Just Own It: grieving a stillbirth by working more
Tim Davidson lost his first child to a stillbirth and answered by working more. We talk grief, humor as armor, and what a newborn changes.
Two years before we recorded this, Tim and his wife lost what would have been their first child to a stillbirth. His company gave him time off. He spent it working more, because he didn't know how else to be near that much loss. He's mad at himself for that now, and he says so out loud.
His other coping mechanism is humor, has been since childhood, and he makes a good case that it's also a professional asset. He's an introvert who can't walk up to strangers in real life; the jokes do the connecting for him, on camera and with clients. Two years of couples therapy handled the rest.
There's a four-month-old in the picture now, so the fixed nine-to-five is dead. He delegates, works fewer and sharper hours, and owns his mistakes out loud, like the time he overspent a client's ad budget two to three times over and found that admitting it immediately built more trust than hiding it ever would have.
“I worked more to not think about it. In hindsight, I'm mad at myself for doing that.”
What stayed with me
- After the stillbirth he buried himself in work instead of processing the loss, and he regrets it.
- He's an introvert performing “talkative”: humor, built in childhood, does the connecting for him.
- Overspending a client's ad budget 2-3x, then owning it immediately, built more trust than hiding it.
- A newborn forced fewer, sharper hours and real delegation.