What happens when the thing we were taught to be is suddenly taken away, and how to come home to who you are.
Over the last few weeks, we have walked through three kinds of grief: the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, and the loss of the material things that made up our sense of home and security. Each one cuts deep in its own way. Each one asks us to stop, to feel, and to find a way to keep living.
There is a fourth grief. It is rarely named, almost never given the same tenderness, and yet it can feel like the most disorienting of all. It is the grief of losing a job.
It is easy to dismiss. After all, people say, it’s just a job. You will find another one. Dust yourself off, update your CV, keep going. But anyone who has lived through redundancy, dismissal, or the quiet collapse of a career knows that it is never just a job. It is something far bigger. It can feel like losing yourself.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Think back to when you were very small. Somewhere around the age of four or five, an adult leaned down, smiled, and asked you the question: What do you want to be when you grow up?
It sounds harmless. It feels like play. But look at what that question quietly teaches a child.
It does not ask, Who are you? It does not ask, What brings you joy? It does not ask, What do you feel called to give to the world? It asks what you will be, and the accepted answers are almost always jobs. Doctor. Teacher. Firefighter. Engineer.
From the very beginning, we are taught that being a person and having an occupation are the same thing. We are shaped, bit by bit, into a role. By the time we are adults, one of the first questions we ask a stranger at a party is “So, what do you do?” and we answer with our job title as if it were our name.
We do not just have jobs. We become them.
A job for life, and a story we inherited
There was a time when this story at least came with a promise. A person could join a company or learn a trade and stay there for forty years. Loyalty was rewarded. The job came with a pension, a gold watch, and a sense of belonging. In that world, it made a certain kind of sense to build your whole identity around your work, because the work was not going anywhere.
That world has changed. Jobs today are more fragile than ever. Restructures, mergers, automation, cost-cutting and sudden redundancies are part of normal working life. But the story has not changed nearly as fast. We still hand our identity to our employer, even though the employer will never hand the same loyalty back.
We inherited a belief that who we are is what we do, and we carry it into a world that can no longer protect it.
Fitting in and feeding the status quo
Most of us did not choose this consciously. We simply did what was expected. We fitted in. We chose the sensible path, the stable path, the path our families understood and our society rewarded.
And so many of us, without ever saying it out loud, set aside our real gifts and talents.
The painter who became an accountant because art won’t pay the bills. The natural healer who took a corporate role because that is where the money is. The storyteller, the builder, the teacher, the listener, who decided that what they were truly good at was a nice hobby but not a real life.
It won’t make money. How many dreams have been buried under those four words?
So we gave our time, our energy and our creativity to a role that fed the system, filled other people’s pockets, and kept the wheels turning. Not because we were weak or foolish, but because we were taught that this is what a responsible, successful adult does.
Just to fit in. Just to feed the status quo.
The time we never get back
Let us pause on something we rarely look at directly: time.
Over a working lifetime, most people spend somewhere around 90,000 hours at work. That is a commonly used estimate, based on roughly forty hours a week over about forty years, and it does not even include commuting, the emails answered in the evening, or the nights spent awake worrying about Monday.
Ninety thousand hours. That is a huge portion of the only life you will ever have.
Think about what went into those hours. The early alarms. The missed school plays and birthday dinners. The weekends spent recovering. The tiredness we normalised. The small voice inside that said this isn’t it and was ignored, again and again, because there was a mortgage to pay and a role to fill.
Time is the one thing that cannot be refunded. When a job ends, we are suddenly confronted with this truth in a way we have been avoiding for years. We look back and wonder: Where did it all go? What was it for? And who was I while I was busy?
That question alone can break a person open.
What the numbers quietly tell us
There is something else worth sitting with. Many of us give so much of ourselves to work that does not truly reach us.
Gallup, which has been studying the world of work for decades, publishes an annual report on the state of the global workplace. According to its latest findings, only around 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. About 64% are not engaged, and a further 16% are actively disengaged. In other words, roughly 80% of people around the world are going through their working days without real connection to what they do.
