I guess it is my turn. Like so many other people, I was laid off last week, and I am not going to pretend it did not shake me. I had already been thinking about retirement and what the next chapter of my life might look like. But there is a big difference between choosing to retire and having that decision made for you. One feels like a transition. The other can feel like a door being slammed. For a minute, fear can get loud. You start thinking about money, purpose, routine, identity, and everything connected to that job. But then I had to remind myself of something I already know about my own life. I have landed on my feet before. I have survived too much, learned too much, and built too much to suddenly believe one eliminated position means I am no longer capable.
That is the part I think people need to hear. A company can eliminate your job without eliminating your value. Your experience did not disappear when your access badge stopped working. Your skills did not vanish because somebody removed your name from an organizational chart. Your judgment, relationships, wisdom, and ability to solve problems still belong to you. Sometimes employment conditions make people forget that distinction because we spend so much of our lives attaching identity to a title. We say, “I am a manager,” “I am an executive,” or “I am a director,” instead of remembering that those are roles we perform. They are not the entire person. A job can end on Friday. The person who performed it still wakes up on Saturday.
And there are a lot of people waking up to that reality right now. Black women in particular have experienced meaningful job losses in recent labor-market shifts, including many women with strong education, professional experience, and years invested in their careers. That matters because it challenges an old promise many people were raised to believe: get educated, work hard, be dependable, do everything right, and security will eventually follow. Life does not always honor that bargain. Sometimes companies restructure. Sometimes budgets shrink. Sometimes whole departments disappear. Sometimes people with excellent records are still let go. That does not mean education and hard work were wasted. It means neither one can guarantee that somebody else will never make a business decision that changes your life.
So if you are sitting somewhere right now wondering what you are supposed to do next, I understand. Be disappointed. Be angry if you need to be. Be scared for a minute. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that uncertainty feels different when a paycheck has just disappeared. But do not confuse fear with prophecy. Fear tells you something important has changed. It does not know what happens next. Sometimes we give that first frightened emotion too much authority. We feel uncertain and immediately decide the future must be bad. Those are not the same thing. Uncertainty can hold possibilities we have not even learned how to recognize yet.
That is where I think the question begins to change. For most of our working lives, the question has been, “Who will hire me next?” That is a reasonable question. We have bills to pay and responsibilities to meet. But maybe at a certain point in life another question deserves a little room too: “What can I build?” That does not automatically mean everybody should become an entrepreneur. Building can mean consulting. It can mean teaching. It can mean writing. It can mean creating something online, mentoring, freelancing, opening a small business, or finally developing an idea that stayed on the back burner because corporate life consumed all the energy. Sometimes getting pushed out of one structure forces you to examine what you could create outside of it.
For me, one thing is already clear. I do not plan to return to corporate America. I do not say that angrily. I simply think that chapter has taught me what it was supposed to teach me. I have earned experience from it. I have learned how organizations operate, how people make decisions, how leadership works, and sometimes how it fails. I have learned what I value and what I no longer want to tolerate. Those lessons belong to me now. Maybe the point of the next chapter is not recreating the last one under a different company’s name. Maybe it is finally using everything I learned in a way that gives me more ownership over my own time.
Do I know exactly what that looks like yet? No. And strangely enough, that does not frighten me as much as I thought it would. I have a list. Some of the ideas make more sense than others. Some may work. Some probably will not. That is part of figuring it out. We often become uncomfortable when we cannot immediately explain our next move because adulthood teaches us to have answers. But sometimes a new chapter begins with questions. There can be something freeing about not knowing exactly where you are going while still trusting the person doing the walking.
I also think we need to talk more honestly about what layoffs do emotionally. Losing a job can feel personal even when management insists it was a business decision. You remember everything you gave. The late nights. The crises you solved. The projects you carried. The people you trained. Then somebody tells you the position has been eliminated, and suddenly years of contribution seem to fit inside one short meeting. That can hurt. We do not have to pretend it does not. But corporate memory and personal worth are two different things. An organization can move on quickly because organizations are designed to keep functioning. Human beings need a little more time to process what ended.
There is also dignity in recognizing when one season has simply ended. We are often taught to fight every ending. Fight for the title. Fight for the position. Fight to stay relevant. Sometimes that fight is necessary. Other times the wiser move is to collect everything the season taught you and walk forward. Not every closed door needs to be kicked back open. Some doors close because whatever is on the other side has already given you what it can. I do not need to spend the rest of my life proving to an institution that I deserved to stay. I would rather put that energy into discovering where I belong next.
And for the women going through this, especially Black women who have spent years having to prove competence again and again, I want to say something very clearly. You did not suddenly become less talented because somebody cut a budget. You did not become less educated because your position disappeared. You did not lose your ability to lead, think, organize, create, negotiate, solve problems, or build relationships. You may have lost access to a particular platform. That is not the same as losing what made you effective on that platform. The hardest part may be remembering that when the title is gone. But the title was never the source of the talent.
Maybe this is also the moment to reconsider what security actually means. For years, many of us were told security came from staying employed by a strong company. But companies change. Industries change. Technology changes. Leadership changes. Real security may have to include skills you can carry, relationships you have built, savings when possible, multiple ways to earn, and the confidence that you can adapt when something disappears. No job can guarantee permanence. Building a life that can survive change may be more valuable than chasing the illusion that change will never come.
I am also not going to romanticize starting over. Reinvention can sound beautiful after somebody has already succeeded. In the middle of it, reinvention can be confusing. There may be financial pressure. There may be self-doubt. There may be days when an idea that sounded brilliant on Monday looks ridiculous by Thursday. That is normal. Starting over does not mean smiling through every minute. It means continuing even when the excitement temporarily disappears. Courage is not always feeling confident. Sometimes courage is simply refusing to let uncertainty become paralysis.
So I am going to share some of this journey as I go. The ideas. The mistakes. The things that work. The things that do not. Maybe somebody else going through the same thing will see a little of herself in it. Sometimes we think everybody else has life figured out because people usually show us the finished product. We do not see the middle where somebody is confused, experimenting, and trying again. I think there is value in showing that part too. Reinvention is not always a beautiful before-and-after picture. Most of the time it is a process happening while nobody is sure exactly how the picture will turn out.
And maybe that is where the excitement comes from. For the first time in a long time, the possibilities do not have to fit inside a job description somebody else wrote. I can ask what I want to spend my time doing. I can ask what knowledge I have that somebody else might need. I can ask what kind of work gives me energy instead of simply what work pays a salary. Money still matters. Reality still matters. But so does purpose. If I am going to build another chapter, I would like it to look more like something I chose.
Summary
Being laid off can be frightening, even when retirement or career change was already somewhere in your plans. The loss of a position can shake identity, security, and confidence, but it does not erase the skills and experience accumulated over a career. Many experienced workers, including Black professional women, have faced job losses despite doing what they were told would create stability. A layoff can therefore become both an ending and an invitation to reconsider what comes next. The answer may be another job, but it may also involve consulting, entrepreneurship, creative work, or an entirely different way of using your experience. The important thing is not pretending uncertainty feels good. It is refusing to confuse uncertainty with the end of your usefulness.
Conclusion
I guess it is my turn, and I am learning to be all right with that. I did not choose the exact moment this chapter ended, but I still get to decide what I do with the next page. I can be scared and hopeful at the same time. I can miss what was familiar while being curious about what has not happened yet. I still have my experience. I still have my skills. I still have my wisdom. And most importantly, I still have myself. So if you are starting over too, come on. We may not know exactly where this road is going, but that does not mean we are lost. I have a feeling a whole lot of us are standing at the beginning of something new, and yes, ladies, we can do this.