What I Learned From Being Laid Off Twice

Hi friend 👋,

There are moments in life that shatter the version of you that existed the day before. Moments that feel like failure even when they are not. Moments that feel personal even though they have nothing to do with your worth. Moments that force you to face a truth we all resist: you are not in control of every chapter, no matter how prepared you are, how well you perform, or how deeply you care. For me, those moments came through two layoffs. Two phone calls. Two endings I never asked for. Two reminders that your career can crumble without warning.

The corporate world treats layoffs as logistical decisions, but what they rarely acknowledge is the emotional reality. A layoff feels like a breakup, a betrayal, and an identity crisis happening at the exact same time. It shakes the foundation you thought was stable. It takes away not only your income but also the version of yourself who believed everything was on track. But here is the beautiful and unexpected truth: being laid off twice did not break me. It revealed me. It taught me lessons no promotion, no award, and no leadership program ever could. It taught me resilience, adaptability, humility, boundaries, courage, and most importantly, self-trust. Today, I want to share what I learned from losing two jobs—and in many ways, finding myself again.

The first lesson was understanding that a layoff does not mean you were not good enough. It means something in the environment no longer aligned. When you get laid off, your mind goes into overdrive searching for what you did wrong. You replay projects, conversations, and moments of imperfection. You do this because you want control. If you can find a reason, you think you can prevent it from happening again. But layoffs are almost never a reflection of your worth. They are financial decisions, political decisions, structural reorganizations, or simply choices made by people too far removed from your work to even know your name. You can be exceptional and still be laid off. I eventually realized I had not been removed because I lacked value. I had been redirected because I had outgrown where I was.

The next lesson was that your career is not your identity, even if you loved it like it was. When a job disappears, it feels like the ground beneath your identity disappears with it. You suddenly confront how much of your self-worth was tied to your title, your team, your routine, and the praise that came with being needed. Losing a job created a painful but necessary separation between who I am and what I do. In that empty space, I found room—room to redefine myself, room to explore who I was outside of productivity, and room to discover what I actually wanted. It was a discomfort that ultimately gave me back my life.

Another truth became clear with time: rejection is redirection, even when the detour feels violent. People love to say everything happens for a reason, but it is hard to believe that when you are staring at a severance email. As time passed, I realized the layoffs pushed me onto paths I would have never considered. They opened doors I could not have imagined because I was too loyal, too comfortable, or too afraid to make the leap myself. Sometimes the universe does not nudge you. It shoves you. Not to punish you, but to move you toward the life meant for you.

I also learned that you cannot hustle your way out of uncertainty. You have to feel it. My first instinct was to immediately become hyper-productive. Apply to endless jobs, rewrite my résumé ten times, network with everyone, and stay so busy that I would not have to feel the grief. But the emotional weight always catches up. The fear resurfaces. The exhaustion hits. The self-doubt whispers. And if you do not let yourself process it, you bring that heaviness into your next chapter. I had to learn to sit with the discomfort and allow the uncertainty to exist without letting it define me. Feeling your way through the mess is what eventually clears space for clarity.

Another surprising discovery was that my network did not see my layoffs as failures. They saw my strength. They saw someone who kept showing up, someone who stayed grounded despite the chaos, someone who navigated loss without losing herself. The people who mattered were not judging the setback. They were noticing the resilience. Vulnerability and honesty did not hurt my reputation—they strengthened it. People trust those who have lived through something and come out stronger.

Layoffs also reveal what you actually want. When the noise stops, you finally have the quiet needed to hear yourself. You begin asking questions you have avoided for years. What kind of life do I want now? What environments feel supportive? What patterns am I done repeating? What am I hungry for? What am I tired of carrying? Losing the familiar is painful, but losing what was misaligned is liberating.

Most importantly, layoffs build a level of self-trust that stability never will. When everything falls apart, you meet a version of yourself you did not know existed. You learn that you can handle endings you never saw coming. You learn that you can rebuild your life piece by piece. You learn that fear does not get to lead. You learn that even when everything feels uncertain, you are still capable of choosing yourself. Self-trust is not built during easy seasons. It is built in moments when everything feels heavy and you rise anyway.

Being laid off twice was not the end of my story. It was the beginning I did not know I needed. It taught me how to pivot, how to persevere, how to rebuild from scratch, how to listen to myself, how to release control, and how to create opportunities rather than wait for them. It shaped me into a woman who does not collapse when life collapses around her but instead rises with clarity and grounded purpose.

If you are in your own career storm, here is what I want you to know: you are not starting over. You are starting smarter. You are not losing your path. You are finding a better one. And one day, you will look back on this chapter and say with absolute certainty, it did not break me. It broke me open.Force.With strength and intention,
Rachael

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