or network is too important to the organization and you have to “take the good with the bad?”

Toxic leaders and cultures take a toll on you, especially when you have your own relational wounding history. You may try to speak up or feel shut down, but there’s another common theme: How betrayed you feel when your experiences are met with silence, inaction, or retribution.

We're at a critical moment regarding leading, accountability, and culture. But one thing that still feels constant is the impact of our history with relational wounding and relational trauma, and how that impacts how, or if, we speak up in the face of injustices from toxic leaders and toxic work culture.

Today’s guest wrote a book on the impact of toxic leaders and cultures, including how we often protect toxic leaders at great expense to the staff and the business. As someone who was bullied both as a child and in the workplace, she has some very special insight into this all-too-common experience.

Mita Mallick is a corporate change-maker with a track record of transforming businesses. She has had an extensive career as a marketer in the beauty and consumer product goods space, fiercely advocating for the inclusion and representation of Black and Brown communities. Her book, Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace, is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today Best Seller.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The practical toll on the business of enabling toxic leaders to continue to manage teams
• The psychological and physical impact of the workplace trauma created by working under toxic leaders
• How people end up in environments that recreate the harmful relational patterns of their past
• Why those with more power in the workplace need to speak up on behalf of others
• How executive coaching can be used as a Band-Aid to cover toxic behavior
• How guilt and empathy for the teammates we’d leave behind can keep us stuck in toxic environments

Learn more about Mita Mallick:

• Connect with Mita on LinkedIn
• Brown Table Talk Podcast
• Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email.

Resources:

• Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier, Marisa Meltzer
• Sia - Unstoppable
• Breaking Bad