May 10th, 2019. My last day at the place where I built my career. I had been laid off.
It was a grey day in April when I arrived in the office of my brand new manager, to what I thought was a regular meeting. There was an HR person in the room. And in the flash of a second, I knew exactly what was going to happen. It was a very short conversation. I wish I could say the news of my layoff was a surprise, but it really wasn’t. My career had taken many twists and turns, and I ended up in a position where I just wasn’t happy anymore. And even though I loved the place I worked, it had been time to go for longer than I had been willing to admit. This was the final push out the door. My last day would be in 3 weeks.
We covered the important things in the meeting: severance, health insurance, the transition plan. And then I walked out and made three quick phone calls: One to Nick, one to my executive coach, and one to my friend Allison. And then I had to start to deal with what happened next.
If you’re interested in learning more about executive coaching and what that experience is like, head over to this post.
Being laid off during “normal” times is a completely different circumstance than a mass layoff in a recession or a pandemic, but I suspect that some of the feelings that come up are probably the same. There’s a degree of fear mixed with exhilaration, sadness mixed with hope — it triggers a LOT of emotions, and I’m going to talk through some of the ones I went through. It is a grieving process because it’s a life loss in a way, but the blessing here is that unlike a lot of life losses, this one is not permanent.
When I first found out that I was being laid off, I immediately transitioned to problem-solving mode. My problem being that I no longer had a job, and needed to find one. I started working my network and asking for informational interviews. Problem-solving is my happy place, and for a while, I was so busy meeting people that I was quite distracted from my loss. So for the time between the day I found out about my lay-off, and my last day at work, I spent several hours every day having goodbye coffees with all my amazing colleagues over the years, and in informational interviews.
For more on informational interviews, read this post.
I still had a place to go each work day and a check list of things to accomplish, and so it honestly didn’t feel too different from a regular work day.
And then came the Monday that I had no place to be. It might sound like a dream to have no place to go to work for the indefinite future, the reality is that it feels kinda weird. It’s not like being on vacation when you’re so focused on making the most of your time, because unlike vacation you don’t know how long this period is going to last! In this situation, you're not at work, but everyone else IS! So it’s not like you have people to hang out with or talk to all day.
I had a few days initially when I went through the “I really wish I were at work right now” stage and had to ask myself what it was exactly about work that I missed - turns out that I missed being around people. That was a relatively easy thing to fix - taking my laptop to a coffee shop or going to a yoga class helped overcome that particular kind of sadness.
Next came the “Why me” stage when I kept going through various scenarios in my head and tried to figure out what I could have done differently so it hadn’t been me that had been laid off. People will tell you that your layoff had nothing to do with you, but for me, that was a really hard thing to wrap my head around. They’ll also say things like “it’s not personal, it’s just business”, but when you’re the person with no job, it feels quite personal. There was also the added layer that because I had been with the same employer for nearly 14 years, where I worked was a huge part of my identity. When people asked what I did, I would say “I work at X”. And if I didn’t “work at X” what did I do?!
The “Why me” stage is a very dangerous place to be really - it’s where all your insecurities start to bubble up to the surface. And even for me (and I PRIDE myself on my confidence), it was a blow. So how did I get out of this stage? Gratitude Journals. I talk about these all the time, and I cannot understate how much these have changed my life. It’s really hard to stay in a “woe is me/why me” mental state if you take a minute to appreciate people, things and experiences around you.
It took about three weeks for me to finally really accept that this layoff would not be the worst thing that ever happened to me, and in the grand scheme of things, it was a blessing. It was an opportunity to really examine what I like and what I want to do with my life and go do that. It was also an opportunity to make finding a job a full time job, because let’s be honest, job hunting takes a LOT of time. I also decided to celebrate the fact that I was going to have the BEST months in Cleveland to do whatever I wanted, and really lean into my summer.
Leaning into this leisure time looked like photo shoots on the beach, an entire summer being a “professional amateur model”, taking long walks with the dogs while listening to audiobooks, reading a lot, blogging 3x/week, cooking, and afternoon cocktails. And of course, job hunting. I had a series of interviews for different roles until I found the right one! And just like that, the summer was over, and I started a new career.
What do you do when you get laid off? Put on a ballgown and have a photoshoot on the beach.
So why did I just tell you this whole story? To let you know that if you’ve been laid off, you are definitely not alone. It’s a weird time emotionally, and while your experience may not look like mine, whatever you’re feeling is absolutely valid. Just let yourself feel your feelings and work through them, either on your own, with your support system, or with a therapist. You will eventually get to the point where you’re moving forward and thriving again. I promise.
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge
~ Audre Lorde