For almost twenty years, my existence was split into two equally consuming and demanding roles: that of a devoted, hands-on mother and that of a committed, full-time magazine editor. These two identities, though very different, wove together to form the fabric of my daily life. One demanded emotional presence, logistical precision, and endless patience; the other required intellectual rigor, editorial sharpness, and the capacity to meet relentless deadlines. Then, last year, an unanticipated shift shook that dual structure when I was laid off from the job I had dedicated more than a decade of my professional life to—nearly eleven years of loyalty and effort—just months before two of my children departed for college and my youngest transitioned to middle school. In what felt like a single, startling instant, the rhythm I had faithfully maintained collapsed: my calendar emptied overnight, my phone stopped its never-ending hum, and the landscape of my days reorganized itself into silence. There were no more looming deadlines to meet, no exhausting commute to endure, and no endless chain of mental reminders about which child had to be driven to which destination and when.
At first, I was surprised to find a sense of relief in the absence of urgency. I had been running on the fumes of burnout, and a break was not only welcome but desperately needed. The timing almost seemed perfectly orchestrated: with the end of June approaching, summer itself extended an invitation to enjoy life’s simple pleasures while also providing me the flexibility to be truly present as my older children prepared to leave home. Life remained active, certainly, but for the first time in years, the pace and responsibilities felt manageable, not suffocating.
During my years of employment, my two main identities—professional and maternal—were constantly intertwined. There were rare periods when they operated seamlessly, but more often, they collided in a demanding and perpetual balancing act. I would spend mornings in high-stakes editorial meetings and evenings as chauffeur, ferrying kids to soccer practices or dance lessons. In the cracks between these roles, I squeezed in emails during school pick-up lines, stayed awake late into the night revising articles after the household had gone to sleep, and composed responses to urgent work messages illuminated by the glow of my laptop at the dining room table. My life was an endless shuffle of responsibilities: deadlines layered over doctors’ appointments, parent-teacher conferences crammed between interviews, and scheduling logistics serving as the invisible spine of my existence. Like countless working mothers, I learned to measure my days not in hours but in completed tasks and narrowly avoided crises.
The pandemic blurred these already fragile boundaries even further. Suddenly, my home became not only an office but also a classroom and the center of all family life. I wrote headlines and edited features while simultaneously supervising remote lessons, troubleshooting online platforms, and reminding children to stay focused. I led department-wide video calls while cooking mid-day meals and absentmindedly transferring laundry from washer to dryer. I became indispensable in every sphere—needed everywhere, all the time. And though a shift to hybrid work later offered modest reprieve as the children grew more independent, the illusory concept of balance remained persistently out of reach.
I had experienced job loss before, but the experience carried an entirely different weight this time. One Friday morning, as I moved through what I assumed would be an ordinary routine, a dreaded calendar invitation appeared: a meeting with my manager and a representative from human resources. Within moments, I learned that my position was being eliminated as part of a larger restructuring initiative. With that brief conversation, the life I had meticulously constructed felt as though it dissolved in a breath.
The contrast with my previous job loss years earlier could not have been starker. Back then, I had a house filled with small children: a toddler just beginning to test boundaries and two older siblings still immersed in the world of elementary school demands—homework, playdates, constant requests for guidance. Losing a job under those circumstances created disruption, yes, but I had neither the time nor the energy to dwell on personal identity. My days were sustained by the constant call of “Mommy!” and the endless to-do list that accompanied it. This time, however, was utterly different. For the first time since 2005, no one in my household urgently depended on me in the same way. It created a dual emptiness—professional and maternal—that placed me in a liminal state, an in-between identity. No longer could I categorize myself as a full-time working mother, a definition that had felt as natural and unshakable as a second skin. Stripped of that certainty, I now faced the daunting question of figuring out what shape my life might take next.
What I hadn’t realized until the quiet descended was just how much of my sense of worth had been bound up in being relentlessly busy. My value felt tethered to productivity: the tangible achievements of a polished article, a neatly executed editorial package, or the flawless coordination of a family’s tightly structured schedule. Without those markers of accomplishment, the elongated spaces in my days became disconcerting. They were at once indulgent—allowing luxuries like sleeping past dawn without the rush of school drop-offs—and yet strangely unsettling, producing feelings of guilt, as if I were wasting irreplaceable time. I discovered I could no longer justify leisure, even when there were no pressing responsibilities on the horizon. The absence of structure made it shockingly easy to let hours drift away in idle distraction: lingering too long over coffee, wandering slowly with the dog, or giving in to the temptation of watching multiple episodes of a streaming series in the middle of the afternoon. Despite these freedoms, I often found myself restless, fidgeting as if looking for the next urgent task that simply no longer existed.
For years, I had romanticized what this scenario might feel like—an uncluttered home where I was no longer chained to my phone, no frantic dashes through Target for last-minute supplies, no harried calls from the school nurse announcing yet another feverish child awaiting pick up. I imagined that when life finally slowed, peace and ease would follow. What no one tells you, however, is that such ease carries its own sense of loss: the ache of no longer being needed with the same intensity or frequency, of no longer being the axis around which everything spun.
Yet in this space of stillness, I find lessons beginning to emerge. I am learning to reinterpret this moment as less an erasure of my former identities and more of a passage toward transformation. Instead of clinging to the question of who I was or grieving what I am no longer, I try to focus on what I could yet become. Professionally, I still carry decades of cultivated expertise: the ability to tell stories with precision, to edit with nuance, and to manage teams with empathy and purpose. Personally, I possess a resilience forged in the crucible of raising children while sustaining a career, a combination that taught me resourcefulness and perspective I never fully acknowledged before. And perhaps most significantly, what I now hold for the first real time in decades is space—the rarest currency of all. Space to reflect, to reimagine, and to slowly sketch out the contours of a new chapter.
Identity, I am beginning to understand, is not fixed. It evolves, it reshapes, it becomes rewritten over time. At present, mine feels like a draft—a work in progress without clear structure or certainty. As someone long accustomed to polished headlines and immovable deadlines, this uncertainty is profoundly uncomfortable. Yet maybe, just maybe, this is where the story becomes most compelling: not in the pursuit of flawless balance, but in embracing the unsettled, messy middle, the place where reinvention slowly begins to take root.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/working-mother-lost-job-kids-left-for-college-reevaluating-future-2025-9
