I Lost My Job at 46—It Was the Most Liberating Day of My Life

Layoffs can be absolutely devastating, mine felt like freedom.

When I said I was going to be a journalist when I grew up at the age of seven, I wasn’t kidding around. Barbara Walters and Katie Couric were my icons. I watched them on TV and imagined sitting behind my own anchor desk. I prepared for my eventual fame by interviewing every adult at recess who would speak to me—the janitor, lunch lady, principal—and proudly filed “stories” every week for my elementary school newspaper. Even on vacation, I was at it. Pilots, flight attendants, servers—nobody was free from my prying.

Later, in college, I developed a fascination with war correspondents after reading about Ernie Pyle and Michael Herr. I couldn’t see myself on the front lines as clearly as behind an anchor desk, but who knew what would happen?

I hightailed it out of Ohio after college, and landed my first major journalism job in Washington, D.C. at National Geographic Traveler, then relocated to New York City. For 20+ years, I lived out my childhood career ambitions and covered travel, food and wine, parenting, and home decor for nearly a dozen national media brands. I was completely content, despite coming up in the magazine industry in an era when The Devil Wears Prada was more fact than fiction.

But like everyone else, I had a lot of time to think during the pandemic. I was in my 40s, and I had worked for every media brand I wanted to work for, in every role I set out to occupy. I was increasingly aware that I needed a new challenge—ideally a career that would have a more meaningful impact on women’s lives than helping them redesign their living rooms. I could do the job in my sleep, and I knew I was capable of more. Making a sweeping change was alluring but could I really just quit?

Then one Monday night in November 2023, a random meeting with the head of my department landed on my calendar for the next day. I wasn’t sure what the agenda was, but anxiety coursed through my body. I felt fidgety and my chest was tight. Lately, nothing I did was right—a deeply unsettling experience after years of success—and I didn’t have the energy for yet another confrontation. I clicked on the Zoom link and was flooded with relief when I saw my boss appear on the screen, along with an HR rep. I had managed people for well over a decade, and I knew exactly what this meant: liberation at last. 

I know a layoff is often devastating—especially in midlife, when finding a new job is its own hellish Squid Games. Unbelievably, this was the first job I’d lost, in an industry where layoffs have been rampant for decades. But I had been waiting for this moment for months, quietly crafting my second act behind the scenes even though I was in the career I’d dreamed about since I was a child. My self-esteem was in tatters, and I craved an environment
—and, frankly, a profession—where I felt valued again. At last, I had a severance package to power the plan that I had been dreaming about. 

Before my layoff, I had been interviewing career coaches to help me figure out my next act. For me, the most gratifying part of being a journalist was helping people improve their lives. I also loved mentoring younger members on my team. When I admitted that I thought I would be a good therapist to the first coach I talked to, he mentioned that I only needed two years of school to become a licensed clinical social worker (plus a three-year licensure process), which was much less daunting than the four years of school I had imagined. I started researching programs at colleges and universities in the city, and began to see a fulfilling future ahead. 

Those who don’t know me at all often remark that my new career ambition is “a leap,” but this idea has been percolating for 14 years since I spent nine months in purgatory with my first pregnancy. I had months of debilitating all-day “morning” sickness, two hospitalizations, and, finally, crippling anxiety. I transformed into someone I didn’t recognize. No matter how many times I saw my active, healthy son on an ultrasound screen, I couldn’t quell the waves of panic that consumed me about his well being. A manager called me out during a meeting at work for not smiling enough. At the time, I was barely surviving. Smiling wasn’t a priority—and why was a woman gaslighting me about not smiling enough? Wasn’t that a man’s job?

It wasn’t until I saw a reproductive psychiatrist—a specialty I learned about through tireless research—near the end of my pregnancy that I finally got a life-changing diagnosis of perinatal anxiety. I had suffered very visibly for months, in a city filled with people who should have known how to help me, yet I had been on my own. 

Now, in my 40s with a supportive husband and children who are becoming increasingly independent, I was finally in a position to go back to school and become a therapist specializing in reproductive mental health—the kind of therapist I desperately needed back then but didn’t find until it was almost too late. By getting my social work degree, I also hope to help restore reproductive rights, and craft other policies that will benefit families. F*** you, Trump.

But it wasn’t all so simple.

After that Zoom call, I traded my vice president title and healthy six-figure income for the unpredictable world of freelance consulting. That immediate rush of relief was tempered by a heartbreaking sense of loss. I was leaving so many inspiring, talented coworkers behind with only a brief mass email to express my gratitude for our time together. I valued my work community, and it was unceremoniously ripped away from me in minutes. I never got to say a real goodbye. It was also a bittersweet end to a career I had once loved. A career I had dreamed about my whole life, and built from the ground up, achieving what had once seemed impossible for a girl from a small town in Ohio. As excited as I was for a new beginning, the enormity of starting from scratch at the age of 46 was daunting. 

