Precedent · State
New Jersey
First U.S. state to mandate K-12 grief & loss education in curriculum (2024).
Proof: state-level reform is achievable.
PROJECT GRIEF
A society's grief runs underneath everything else.
Project Grief is a research and reform body building grief literacy into the systems that need it most — workplaces, schools, hospitals, and governments.
Opening — A note from the founder
I lost my wife and learned first hand that grief has no infrastructure.
My wife died and very quickly I was expected to be "myself" again. I was expected to preform the same at work. To "move on" from the pain of loss. And to step back into my old life. The systems that had organized my life: my job, kids' school, doctors, banks—they kept running. But none of them knew what to do with me. So I started reading. Then writing. Then talking to other grievers. What I found wasn't a soft, sentimental gap, but a measurable, structural one. We have built infrastructure for every other inevitable human experience. We have built nothing for grief.
"We treat grief like a private problem. It is a public one."
Project Grief is the policy and reform arm of that work. The whitepaper is its first artifact. The library will be its body of evidence. What follows on this page is the short version.
— CJ Infantino, Founder
§1 · The parallel
Every other inevitability has a system. Grief is the one we left out.
Inevitability 01
Waste accumulates
System in place
Sanitation departments. Trash collection. Recycling.
Inevitability 02
People get sick
System in place
Hospitals. Insurance. Public health.
Inevitability 03
Fires rage
System in place
Fire departments. Building codes. Hydrants.
Inevitability 04
Pipes burst
System in place
Water utilities. Plumbing standards.
Inevitability 05
Grief happens
System in place
Three days off. A condolence card. Silence.
Fig. 01 — Infrastructure parallel
§2 · The recognition
You already have metrics for grief. You've been calling them something else.
Employee turnover. Absenteeism. Healthcare utilization. Dropout rates. Homelessness. Disengagement scores. The data has been sitting in your dashboards the whole time under names that obscured what it was measuring.
§3 · The evidence
What the gap is costing.
$75B
U.S. annual cost of grief-related lost productivity in workplaces
Src — Grief Recovery Institute
1 in 5
employees actively grieving at any given time
Src — Grief Recovery Institute
1 in 29
children in every classroom has lost a parent or sibling
Src — Childhood Bereavement Network
90%
of U.S. educators receive no training in supporting grieving students
Src — AFT / New York Life Foundation
5
U.S. states with any bereavement leave law (CA, IL, MD, OR, WA)
Src — NCSL
3 days
most common U.S. bereavement leave — largely unchanged in decades
Src — BLS / SHRM
$0
federal U.S. budget line for grief literacy or bereavement infrastructure
Src — HHS Budget
§5 · What's already working
Reform isn't theoretical. It's already underway.
Precedent · Corporate
Adobe · Google · J&J
20–30 day bereavement leave policies — vs. the 3-day national norm.
Proof: leading employers have already crossed the line.
Precedent · DSM
DSM-5-TR
Prolonged Grief Disorder formally added in March 2022.
Proof: clinical recognition is moving — slowly.
§6 · The proposal
Three places to install the missing infrastructure.
I.
Workplace policy
For — Employers, HR, governments
Codified bereavement leave (20-day floor), manager training, grief-aware HR analytics.
II.
Education curriculum
For — Universities, K-12, ed-prep programs
Grief literacy as a required module in teacher certification — mirror the NJ model nationally.
III.
Civic protocol
For — Federal & state policymakers, NGOs
Public health framing, federal bereavement standards, community resilience funding.
"Until grief becomes infrastructure, every other system pays its bill."
Build it with us.
Work with us
Build the infrastructure your institution has been quietly paying for.
Project Grief works with employers, school systems, governments, and NGOs serious about closing the grief literacy gap. Tell us what you're trying to build and we'll find the right starting point.
Or email hello@projectgrief.com directly.