When my Fortune 150 company announced another round of layoffs, I should have felt panic.
Instead, the first thing I felt was relief.
I had been with the company for 14 years. I built a reputation as someone reliable, someone who got things done. I was on the team with the most interesting work, the most funding, and the strongest leadership.
From the outside, everything looked right.
Except it wasn’t.
I was dealing with chronic pain.
At first, I could manage it. I would get through the workday, using work as a distraction, and then deal with the pain afterward. It became a cycle I unknowingly sustained for years.
I hid it from my manager.
Not because I didn’t trust her, but because I didn’t want it to change how she saw me.
I had built an identity as someone who handled things.
I didn’t want that to shift.
Eventually, the pain became impossible to ignore.
I sought answers. I went to the Mayo Clinic. I tried to keep working through it.
Then everything escalated at once.
The pain worsened.
A serious infection hit.
My performance started to slip.
The life that had worked for years stopped working.
The dynamic with my manager changed.
What had been a relationship built on trust and ease became more formal, more distant.
Whether it was real or perceived, it didn’t matter.
Something had shifted.
I took a medical leave of absence.
As my return approached, my physical therapist told me she didn’t think I could go back to full-time work.
I agreed.
But my role didn’t have a part-time option.
So the question became:
Do I go back and try to force it?
Or do I walk away?
If I’m honest, I would have tried to force it.
Then the decision was made for me.
My role was eliminated in a large-scale layoff, effective on my return-to-work date.
First came relief.
Then came something else: freedom.
The question changed.
The answer wasn’t entirely new.
Years earlier, I had started a business. I had always been drawn to creative work.
That pull had been there all along.
I just kept answering it with, Not right now.
The life I wanted had been showing up for years.
I just wasn’t ready to choose it.
The layoffs didn’t end my corporate career.
They revealed that I didn’t want to rebuild it.
After signing my severance agreement with the company, I joined one of my daily conference calls with my international writing community (including England, Australia, Connecticut and California).
“I guess you all are my co-workers now.”
And just like that, something shifted.
New World
Sometimes we don’t change our path because we are brave.
Sometimes God removes the path we were clinging to.
And then we have to decide what to build next.
I thought I was writing about pain.
But the deeper story was never just pain.
It was about questioning the narratives I had accepted without realizing it.
About recognizing when a life no longer fits.
About choosing differently.
Stop Waiting for Permission
My hope is that a year from now, my readers will no longer wait for permission to act on what they already know.
If you’re new here, start with:
Start Here: Living an Unlimited Life
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If this essay resonates with you, I’d love to hear what it brings up for you. Just hit reply and tell me.
Oh wow... Such a significant change, one decision, the next move, I suspect it would have been stressful at the time, i often wonder if those changes are part of a larger purpose. Change needs to happen so we move on to meaningful work.