Take a moment to let that land.
It means that most of the world is giving the majority of their waking hours to something that does not light them up. Most of us are spending our lives on work that doesn’t feel like us. And yet we cling to it, define ourselves by it, and fear terribly the day it is taken away.
This is the paradox at the heart of job loss. We can be deeply unfulfilled in a role and still be devastated when it ends. Because it was never only about the work. It was about who we believed we were inside the work.
When the job goes
Then, one day, it is gone.
Sometimes it arrives like a bolt of lightning: a meeting called at short notice, a quiet room, a manager who cannot quite meet your eyes. Sometimes it creeps in slowly, through rumours and restructures and the dread of waiting for the email. Either way, the effect is the same. The ground you have been standing on disappears.
And it is never just about the job.
The silence where your routine used to be
For years, your days had a shape. An alarm, a route, a desk, a team, a rhythm. Suddenly there is nowhere to be. The silence in the morning is enormous. The structure that held you has dissolved, and you realise how much of your sense of stability was borrowed from your schedule.
The shame
Perhaps the heaviest part is the one that is spoken about least: shame.
The shame of not working. The shame of not earning. The shame of the question “So, what are you doing now?” The shame of watching others carry on as normal while you feel left behind. The shame of having to sign on, to apply for support, to ask for help when you have always been the one who coped, the one who provided, the one who held it together.
We have been taught that our worth is measured by productivity and income. So when the pay cheque stops, a cruel inner voice begins to whisper: You are not enough. You have failed. You are a burden.
That voice is not the truth. But it can sound very convincing in the dark.
The fear
Then there is the very practical, very real fear. The bills keep arriving. The rent or the mortgage does not pause out of sympathy. Savings shrink. For many, debts begin to grow. It becomes hard to sleep, hard to think clearly, hard to make decisions from a calm place.
Fear and grief feed each other. The more frightened we are, the harder it is to feel. The more we avoid feeling, the longer the grief stays lodged in the body.
The identity crisis
And underneath it all is the question that can keep you awake at three in the morning:
“Who am I now, if I am not that?”
Your title disappears. Your purpose disappears. Your sense of meaning, your place in the world, your answer to “What do you do?”, all of it can vanish at once. You do not just lose an income. You lose a version of yourself.
This is why losing a job can feel like grief in its truest form. You are mourning a role, a routine, a community, a future you had planned, and an identity you thought was permanent.
Why we rarely call it grief
One of the reasons this loss is so hard is that our culture does not give us permission to grieve it.
When someone dies, we hold a funeral. When a relationship ends, friends gather around with tea and tissues. But when a job is lost, the message is usually get back out there. Update your LinkedIn. Stay positive. Network. See it as an opportunity.
There is nothing wrong with practical action. But when we rush to fix and replace, we skip the feeling. And grief that is skipped does not disappear. It goes underground. It shows up as anxiety, exhaustion, anger, numbness, restlessness, or a persistent sense that something is deeply wrong, even after a new job has been found.
If you have lost a job, you are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to be sad, lost, relieved, confused, and all of these at once. None of it means you are weak. It means you are human, and that something that mattered has been taken from you.
You are not your job
Here is the truth that sits underneath all of this, and it is worth saying slowly.
You are not your job. You never were.
You were a whole person before you ever held a title, and you remain one when the title is gone. Your worth was never created by an employer and it cannot be taken away by one. Your value is not measured by your income, your productivity, or the line on your CV.
You are not a failure. You are a person who gave years of your life to a system that was never designed to hold your soul.
And this is where something extraordinary becomes possible. When the structure falls away, the question that was buried for years can finally rise to the surface: If I am not what I do, then who am I? And what am I really here for?
That question is painful. It is also a doorway.
