Many fear what US federal job layoffs and government science grant cancellations will do to our services, our freedoms, healthcare and even our money. I also fear what layoffs do to the person who lost their job. Having been through that three times myself, I don’t wish it on anyone.

When you loved your job, losing it is heartbreaking.

Losing a Job You Loved

Years ago I’d always said, “I love my work,” and smiled or even laughed out loud. And it was true, that like most of the scientists working in research who I knew at the time, I did really love it.

After each layoff, I came to love the next job a little bit less. But still, my identity was inextricably bound up with my job. Doing it well and loving that was a core part of who I thought I was. Maybe, like an individual’s life itself is, this was simply like the flame of the candle in the window where a sudden puff of wind could blow it out. Gone. 

I wrote about my second layoff in the second novella titled “After the Layoff” in the independently published fiction book of four novellas, The Doctor’s Dreams. The fictional main character, scientist Eve Wissen, feels like a decapitated, single head of household after a surprise layoff at work.

Her sudden freedom thrusts her into a terrifying void where she scrambles to reinvent meaning for her life. The abyss is scary.

“He who fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster himself. And if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”. –Nietzsche

The story was based on my own lived experiences, after a layoff at WebMD’s Medscape in New York City where I’d been Scientific Director for many years, and then Director of Outcomes. I did actually feel like my head had been cut off and was bleeding out money faster than I ever could have imagined, with two teenage children depending on me as their sole support.

It was ugly for a bit, I kind of lost my mind, and the novella is a fictionalized horror story that helped me deal with all that. 

In real life, I eventually sought out help. And after getting on antidepressants, I was back to work by a year later. A different kind of job as a health journalist. A better one, I told myself. I don’t really know if that was true, but I always try to lean toward the positive.

On the new job as a Senior Editor at Everyday Health, I was trained by a ruthless, seasoned journalist who’d worked at the Washington Post for most of his life. He pushed me to write a new, evidence-based news story within the day, every day, complete with original quotes from experts I reached out to for their reactions to the news. I even interviewed Dr. Sanjay Gupta live, in person, about Zika virus, while in our City studio.

I started to have fun again. I later turned the Zika virus scare into a fictional story, published as an audiobook and ebook, Mosquito Song, Dreams in Old San Juan.

Now, I’ve learned over time that loving what can not be taken away is better for me. Or at least, less painful.

Layoffs and Job Loss Have a Deeply Personal Cost

From when I was a small child I’d known many who did not love their job, my own mother for example – a public school teacher. I can’t even count the times she said she hated her job and couldn’t wait to retire. While she loved teaching children and had a gift for it, which I write about in my book “When the Baby Is Not OK: Hopes & Genes,” my mother also had all-too-frequent heated run-ins with the school administration.

Most days after work, she locked herself in the bedroom alone for a half hour. I heard crying. She always reemerged, healed and once again the powerhouse that her family all considered her to be.

“That’s never going to be me,” I promised myself.

Every day now when I check LinkedIn in the morning, I see more scientist and public health friends changing their status to “Open to Work.” Layoffs, or lost NIH or NSF or NCI grant funding that decimated their worksites. For many, the loss is personally devastating.

Like Nobel Prize laureate Barbara McClintock, my mentor in graduate school, once told me, “You can’t do Molecular Biology experiments in your backyard, Jennifer.”

I think she meant I had to learn to play the game. Get along.

The Weight of Science Layoffs

I know that most scientists who have been laid off or lost grant funding will not be able to do their experiments any longer. Maybe their projects will go on with someone else running them, but maybe not. I feel for them. It is a difficult loss, mentally. It’s not just the money. It cuts us at the very core of who we thought we were. 

Recently, reports in Bloomberg News estimated US federal worker layoffs climbing to 250,000 jobs lost. My heart goes out to each individual losing their position. In the Social Security Administration it may be 7,000 people, and half of the thousands of people working in the Education Department, about 80,000 in Veterans Affairs, even half of the IRS’s 100,000 people and 76,000 working in the Defense Department. So many heartbreaks.

When hearing about the government downsizing, the economy tanking, and all the daily trauma in the news, I keep thinking about the individual very real people — and what I went through while I was out of work. 

For every person who loses their job through no fault of their own, what about their hearts? What about their minds?