John, thank you for such a thoughtful post.  Your second question, "How do you as a leader make life easier for others at this time?" speaks to me the most.  I'm a former HR manager from a Fortune 100 company and I was never able to get my head around what IS appropriate.

If I were to focus more on how to handle this practically, I think I would fall back on this quotation I ran across many years ago, AND gather input from my constituents.

"The paradox of diversity: Each individual is like all other people, is like some other people, and is like no other person -- all at the same time." - source unknown

Again, thank you for this post.  You wrangled down some thoughts that I know I have had and chose to put aside one too many times.