In My Laid Off Era

I thought getting laid off was supposed to be devastating!!

And, to be clear, when I first learned my position was being eliminated, I wasn’t exactly clicking my heels together and shouting, “Finally!”

There was shock. There was uncertainty. There was the immediate panic that comes when someone unexpectedly removes the steady paycheck, health insurance, and 20-year, carefully mapped-out career path from beneath your feet.

There was also the small matter of figuring out what in the hell I was supposed to do next!?

But now that I’ve had a little time to settle into it?

I think my company may have done me a favor.


Actually, I am confident they did the hard part for me.

If I’m being fully transparent—by the time I was laid off, things at work had become difficult. The environment was starting to feel increasingly toxic, and many of the decisions being made no longer aligned with what I believed was best for the team of people I managed, my counterparts, or the company at large.

It was frustrating. It was exhausting. It was saddening. And it had become harder and harder to continue to care as much as I did while feeling like the things I cared about weren’t always the things driving the decisions.

More often than not, I ended my day feeling beat up and beat down.

But I still had my team. I loved my team. And I would not have left them.

I don’t say that because I believed they couldn’t function without me. They were some of the smartest, most capable people I have worked with, and they all knew how to do their jobs and how to do them well.

But I was intimately aware of the immediate pressure they would likely be under without me as a buffer between them and whatever was coming down from above.

I felt like I was no longer just doing my job—I was also standing in the gap between corporate decisions and the humans being affected by them.

That’s the strange reality of middle management. You’re handed decisions you didn’t make, expected to explain them to people you care about, and then left to absorb everyone’s frustration while trying to soften the impact.

I pushed back when I could. I translated when I couldn’t. And sometimes I simply stood in the middle and took the hit before it reached them.

As unhappy as I had become, I couldn’t picture myself calmly handing in my notice and removing that buffer altogether.

So I stayed.

I kept solving problems.

I kept questioning decisions that didn’t make sense.

I kept trying to protect my team while also doing what I believed was right for the company where I had 
practically grown up. My frontal lobe wasn’t even fully developed when I started working there!

And because I am who I am, I probably would have kept doing it until I had absolutely nothing left to 
give.

I’m actually so grateful that I didn’t have to.

The company made the decision I couldn’t bring myself to make—not because I was afraid to leave, but because I felt too responsible for the people, most of whom had reported to me for 5+ years.

After the initial shock wore off, I realized something slightly inconvenient—I was relieved.

Welcome to my laid-off era!

It turns out I really like it here.

I actually haven’t stopped working. People within my network started reaching out almost immediately, and I ultimately decided to leverage my experience and expertise in one of the “big box stores” of the medical device industry.

I still have deadlines, responsibilities, and plenty of things capable of irritating me before 9:00 in the morning. But now I have more control over what I take on, when I do it, and how much of myself I’m willing to hand over in the process.

My life no longer has to fit into the tiny spaces left open on my corporate calendar.
I can finally prioritize my family in the way I’ve always claimed I did—sometimes with a little guilt, because I knew that wasn’t always the case.

I can schedule an appointment without studying my calendar like I’m negotiating an international peace treaty.

I can show up for the things that matter most to me without feeling like I need to apologize for stepping away from the never-ending stream of Teams messages.

And occasionally, I can even drink my coffee before the ice melts and waters it down.

Honestly, that last one may be the greatest perk of all.

This season doesn’t look the way I thought this stage of my career would look. It is definitely less predictable.

There are no guarantees in consulting, and “flexibility” sometimes means working very strange hours because a client is on the other side of the world—or I just have other things I want to do during daylight hours.

But my time finally feels more like mine.

For years, my days were shaped by meetings, deadlines, reorganizations, shifting priorities, and decisions I didn’t always agree with but was still responsible for carrying out.

Now, I get to decide what deserves my time.

Sometimes that’s client work.

Sometimes it’s my family.

Sometimes it’s writing.

And sometimes it’s realizing at 10:00 on a Tuesday morning that I’ve already moved my body, consulted with a client, run an errand, switched out the laundry, handled something for one of the boys, and started an entirely unnecessary new project—all without checking Teams once! 🥳

I didn’t realize how much I needed this freedom until someone literally handed it back to me on a silver platter.

I’m not suggesting everyone should add “get laid off” to their vision board. I’m also not pretending there weren’t difficult, scary, and uncomfortable moments along the way.

But sometimes the thing that feels like rejection is also a release.
Sometimes the door closing behind you is the only thing that finally allows you to stop bracing against it.

It didn’t just release me from a job. It released me from the responsibility I felt for holding everything—and everyone—together.

It did the one thing I couldn’t do for myself.

It gave me permission to leave.

And now that I’m no longer living by the corporate clock, I’m learning to build my days around my actual life instead of squeezing my life into whatever time is left over.

Honestly?

I’m loving this era!

Susan

Nickel from the 🫙: Sometimes being forced to let go isn’t so bad – sometimes it’s the only way we finally discover how much holding on was costing us.