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Lost your job? Here’s what to do next.

We’ll all lose a job at some point. Here’s how to get through it.

Sheryl Garratt
The Startup
Published in
9 min readFeb 4, 2025

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Photo by Thirawatana Phaisalratana on Getty Images

So you’ve lost your job.

This has happened to me twice. I loved the first job, and I was very good at it. So I was devastated, and was grieving and depressed for months afterwards.

The other job I didn’t love at all. It wasn’t right for me, and I was offered a severance package that was more than fair. Yet it still hurt: rejection always does. So be kind to yourself, when it happens to you. And be as understanding as you can, when it happens to friends.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth.

No matter how skilled we are, how hard-working, most of us will lose a job at some point in our lives. Many of us will experience it more than once.

Sometimes you just weren’t ready, or the job wasn’t a good fit. But often it has nothing to do with you and your abilities at all. Industries are being disrupted constantly, and few of us can now expect to be in the same career for life, let alone at the same company.

So if you’ve lost your job, how do you get through it gracefully? Here’s what I learned.

1. Rejection hurts.

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The Startup
The Startup

Published in The Startup

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Sheryl Garratt
Sheryl Garratt

Written by Sheryl Garratt

Writer; editor; coach, supporting creatives to step up and do their best work — and get paid for it! Find me at www.thecreativelife.net

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