To settle myself, I popped on a pair of headphones and cranked up Mike + The Mechanics, and speed-walked to Best Buy to buy a new computer. By the end of the day, I had my first freelance client, which helped soothe my anxieties about being unmoored after a lifetime of being entrenched in the corporate world. I watched my daughter and her friend play in the park, something I never got to do when I was working. The unseasonal afternoon sun warmed my face, and I felt a deep sense of wellbeing wash over me. I could do this, one step at a time. 

The fireball that had taken up residence in my chest six months earlier, because of all the stress I was experiencing at work, vanished overnight. I slept soundly. I was present with my kids. I traded early morning meetings for walks in Prospect Park with girlfriends and fell in love with writing again.

Eager to jump into my new industry, I volunteered for a maternal mental health center and was hired a short time later as a paid co-facilitator. I developed an affinity for the mothers and birthing people that I met, and the time I spent with them was deeply satisfying. One day a program participant said to me, “You somehow know what will make us anxious and you take care of it before it becomes a problem.” My heart swelled with happiness. At last, I was in the right place. I was helping someone who had struggled as I did years earlier, and they valued my support. I applied to just one grad school to earn my masters degree. A professor I admired taught there, and I was determined to get in. Luckily, I did. 

When classes started this past fall, my kids made me a first day of school sign and we posed together for a photo. At this point, my 14-year-old finally understood that I was not going to a special school for old people (his words, not mine)—just regular old graduate school. He and his sister were proud of me, and I was proud of myself. But secretly, I was terrified of being the old person in a sea of young people once I got to campus. I had visions of sitting alone in the lounge, horribly conspicuous and undesirable in my middle age.

Instead, I discovered a student body ranging from recent undergrads to grandparents, all smart people who amaze me and have never once treated me like an old lady. In fact, my classmates are deeply kind and supportive. I was worried that somehow my brain wouldn’t work as well as it did during my undergraduate days—perimenopause could attack at any moment!—but I pulled off a 4.0 last semester. Perhaps because I gave up Jack Daniel’s coolers and Marlboro Lights in the ‘90s around the time I graduated from undergrad?

I still have two and a half semesters of school to go, a licensing exam, and hundreds of hours of supervision to become a LCSW, but switching careers at this stage in my life is making me feel excited and energetic in a way that I haven’t felt since my days at Time Inc. (RIP). In my clinical internship, I’ve discovered that my 20+ years of reading people and interviewing them as a journalist are incredibly helpful skills to have as a therapist.

As much joy as I feel, it’s a little weird to start over at 46. I was someone who equated my worth with my job title for years, so going from vice president to intern was a huge shift in identity. A supervisor where I volunteered last year repeatedly introduced me to people as “the mature intern,” further fucking with my head. Now, as a grad student, I’m interning once again, and the only person older than me in the office is my supervisor. Fortunately in clinical social work, middle age isn’t a deal breaker or even an issue at all.

Also, for the first time since the age of 10, I don’t have a steady income (I made a killing babysitting, even if I only got $3 an hour). In the absence of a consistent paycheck, I’m much more reliant on my husband financially than ever before. That’s been the most difficult adjustment of all, aside from having homework again.

When my husband and I got married in 2003, we knew money was a top reason that couples fought. We decided that we would split the bills equitably, keep independent checking accounts, and avoid that conflict altogether. For 23 years, our plan worked beautifully. Even our financial advisor was impressed. However, once my severance ran out, we had to change our ways. My freelance checks are unreliable and my 60-hour-a-week school and internship schedule doesn’t leave time for work during the school year.

A whole new set of arguments has emerged. It will probably be a thorny issue until I’m working full time again next year, but we are extremely fortunate. We own our apartment, and we have savings and investments. We are not taking a fancy vacation this year, and I shop far less, but our day-to-day expenses are covered and we can still afford small extras like lessons for both kids and dining out with friends.

Weirdness aside, my second act is empowering me to do more than I ever thought possible. I can reinvent myself instead of quiet quitting or bouncing around from job to job in an increasingly ageist industry. People want therapists with life experience. I can learn new things, and meet new people to admire and love and support (and to be loved and admired and supported by). I can be surprised in ways that I never imagined. I can also show my kids that you’re never too old to try new things. After all, Martha Stewart launched her empire at the age of 50. If Martha can do it, so can I. My next big vacation can wait.

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