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losing a job

Grieving over job loss

““Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.” Robert Frost
job-losses

It was a wonderful morning when I wobbled over to the Director’s office at the UP Institute of Small Scale Industries (UP-ISSI). The month of January 1986 was just a few months before I gave birth to my eldest girl, Lauren and I was always in high spirits. I thought the new director just wanted to talk business. Meet and greet each other formally. It looked like he had great plans for UP-ISSI which didn’t include me. The new director informed me that my contract will be terminated. (UP then was in freeze hiring so I was always under a contract). Part of me died with the notice. I was angry, depressed, confused, hurt, and worried. I was so bitter and angry at the new director because I was passionate and competent in my job in research and consultancy. Sometimes I think he just terminated me because I was hired by the past director. I didn’t believe there was shortage of funds because I was hired through a foundation of the institute. I had high hopes about going back to work but they never hired me back. It was really a devastating loss. It wasn’t even the financial aspect that made me feel bad. The research and consultancy work served as part of my identity, a place to use my skills and talents and watch them build over time as I believed I became more competent at them. I went through the grief process of anger, denial, barganing in that roller coaster ride and finally accepting the loss.

I guess there is a silver lining to all this. I became a full-time mother devoted to bringing up my children. If I continued on with my work at UP-ISSI, I would have been such a workaholic with little time for my growing kids.

When someone talks about grief, it is often associated with a death of a loved one. When I started this blog, I talked of my grief journey after my son’s death. There are other areas of life in which loss results in grief that is just as real. One of these is being experienced more and more often due to the current trend of companies to ““down-size.”

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