When I found out I got laid off, it was 4 a.m., which is less dramatic than it sounds. I’m just a person who wakes up at 4 a.m. to do unpaid overtime worrying about things that haven’t happened yet.
By breakfast, I had decided to start a company.
Those two facts are not a triumphant before-and-after. They’re the same fact, four hours apart, with nothing heroic in between—just half of an Eggo waffle eaten standing over the sink and 20 job applications I have no memory of sending.
The actual decision got made in the car, on the way back from daycare drop-off, when my husband said, very gently, the way you’d talk to a person on a ledge, “Hey, maybe now’s the time to try that travel thing you mentioned last year.”
And instead of saying, “Absolutely not, I would like to lie down until further notice,” I said, “…hm, okay.”
That’s how the biggest decision of my adult life got made. Not on some mountaintop. In the car, in free fall, because someone who loves me handed me something to hold and I was too tired to set it down.
Starting Over From the Kitchen Counter
So. A Monday, two weeks later, because everything is material and I have a mortgage.
It’s 8:38 a.m. I’m holding a coffee I will take three sips of and then rediscover at 4 p.m., cold and faintly disappointed in me. In the next 90 minutes, I’m going to do two things that have no business sharing a morning. At 9, I open pre-orders for a small children’s product I built out of thin air and spite. At 9:30, I sit for two back-to-back interviews with a very large tech company, the second with an executive so senior I’d practiced saying her name out loud the night before in the mirror, like a woman in a film about to do something brave or extremely ill-advised.
A launch and a corporate interview. Before lunch. From one square foot of counter that still has yesterday’s string cheese fused to it like a fossil.
Meanwhile Ruby, who is 2, has carried her pretend laptop to the chair beside mine so she can also work. Ari, who is 4, is requesting “second breakfast” with the haunted urgency of a boy who has never, not one single time in his life, been fed. And somewhere in there, a stranger on the internet buys the thing I made 18 minutes before I have technically opened the store.
This is not a metaphor. It is a Monday. It is, somehow, always a Monday.
When the Job Title Disappears
I spent 15 years building a career I was good at. Big companies. Senior titles. The kind you can say at a party and watch do a little something to a stranger’s face. I knew exactly who I was at work. And a large, load-bearing portion of who I was, full stop, turned out to be who I was at work, which is a thing you learn at 4 a.m., with no warning and a few weeks of severance.
When the title went, the income went. Obviously. That part you can put in a spreadsheet.
But the scaffolding went with it. The structure I’d been standing on for years without once noticing I was standing on anything at all.
So there I was at 9 a.m., still in the clothes I’d slept in, allegedly a professional, technically a stay-at-home mother, in reality some unsexy third thing with no name and no business cards, not at all sure which one of them was meant to take the interview.
The Messy Middle of Career Reinvention
Everyone wants the part where it works out. I understand the appeal. I read the Wikipedia while I watch the movie too.
But I’m not in that part.
I’m in the middle, and the middle is a woman doing math at midnight about how many months the savings will cover. It’s knowing the last paycheck has a real date on it, and that a mortgage and two children do not pause for anybody’s reinvention. It’s the very specific nausea of stepping off a ledge when you are not the only person tied to your back.
Ambition is a darling little word right up until other people’s dinners depend on it.
And motherhood, for the record, had already moved in and taken the primary bedroom and most of the closets. There is only so much of one person to go around. I have spent this whole year being introduced to my own edges, and I can’t say I’ve loved meeting them.
Wanting Something for Myself
And still. I want this.
I’m not going to be ashamed of it, not even here, not even from the floor. I refuse to perform the tasteful version, the one where building something is just a sensible, chin-up little response to getting let go, a thing I’m doing because I had to. I’m doing it because I have wanted it for as long as I can remember and was too well-behaved to say so out loud, and getting fired, of all the indignities, took the lock off the door.
The wanting was never the problem. It had been in the garage the whole time with the engine running.
What’s different now is whose road it’s on. For 15 years, I aimed all of it at other people’s companies and other people’s bottom lines, and this is the first time in my life the thing I’m pouring myself into has my own name on it.
What’s also different is that it has to share a body, and a calendar, and a frankly insulting allotment of attention with two people who need me completely and a house that, rudely, will not run itself.
I have not made peace with this. I make war with it, hourly, and I lose a respectable number of the fights.
My kids see more of this than I would have picked for them. Not the clean version. The real one.
Ari has started telling people he’s my co-founder, which is generous of me to permit, given that he does roughly what a real one does. Ruby sets her pretend laptop down beside mine every single evening, and I can’t tell you what that does to me without needing to sit down for a second.
Partly because I don’t yet know whether my children are watching their mother build something or watching her come apart at a kitchen island, and most evenings the truest answer is both, same woman, same minute.
I would like to be teaching them courage. Some nights, I suspect I’m only teaching them what a person looks like when she’s holding far too much and won’t put any of it down.
I don’t have the takeaway. I just don’t have it.
I’m still inside the thing, and it hasn’t decided what it’s going to be, and frankly neither have I. Some mornings, the launch and the interview and the little laptop beside mine feel like one long, improbable miracle. Some mornings, they feel like evidence I picked up about four more things than a person was issued arms for.
The title is gone. I’m still here.
Somebody’s mother, and somebody who wants things, and finally done apologizing for the second one to make the first one easier to look at.
That is not a resolution. It’s a Monday. I’ll report back from the other side, if there turns out to be one, and if I recognize my own face when I get there.
FAQs About Being Laid Off With Young Kids
What does it feel like to be laid off with young kids?
Being laid off with young kids can feel like losing income, structure and professional identity all at once. It is not only a career event; it can also affect a mother’s sense of security, ambition and selfhood while the daily demands of childcare, bills and family life continue without pause.
How can a layoff affect a mother’s identity?
A layoff can affect a mother’s identity by removing a title, routine and professional role that may have helped define who she was outside of motherhood. For many women, losing a job means confronting the question of who they are when the work identity disappears but the responsibilities at home remain.
What does career reinvention look like when you’re also a mom?
Career reinvention as a mom often happens in the middle of ordinary family life: from the kitchen counter, between daycare drop-off, job applications, interviews, childcare, meals and financial pressure. It is rarely a clean before-and-after story. More often, it is a messy process of trying to build something new while still being needed by everyone around you.
Can motherhood and ambition coexist?
Motherhood and ambition can coexist, but not always neatly. Many mothers are trying to hold financial responsibility, caregiving, identity, creativity and professional desire at the same time. Ambition does not disappear after motherhood, but it often has to share space with people, routines and responsibilities that depend on you.
Why can job loss feel so personal for working mothers?
Job loss can feel deeply personal for working mothers because work is often tied to identity, confidence, independence and security. When a job title disappears, it can raise bigger questions about value, purpose, money and what it means to be someone outside the role of mother.
How do you start over after being laid off as a parent?
Starting over after being laid off as a parent can begin with small, imperfect steps: applying for jobs, exploring long-held ideas, asking for support, looking honestly at finances and making space for both grief and ambition. There may not be a clear resolution right away, and that uncertainty is often part of the process.
