The End of Your Job Isn’t the End of You
Reframing Job Loss: The End of Your Job Isn’t the End of You
Co-Authored by Dr. Sarah Trocchio and Damon Maassen, CPTD
September 9, 2025
In 2025, the story of job loss is no longer an exception, it’s becoming a shared experience. Mass layoffs, economic uncertainty, and shifting industries have left countless professionals navigating abrupt transitions. But what’s often missing from the conversation is how deeply personal and communal this experience can be.
Losing a job isn’t just a logistical shift. It can rupture your sense of purpose, disorient your daily rhythm, and shake your identity and connection to community. It can stir grief, self-doubt, and shame. In our own career transitions this year, we’ve felt the weight of these disruptions fi rsthand – alongside glimmers of clarity, growth, and unexpected possibility.
In our own transitions, we’ve come to understand that clarity doesn’t always arrive quickly and that growth can look like fi nally resting, reevaluating long-held beliefs, and rediscovering what brings us alive.
● For Damon, this chapter has been about deepening his commitment to inclusion, community, and impact through coaching, facilitation, and speaking engagements that center humanity while challenging systems. It’s also been a season of service, working alongside mission-driven organizations and exploring the next bold opportunity to lead and collaborate.
● For Sarah, this chapter has been about self-authorizing what a multi-hyphenate career looks like on her own terms, embracing non-linearity, and helping others do the same through her career coaching and strategy fi rm.
This series was born out of three interconnected truths: we’ve lived the emotional and structural realities of career transition ourselves; we bring years of professional experience in human-centered talent development and inclusive leadership; and we both feel deeply called to hold space for others navigating this terrain – not just with strategy, but with compassion. We know what it’s like to rehearse answers for questions you never thought you’d have to answer, to feel the sting of being replaced by a cost-saving spreadsheet, and to wrestle with who you are outside of a job title. We also know what it’s like to slowly, carefully reclaim your narrative.
Too often, job loss is framed as a problem to fi x. A gap to explain. A failure to recover from. That framing fl attens something profoundly human. We believe it’s time for a different lens: one that honors both the emotional reality and the systemic context of these transitions. One that replaces shame with self-compassion and helps people reclaim authorship and agency.
Whether you’re facing a layoff, reevaluating your path, seeking purpose in the unknown, or all of the above, this conversation is for you. We want to name the truths that often go unspoken: that grief in career transitions is real, that your worth isn’t tied to a title, and that you are not alone.
The Bigger Picture: Job Loss by the Numbers
While our personal experiences offer one lens, it’s also important to understand how widespread and inequitable this disruption really is.
While the ripple effects of layoffs are often coined as a “tech problem,” the truth is far broader and far more urgent. In the fi rst half of 2025, the U.S. economy has witnessed a staggering 744,000 job cuts, spanning industries from tech to retail, fi nance, healthcare, and beyond (Capital Analytics Associates, 2025). Government workforce reductions have also surged. Federal agencies — including Health and Human Services, Education, and several oversight bodies — have announced cuts totaling tens of thousands of roles, reshaping long-held structures and expectations.
Alongside this, construction, manufacturing, and government-adjacent contracting roles have shrunk, particularly in communities reliant on federal spending (The Washington Post, 2025). While the emotional toll of job loss is deeply personal, these shifts refl ect complex systemic forces reshaping labor, service, and identity. This isn’t a story about one sector, it’s a story about the fabric of work itself changing.
The contraction of jobs disproportionately impacts workers who already face systemic barriers to employment and reemployment. Black and Latine professionals, older workers, and individuals with disabilities often experience longer periods of unemployment and deeper fi nancial insecurity. For example, in early 2025, Black women faced the longest average unemployment duration, more than six months, of any demographic group (19th News, 2025). Similarly, a National Employment Law Project (NELP) analysis highlights how older workers and workers of color are more likely to experience unemployment spells exceeding 27 weeks (NELP, 2024). Individuals with disabilities, especially those who are Black or Latine, face even steeper challenges, with unemployment rates that continue to outpace the national average due to intersecting barriers of bias and accessibility (National Partnership, 2024). And while public conversations often focus on “resilience” or “reinvention,” few acknowledge the systems of inequity that shape who gets hired, who gets let go, and who gets heard.
The emotional impact is equally profound. Studies show that the psychological effects of job loss can mirror those of losing a loved one; marked by sadness, anxiety, and a loss of identity. A 2024 survey by the American Psychological Association found that 62% of unemployed adults reported moderate to severe mental health challenges, with fi nancial strain and social stigma as major contributing factors.
Behind these numbers are people – parents, caregivers, students, and community leaders – grappling with uncertainty and the ache of being unseen. When whole industries shift or shrink, individuals are often left holding the emotional and economic aftermath in silence.
From Shame to Self-Compassion: Rewriting the Story
Career transition is a profoundly human, and therefore, messy experience. And yet, so many of us feel pressure to perform optimistically and even at times, robotically – to pretend we’re fi ne, to rush into productivity, to brand ourselves as “thriving” when we’re still fi nding our footing. That performance can come at the expense of authenticity and healing.
It’s time to change the narrative. Instead of asking, “How can I bounce back quickly?” we might ask, “What do I need to grieve, reclaim, or redefi ne?” Instead of forcing silver linings, we can create space for duality, where pain and possibility coexist.
And perhaps most importantly, we can begin to speak about our experiences in ways that affi rm our dignity. You were not discarded. You are not broken. You are navigating a system that wasn’t built with care at the center. That’s not failure. It’s an invitation to transition. We believe in a different kind of narrative – one that centers dignity, embraces complexity, and invites rest. One that sees job loss not as failure but as fertile, albeit messy ground for becoming.
What if this transition isn’t the end — but the opening?
What Comes Next
Now that we’ve named the broader landscape and invited a reframing of the narrative, an accompanying resource to help you explore the path forward will be shared later this week. It includes practical tools, coaching questions, and a candid dialogue between the two of us, rooted in lived experience and guided by care.
Because no one should have to navigate career transition alone or in silence.
You are not behind. You are not broken.
You are opening. You are becoming.
About the authors
This article was co-authored by Dr. Sarah Trocchio and Damon Maassen, two equity-centered professionals with lived experience navigating career transition. Together, they bring decades of expertise in inclusive leadership, coaching, and human-centered talent development. This series refl ects their shared commitment to helping individuals reclaim narrative ownership, challenge systemic norms, and move through transition with clarity, care, and compassion. 4
