"Waste not fresh tears over old grief." -Euripides
Part of the process of job-hunting is resolving the loss of old jobs. It doesn't matter whether you liked the job. Or the previous job, or the one before that. The fact is, you were laid off, or downsized, or organized out, or whatever nice words they want to put on it - it still says rejection. And rejection can make you angry if you let it.
The first time it happened to me it was from a job that I thought I would have until the day I retired. Talk about throwing a wrench in the works! I was completely unprepared and for that I say shame on me. So on top of looking for a new job I had to deal with a lot of anger, disappointment, surprise and even shame.
But I got a new job, found my place once again and made new plans. For nine months. And out of the blue it happened again. This time I dealt with not only the new anger, but it brought back the grief and anger from the previous loss.
We tend to think of grief as being associated with death, but it's true that we go through the same stages of grieving with any loss in our lives. If we recognize them and deal with them from that viewpoint, acknowledge the seriousness of all losses and their effect on our health, both physical and mental, we can move through these phases more smoothly and not let them mire us in self-pity and frustration.
This third job loss was not a surprise. I was prepared and recognized the signs. I'm not even angry, at least not at the employer. Perhaps at our government and Wall Street and those vague entities we like to call "them" that have pushed our middle class toward poverty.
But I'm prepared now. I know how to job-hunt, I know how to survive. And I'm finished with the grieving.
Part of the process of job-hunting is resolving the loss of old jobs. It doesn't matter whether you liked the job. Or the previous job, or the one before that. The fact is, you were laid off, or downsized, or organized out, or whatever nice words they want to put on it - it still says rejection. And rejection can make you angry if you let it.
The first time it happened to me it was from a job that I thought I would have until the day I retired. Talk about throwing a wrench in the works! I was completely unprepared and for that I say shame on me. So on top of looking for a new job I had to deal with a lot of anger, disappointment, surprise and even shame.
But I got a new job, found my place once again and made new plans. For nine months. And out of the blue it happened again. This time I dealt with not only the new anger, but it brought back the grief and anger from the previous loss.
We tend to think of grief as being associated with death, but it's true that we go through the same stages of grieving with any loss in our lives. If we recognize them and deal with them from that viewpoint, acknowledge the seriousness of all losses and their effect on our health, both physical and mental, we can move through these phases more smoothly and not let them mire us in self-pity and frustration.
This third job loss was not a surprise. I was prepared and recognized the signs. I'm not even angry, at least not at the employer. Perhaps at our government and Wall Street and those vague entities we like to call "them" that have pushed our middle class toward poverty.
But I'm prepared now. I know how to job-hunt, I know how to survive. And I'm finished with the grieving.
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