In Her Words: Grief Isn't Sexy, But It Touches Everyone
When Jill Kottmeier, 47, was a teen, she witnessed a close friend lose her baby; this heartbreaking experience propelled her 20+ year journey of providing grief support to hundreds of families.
When I was still in high school, one of my best friends was a senior in college and pregnant. When she gave birth at 37 weeks, her baby died. His name was Kaleb and he was still born. As a teenager, I knew people died of course. I also lost two friends. But I had no idea that babies died. It was a life-changing, shocking experience for me. Becki’s nurses at St. Alexis Hospital in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, were incredible. I remember being at Kaleb’s grave and knowing that I wanted to work to support grieving families and somehow take this really traumatic, terrible thing and make something good out of it. I thought to myself, “This is what I’m put on this earth to do.”
At the time, which was more than 20 some years ago, St. Alexis didn't have a program to support families in similar situations. They referred my friend to Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Illinois where they offered a memorial service and a support group. She started going and I joined her for some of it.
Because of that experience, when I was still a senior in high school, I decided to pursue a nursing degree. While I was still in nursing school, I started working at Northwest Community Hospital. I’m still there today, 27 years later. I started out as a patient care technician (PCT) on a medical floor and when I graduated from nursing school, I immediately applied to be a labor and delivery nurse and was lucky enough to be hired. They don't hire very many new grads each year, but I think my passion came through.
I worked as a labor and delivery nurse for about 17 years. During that time, I was very involved with families experiencing perinatal loss — from a miscarriage to a stillbirth to a newborn death — and I supported the program, but I wasn't in charge. I was just there as a passionate human being. When a child dies, it's probably the most horrific thing parents will experience in their lifetime. For them to trust me enough to come into that space and be present with them was the biggest honor I could have received. After I was 17 years into my career, I took over as the perinatal palliative and bereavement coordinator and I served in that role for about eight years, facilitating the entire program. I was still supporting families, not as a bedside nurse, but in a different way.
Shortly before Covid hit, I decided that I wanted to get a master's degree, but I didn't want to pursue a master's degree in nursing. Everybody disagreed with me on that choice. While a master's in nursing is very valuable, it just wasn't my path. Instead, I started pursuing a master's degree in thanatology, which is the study of death, dying, and bereavement. It was again, a life changing experience and one that I’m so grateful for because I was able to expand so much of my knowledge.
My degree came at the perfect time. Prior to Covid I would sometimes be called to our adult ICU for support if there were grieving children. During Covid the ICU staff would say, “We need that lady that does all that death stuff. Really! Come help us,” because they were experiencing a level of death that nobody had ever witnessed really, ever. The families needed support and the staff needed support and I was supporting them. The role I’m in now as director of wellbeing and bereavement services throughout the hospital, grew out of that experience.
My colleague, Maureen, and I started a crisis response team. Maureen is a social worker by trade. She and I were doing a lot of this work informally, prior to Covid and during early Covid. But then we decided, with the support of our executive leadership, that we would launch a formalized crisis response team so that when there was a traumatic event or a really difficult death, or even a personal crisis, we would have a trained team to respond and support the staff.
The training is three days long and it’s through the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation. We have a group of peer supporters from different disciplines. If you're working with physicians, there's a physician peer supporter that can join a team or a chaplain or a social worker or nurse or a PCT. You don't have to be a clinician to participate. You just need to be able to go through the training and be able to provide de-briefings and one-on-one sessions for people in crisis.
Now our team is made up of 87 responders throughout our whole healthcare system, which after a merger is now Endeavor Health. We’re the only hospital system in region 9 with a formalized crisis response team. The fact that we recognize that working in healthcare and witnessing so much trauma is difficult, and we know we need to be able to support the mental health of our staff along with our patients, is a huge shout out to our leadership and our staff.
We had a smaller team in July of 2022 when the shooting at the Highland Park parade happened. Our team was able to respond and support the staff at Highland Park Hospital. We were also able to be there for the first anniversary. Covid has been such a negative thing for so many people, but I wouldn’t be doing any of the work I'm doing now without it, and we would not have had a crisis response team in place already to help the Highland Park Hospital staff after that shooting.
Grief isn't sexy. People don't want to talk about it. People don't want to face it.
You get to an age where you start seeing death more. Fortunately or unfortunately, I started seeing it from a young age and that’s what formed my drive to support people in crisis and in grief. Grief isn't sexy. People don't want to talk about it. People don't want to face it. And then those that are grieving are left isolated and alone and kind of chastised and really don't feel like they can be open with that.
My heart will always lie with the families that I’ve had the honor to be with in the depths of sorrow. To see how they go about their very intimate, private, grief journey and to be able to accompany them through that journey and to really build those connections with people is one of my greatest honors in life.
Where do you see yourself going from here?
