In March 2025, the healthcare company where I'd been an office manager for two and a half years reorganized and let several middle managers go. I was one of them.
It was shocking. I felt like I had poured so much into that office. But if I'm honest, underneath the shock, there was also relief. As a woman in her late 50s working mostly alongside younger people, I'd spent a long time feeling like they were trying to mold me into something I wasn't.
Still, I assumed the next chapter would come quickly. I'd always worked. I'd always landed on my feet.
That was seventeen months ago. This is the first time in my life I don't know whether there's a happy ending waiting.
The Search
At first, I applied exclusively for in-person roles. My background is operations management in healthcare — the kind of work that requires you to be in the building. But I quickly discovered that organizations across the board are eliminating middle management positions. The jobs that match my skill set are disappearing.
So I widened the net. I started applying to remote roles through job boards and company websites. I enrolled in a coding-in-healthcare course, something I'd genuinely enjoyed as part of my last job. It's not patient-facing, which means it doesn't require me to be in a hospital or even in an office. It opens doors I couldn't see before.
It helps to be learning something. It gives the days a shape.
The Money
But shape doesn't pay the bills. I'm now eating into my 401(k), and I don't know what to do about it. My husband works, but losing my salary has been financially devastating. I lie awake wondering whether we should sell the house, move somewhere cheaper, or — in the scenario I can barely say out loud — move in with my mother.
I know I'll be OK. But "OK" might look very different from the life I thought I'd be living at this age. It feels like standing on the precipice of failure. Uncomfortable doesn't begin to describe it.
But it's not over. I keep telling myself that. It's not over.
The People Who Steady Me
My husband helps me comb through listings. He understands it's not as simple as throwing a résumé online and waiting for the phone to ring. My mom has been quietly, steadily supportive.
My adult son, who still lives at home, keeps trying to get me outside. He nudges me toward the garden, even though I have a long and documented history of killing every plant I touch. I've been teaching him to drive, which, surprisingly, pulls me out of my own head. You can't spiral when you're watching a teenager merge into traffic.
What I'm most grateful for is what they don't do. They don't push. They don't hover. They know I'm doing everything I can, and they give me room to do it.
The Invisibility
I feel like my age is a factor. I can't prove it, but I feel it. And I don't understand why. Being in your 50s doesn't mean your brain stops working. I have decades of life experience. I can walk into a crisis and stay steady. In every job I've held, people relied on me daily to find solutions, to keep things running, to be the person they turned to.
I went from having a purpose to feeling like nothing.
It sounds small, but the closest comparison I can find is being in sixth grade and not getting chosen for dodgeball. You stand there, watching everyone else get picked, and you think: *What's wrong with me that no one sees?*
The Dark Days and the Choice
There are days when I think about vacuuming the house and think, *What's the point of that, too?* Days when I wonder what the point is of getting dressed. It's crushing to go from being the rock for so many people to feeling irrelevant and unnecessary.
I try not to dwell there. But I also don't pretend those feelings aren't real. My daily struggle is to see the despair, own it, feel it — and then reject it. Not suppress it. Reject it. There's a difference.
I have days when I want to give up. But I won't.
If you're in this — in the middle of your life, staring at a silence where a career used to be, wondering if anyone will ever hand you a purpose again — hear me: don't let this be the ending of your story.
It's not over.