So You’ve Been Laid Off, RIF-ed, Fired: Phase 1 – The First Impact

I didn’t expect the call.

I mean, part of me did. The weeks leading up to it had been tense. My manager and I had stopped clicking. Our 1:1s had become increasingly difficult and unproductive, and even when I walked him through my work in detail, the conversations felt circular. Expectations kept shifting without explanation. I had the quiet sense that something was coming, the way you do when a situation has run out of road.

Still, when the moment actually arrived, it knocked the air out of me.

I was sitting in the dining room of a friend’s house, remote working together like we always did. My manager asked if I was in a private space and if anyone else was around. Then he read a script word for word, no deviation, no inflection. No humanity. My body went into a full freeze while my brain screamed to fight. And my first thought wasn't grief or panic. It was relief. A completely unexpected wave of it. I wasn't going to have to navigate that dynamic anymore. That landed before anything else did.

Then the call ended and the shock arrived.

I went upstairs and fell apart. Not quietly. The kind that empties out your chest. My friend and his partner didn't try to explain anything or fix anything. They showed up with flowers and my favorite candy and let me be messy and scared and quiet. I laid in their bed until my body remembered how to work again.

The rest of that day is mostly gone to me. I was exhausted and scared and I called my dad because he'd been through a layoff before (early 2000s), and he's always been the person I call when my life unravels and I need someone to help me grab the rope. He gave me logic when I needed it. At some point he said, "Applying for jobs and interviewing is now your full-time job." It sounds blunt. It was. It also gave me something to stand on when the ground felt like it was gone.

I passed out that night from pure exhaustion.

The next morning the panic was already there when I woke up. That specific one that's in your stomach before your mind catches up. I am not getting another paycheck. Before I could spiral, I grabbed my phone and put up a LinkedIn post. Then I started DoorDashing. Not because it was lucrative, but because I needed to be doing something with my hands.

The first people I told were my closest friend and his partner, my dad, and my now-husband, someone I'd known for about a month at that point. Each of them gave me something different.

My friend already knew things had been rough at work. When I burst into tears after the call, he didn’t need an explanation. He just stayed.

My dad gave me structure.

My husband gave me something I didn't expect from someone that new in my life: he was steady. I've spent most of my life being the one who holds things together for other people. Having someone show up for me without making it a thing and that mattered more than I could articulate at the time.

And then there was the unexpected support, my LinkedIn network. Former coworkers who reached out within hours. Recruiters who passed along leads. People who were genuinely angry or genuinely sad. People who connected me to opportunities before I'd even finished processing what happened. And, maybe more than anything, other people from my company who had also been let go. There is something specific about navigating that chaos with people who already understand the shape of the loss.

But the most important support came from others at my company who had also been laid off. There is something grounding about navigating the chaos with people who understand the shape of the loss. Their presence made the whole experience feel less isolating.

I'm writing this because layoffs feel like freefall, and nobody hands you a guide on the way down. Your body might shut down. Your brain might go straight into survival mode. You might feel relief before you feel grief, and that might confuse you. All of that is normal.

You're allowed to fall apart. You don't have to move fast to be resilient. Your value was never on the badge they took back.

This is Phase 1. The shock and the unraveling. And most importantly, the first moments where people show up and you let them.

Phase 2 is coming — for anyone who needs a Security Blanket during their own unexpected freefall.