"So much grief." It sounds like you're trying to interpret Hickey's emotions. How would you check whether your interpretation is accurate?

I don't know if you're a native English speaker, so apologies if this isn't appropriate. But the word 'grief' has more than one vernacular meaning.

"Giving someone grief" means giving someone a hard time.

So "he experienced so much grief" can just mean that it can just mean that people criticised him. It doesn't necessarily express anything about Rich Hickey's state of mind.