If I am lucky, I will get to continue to do the work that I’m doing at Northwest Community Hospital and continue impacting patients and families. Right now, one of my goals is to really grow the space for employee grief support. Grief touches everybody. Nobody will escape it. But there is a significant struggle when you are grieving and you must go back to work.
“Well, apparently rock bottom has a basement.” I needed that. That gave me some humor to help me cope.
At many workplaces you get three days of bereavement leave. If you’ve ever experienced it, three days is nothing. And then you come back to work and you’re expected to function at the same level and your brain literally cannot. I worked with somebody whose child died. Within that first year, somebody said “When are you going to take their picture down?” She said, “Never. Because that’s my child.” If somebody is grieving and coming back to work, we want them to feel like they are supported in every way possible.
I think my next big goal is to start speaking about grief on a more public platform. I've had the honor to speak at different conferences that are healthcare related about grief and trauma. I would like to continue working on that and continue developing my presentation and speaking skills because there’s a lot of impact that can be made by reaching people through public speaking. Some of that speaking stuff is related to work, some of it’s not related to work, and some is in a crossover gray area.
Belle Curve Stories is about women navigating life with grit, grace and growth. What do those three words mean to you?
Grit is like being in the depths of whatever you’ve been thrown into. Usually, it’s really scary and it's dark. And maybe it feels like you can't breathe. Sometimes I’ve wished for a pause from the stuff being thrown at me because I've had what feels like too much. But grit is standing up and saying, “This is not going to take me down.” I’m going to grow and I’m going to get better and I’m going to help somebody else through my pain.
In 2015, we had a terrible house fire and that was a whole different kind of grief. I'm not kidding you. The day before the fire, I was sitting outside and it was sunny and warm and I said in my head, “Hmm. Nobody has died in a while. That’s nice.” And the universe was like, oh you’re getting bored. Let me throw THIS at you.
Losing my house really took me down to probably my worst mental health of my life. But I found a quote that says, “Well, apparently rock bottom has a basement.” I needed that. That gave me some humor to help me cope. So many times, we think, “Oh, this is rock bottom.” But then something else hits and you realize, “Oh, okay, there's something lower than that.”
We were out of the house for nine months. We tried to have as normal of a life as possible, but it was really, really challenging for everybody. I’m a single mom. I was doing everything by myself. I was managing two houses and making all the decisions for a brand new house. We kept four walls inside, but everything else was gone and out. It was a lot. I was able to navigate pretty well until I moved home, and then I had a little bit of a mental health crisis. I got a lot of therapy. I leaned on my core group of people who have gotten me through all my life. I don’t think you can get through this life without your family and friends. I got better and I healed. I still have some trauma around it, but I know how to cope and I'm still standing.
My children were teenagers at that time and some people told me, “Oh, you can't let your kids see you like this.” I’m a really open, real raw human being. Do I think they need to see every piece of that? No. But they can see me struggle. They’re also going to see me get up and they’re going to see me get help. They’re going to see me heal. That is the example I want to be for them. What am I teaching them if I’m hiding my pain? Maybe they will go through something similar in their life. I don’t want Jake or Callie’s recollection to be “I never saw mom cry. I never saw her struggle.” My daughter was diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses in 2021 and her body fell apart. She amazes me every day with her strength. I’m hoping that I taught her a little about that.
Grace is being present with yourself, being present with others, and trying to step out of judgment of yourself. I think we're our own worst critics and allow ourselves to be whatever you’re feeling, and try not to label it as good, bad, or indifferent because it is what it is. When we can step away from judgment, it can help. To me, that’s what grace looks like.
Growth is learning and developing and evolving through all of life’s ups and downs. Looking back on everything traumatic that’s happened. I’ve had a large amount of post traumatic growth. I’m lucky because not everybody experiences that. It has really been able to fuel me to do better and to do more for others through that pain.
One really traumatic thing — the death of my friend’s baby — really launched an entire career for me. Every year on Kaleb’s birthday, I call Becki and thank her for sharing him with me and teaching me so much. I always say that my patients are my biggest teachers and have taught me way more than a book or an article could ever teach me.
Aside from those early, formidable, teenage grief years, I then experienced the traumatic deaths of my father, my cousin, and my brother. Grief has shaped my entire being in really beautiful ways alongside the terrible ways. It changes you and affects your daily life.
Plus you never know what wonderful things will come out of very sad situations. My boyfriend, Paul, who I’ve been with for nine years now, was one of the firefighters who responded to my house fire in 2015. We went to junior high together and reconnected all those years later.
If you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 year old self, what would you say?
Even if it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be okay, it’s going be okay. And you’re going to help a lot of people.
As told to and edited by Teresa Bellock and Sandra Ditore.
Jill Kottmeier, 47, MS, BSN, RN, Thanatologist, CPLC, and director of wellbeing and bereavement services for Endeavor Health’s Northwest Community Hospital, is the mother of two adult children. She lives in the Chicago suburbs and finds joy and purpose in helping others through grief. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