The blessing hidden inside the loss
It may be hard to believe right now, but many people look back on the loss of a job as one of the most important turning points of their lives. Not because it was easy, but because it stripped away everything that was not truly them.
When the role is gone, you are given something rare: a pause. A gap in the machine. A moment where you are no longer being carried along by habit and expectation.
In that gap, you can begin to ask honest questions.
- What did I give up in order to fit in?
- Which of my gifts and talents have I been ignoring?
- What did I love as a child, before anyone asked what I wanted to be?
- If money were not the only measure, what would I want to give to the world?
- Who am I when no one is watching, grading or paying me?
These are not questions to answer in a day. But they are the beginning of coming home to yourself.
How shamanic healing can help
This is where shamanic work can be profoundly supportive.
In shamanic traditions, painful loss is understood as more than a mental or practical problem. When we go through shock, grief or major upheaval, it is said that part of our vital energy, our essence, our spirit, can withdraw or become lost. This is often called soul loss. It may sound unfamiliar, but many people recognise it instantly: that feeling of being only half present, going through the motions, disconnected from joy, from direction, from your own life.
Shamanic healing works gently with this. Rather than only talking about the pain, it invites us to feel it, release it and reconnect with the parts of ourselves that went quiet. It helps clear what has become heavy, and it supports us in remembering who we are beneath the roles we have played.
In my own journey, I knew the why, the what and the how of my pain, and still I could not find my way out from under the cloud. Understanding alone was not enough. It was shamanism that took the pain away and replaced it with purpose and meaning.
That is what I see in the work I do now. People arrive feeling lost, ashamed, frightened, unsure of who they are without their title. And step by step, they begin to reconnect with something deeper, something no redundancy can touch: their true self, their purpose, their natural gifts, and a sense of meaning that does not depend on any employer.
Shamanic healing is not a replacement for practical support, and it is not a quick fix. But it can be a powerful companion on the path from loss to renewal.
Gentle steps for right now
If you are in the middle of this grief, here are some small, human things that can help.
1. Let yourself feel it. Name what is happening: I am grieving. Give the sadness, the anger and the fear space to move, rather than pushing them down.
2. Separate your worth from your work. When the shame voice appears, gently answer it: I am more than my job. My value is not my income.
3. Look after the practical side without drowning in it. If money worries are building, reach out early to free debt advice services, your local support organisations and the benefits you are entitled to. Asking for help is not a failure. It is strength and wisdom.
4. Create a little structure. A morning walk, a regular wake-up time, a daily intention. Small rhythms can steady you when the big structure has gone.
5. Reconnect with what is yours. Spend time in nature. Write. Draw. Move your body. Do something that has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with being alive.
6. Speak to someone. Talk to a trusted friend, a counsellor, or a healer. You do not need to carry this alone. If you ever feel hopeless or unsafe, please contact your doctor or a local crisis service straight away.
7. Ask the bigger question. When you feel ready, begin to explore: What do I truly want to give? What is my real work in this world?
From loss to purpose
We began this series by looking at the grief of losing a loved one, the grief of a relationship ending, and the grief of losing material things like a home. In each of them, there is a common thread. Loss strips something away. And in the space it leaves behind, we are invited to find something truer.
The loss of a job is no different. It can feel like the ground has vanished. But sometimes the ground has to vanish so we can finally learn to stand on something that cannot be taken away.
You are not what you do. You are the quiet, powerful presence underneath, with gifts that were never meant to be buried and a purpose that was never tied to a payslip.
The years you gave cannot be returned. But what you do with the years ahead is entirely yours.
So take a breath. Let yourself grieve. And when you are ready, begin to ask the question that was waiting for you all along:
Who am I, beyond the title, and what am I here to do?
If this speaks to you, and you are going through the loss of a job, a loved one, a relationship, or a home, you do not have to walk through it alone. I would love to support you in reconnecting with your true self and discovering the blessing hidden inside your loss. Reach out, and let’s take the next step together. 🖤
