About three months after I had left Glamour magazine, an editor at the Daily Mail asked me if I’d like to go to a retreat in Somerset for a story. The place is called The Arrigo Programme, check it out. Being unemployed and spectacularly available, I jumped at the chance. I got the train, but I reckon I could have sprinted from London to Somerset in about a half an hour, so excited was I about the prospect of a few days of massages, lie-ins and log fires (it was January).
I should have done a bit more research. There were some massages, yes, but this was mostly an intensive few days of therapy. The sort of ‘break you down to build you up’ variety and well, with the state I was in, they’ve never had an easier job of the wrecking bit.
The picture above is the one I’d posted on Facebook to announce to my friends that I’d been made redundant. Aren’t I hilarious? I threw myself into helping other colleagues, also staring at their tear-stained P45s, find work. I started taking relentless meetings, racing to several different locations all over London every day, just to have chats with people, get my face about. I had no clue what I could, or wanted to do next. Some of these meetings were useful. Most weren’t, but being busy in this way gave me the illusion that I was being productive and stopped me thinking too much on any given day about the 17-year job I’d just lost.
This vibe:
Besides, I had a 12 year-old daughter in the house. I needed to be An Example. I needed to show her that setbacks happen but that’s totally OK. It’s how we handle them, right?
So by the time I found myself down in Somerset, I was physically exhausted. On my first morning there, they had arranged a two hour session with a therapist. I think I’d been talking to him for 20 minutes when the tears came.
I’m no stranger to therapy. And I’m not the sort of person who gets embarrassed by tears. But I was genuinely shocked at what had made me cry. It was when I started saying that one of my bosses at Glamour had basically ghosted me. When I didn’t hear a word from him in the weeks after it all went down, I wrote to him and just said that whilst I was sad at how things had ended, I was enormously grateful that the job had ever happened for me and it would also be a life, not just career highlight. I heard nothing back.
And now I was absolutely horrified to find that I was crying about this. To me, it was such an embarrassing thing to be crying about. Crying is for when someone dies, or when you break your arm, or about this dog who pays for food every day with a leaf. Not a fucking job. Right??
But, the therapist - a kind, soft spoken man - had struck therapy oil and he wasn’t going to let me dry my eyes and pretend this had never happened. Damn/bless him.
And I had to admit. I’d been running away from a hurricane of my own unprocessed feelings about being made redundant.
I’d been fired before. In 1997. It wasn’t even dressed up as any sort of business/cost cutting situation. No it was a straight up, ‘We don’t think you’re any good’. I was much younger, much less experienced and the shock of it was devastating at the time. I managed to get some closure, though, when the same people who’d fired me asked me, about eight months later, if I would consider coming back to work for them. Rarely has saying ‘no’ felt so thrilling.
I’d always told myself about that episode that the worst thing had happened, I’d survived it and moved on so if ever it happened again, I’d be fine. (‘FINE!!’)
And so while people commended me on handling my Glamour situation so well, and I enjoyed looking outwardly strong and confident and in control of whatever this next chapter would be, I was waking up in the middle of the night most nights full of churning thoughts. I’d get exasperated at the new plans for Glamour, convinced they wouldn’t work (like this was any of my business or my problem anymore). I’d think of all the things I wished I’d said in the moment I was being told I was leaving (I sat there stunned and mute). I composed several letters in my head to my old boss, full of the zingers I wished I’d said at the time.* And well, I just had a gnawing hole of anger in my gut.
It’s easy to say it’s ‘just’ a job and you can just move on. And of course we all have a rational side that rolls its eyes and tells us this when we’re staring at the ceiling at 4am. But if you derive any fulfilment from your job, any relationships within it, any sense of pleasure at all, it stands to reason that losing it is going to have an effect.
It’s a great thing for companies to have employees who care deeply about their work. I was a teenager when people started advising me to find work I ‘loved’, that I’m ‘passionate’ about, and lucky me, I usually have managed that. The downside of that is when a company is done with you, the rejection and the humiliation really bloody hurts. And I think it’s OK to admit that, right?
I don’t have any solutions on how to get through this experience unscathed. All I know is that my tears in that therapy session that day were needed. I had a lot of emotions that were eating me alive and they needed expelling. I needed to stop being embarrassed about the pain I was feeling, to stop trying to ignore it and just get on with feeling it.
It is, in some senses, a kind of grief. And here is where I’m at pains to stress that of course I don’t think it’s the same as the grief of losing a loved one. But there is loss at play. And I think it would be helpful if more of us felt able to express the pain of that loss.
Don’t be ashamed to need the space to feel those feelings and to talk about it - with friends or even a therapist. It’s the only way to eventually dull that pain and rebuild your self confidence.
*I didn’t ever write such a letter, let alone send it and I’d advise the same to you.
When I suddenly left the editor’s job I simply adored I spent years angry and bitter, then sad, mainly because I had been ripped away from my editorial family and was scared I’d never find the same kind of familial vibe. I ended up having a bit of counselling ah she said to me I was grieving the loss of that job and that I was too preoccupied trying to seek out another job where I would find a similar family, which she said would be hard to do. Hearing those words, I finally let go and embraced the future and knew that while things may never be the same I always had those great memories.
Belonging is a basic need. Being forced out is frightening (I thought I was fitting in) humiliating and forces us to search for a whole new context with no preparation. You’ve coped so well. Love Palace Confidential