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The Everyday Grief Podcast
Everyday Grief is a podcast for professionals, leaders, and caregivers navigating the unspoken grief that comes with life’s hardest changes — career transitions, layoffs, leadership shifts, relationship loss, death, and personal identity loss.
Hosted by Dr. Anitra — a grief and change-transformed leadership voice, certified executive coach, HR consultant, minister, educator, and clinically trained chaplain — this podcast blends deep expertise in grief, leadership, organizational change, and personal transformation, guided by ethics, biblical scholarship, and theology.
Here, we explore how grief shows up beyond death — and within it — in workplaces, leadership, family, and identity — and what it means to move through loss while holding onto your worth and dignity.
If you’ve ever asked:
- Who am I now that this role is gone?
- How do I lead when I’m grieving?
- How do I rebuild after a relationship ends — or after loss that changed my life?
- How do I carry a death that still lives with me?
— you belong here.
Each episode offers:
- Real conversations about workplace grief, leadership loss, identity shifts, relationship grief, and death-related loss.
- Gentle reflection to help you process grief without pressure — and without having to "move on" too fast.
- Practical strategies for navigating non-death grief, professional loss, relationship grief, and deep personal transformation — with compassion and care.
Whether you’re facing a layoff, leadership change, breakup, divorce, estrangement, death of a loved one, or a quiet loss no one sees, you don’t have to navigate it alone.
Take the Grief Resilience Assessment: https://everydaygriefcoach.com/assessments
Join the Everyday Grief Community: https://www.everydaygriefprograms.com/products/communities/everydaygriefcommunity
Because grief belongs in the conversations we have about leadership, love, loss, and life — and so do you.
The Everyday Grief Podcast
I Am Not My Job — Grieving Career & Identity Loss (Layoffs, Leaves & Promotions Series)
What happens when the job that gave you meaning is gone?
In this first episode of the Layoffs, Leaves & Promotions series, Dr. Anitra shares her personal story of job loss and how it shook her identity — along with reflections on what it means to grieve a role that felt like part of you.
Whether you’ve experienced a layoff, career transition, leadership change, or find yourself asking "Who am I now that this part of my life has ended?" — this episode is for you.
We’ll explore:
- Why job loss is a form of grief, even if no one calls it that.
- The hidden grief of losing identity, purpose, and belonging.
- The stories we tell ourselves — and how to gently ask, “Is it true?”
- Reflection questions to help you reframe your story and honor your worth.
Resources Mentioned:
Take the Grief Resilience Assessment — discover how you process grief and what care you need:
https://everydaygriefcoach.com/assessments/
Join the Everyday Grief Community — a private space for those navigating life and career losses with support and compassion:
https://www.everydaygriefprograms.com/products/communities/everydaygriefcommunity
Because you are more than your job — and you don’t have to do this alone.
Connect and learn more: https://everydaygriefcoach.com
Want to learn more about Everyday Grief Inc. and my work?
You can visit us at everydaygriefcoach.com.
To learn more about me and why I do this work, visit everydaygriefcoach.com/about.
Hello and welcome. Before we dive in today, I want to start with something simple A breath. Wherever you are sitting, driving, walking, just take a deep breath with me, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Let's do that again In through your nose and out through your mouth. If you've been holding your breath, if you've been bracing yourself through the weight of grief or loss, I want to give you permission to breathe again.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is for anyone navigating the kind of loss that doesn't always get named the loss of a job, a role, a title that felt like it was part of who you are, of who you are. So, as we begin, I want to invite you to let this space be one where you don't have to hold it all together. You can set the mask down, you can be honest about what this loss has meant to you, even if you've never said it out loud. Welcome to Everyday Grief, where we explore the many ways loss shows up in life and how we can care for ourselves and others in the midst of it. I'm Dr Anitra, a grief-informed leadership coach, minister and founder of Everyday Grief. Today, I'm beginning a special series called Layoffs, leaves and Promotions, because you probably know, like I do that grief is not just about death. Grief is about change, identity and the things we lose when life doesn't go as planned, especially in our work and leadership lives. If you've lost a job for a promotion or felt like part of your identity is slipping away with the career change and you know, that kind of change I want you to know. This space is for you, and today's conversation is called I am, not my job. So I want to begin with a personal story, because it's helpful to get context and to know who you're listening to.
Speaker 1:So years ago, I was working in a role that felt like it was home. It felt like it was more than a job. It was my calling and I believed in it very much, deeply, and in fact, I traveled across the state that I was living in at the time really trying to raise funds, friends and awareness for the work that I was doing, and so I met a lot of people and I built many relationships and I was really proud of my work and I hit every goal. In fact, I exceeded the amount of money that was expected to be raised. I had raised the feasibility of the program that I was working with, so everything was going just right, better than I had thought, better than even the school had thought but then something happened that I don't think I expected. I did not calculate this into my plans at all, and you might be in the same position. There was a financial crisis and the position that I worked so hard on was eliminated, just like that gone. And even though I knew it wasn't about my performance, it did not prevent me from analyzing it as a way of being rejected. I felt like it was a rejection, like I wasn't enough, like everything I had built didn't matter to anyone, and so, after the initial announcement, being stunned by it, I cried. I wondered who I would be. When I saw people, what would they say when they thought oh, I thought you were there, I thought you were doing this role, and I wondered who am I if I'm not that? See, I become that invested in that role. And if you're listening today and you've lost a role you loved or maybe you didn't to say this to you, you are not your job. You are not your job, but I know it doesn't always feel that way. Here's what we don't talk enough about Job loss is a form of grief.
Speaker 1:Normally, if someone talks about a job loss, people will dismiss that or just say something like oh, you'll find another. But it really is grief and we've got to be attentive to that. There's a grief expert that I really do appreciate her work. Her name is Dr Mary Frances O'Connor, and she teaches us that grief lives in the brain, and it happens whenever we lose a meaningful relationship, because we're actually rewiring our brain. We're trying to adapt, we're trying to reconcile as we are introduced to new pieces of information. When we are introduced to a loss, our brain is trying to make sense of it, and so when we look at a job, a job is a relationship. It is a relationship with a company, with colleagues, with the role that shaped how you saw yourself, because it becomes who you are, so that when that ends, your brain begins to grieve, even if nobody calls it grief.
Speaker 1:But instead of acknowledging that you are in grief, as it would be the case if you were encountering a death-related loss, you will find people that will dismiss it and they don't always mean to, but it doesn't rise to quite that level of a death-related loss and so you'll hear them say things like oh, you'll bounce back, something better is right around the corner, it'll come along. You're so talented, you'll be fine, and I've heard each one of these. You probably heard something very similar, and while that all may be true yes, indeed, we may be talented and something else may come around the corner it doesn't really help you to hear those things when you're sitting in the rawness of a loss, when you're in the thick of it. No one's cliche, no one's axiom, their religious sayings, none of that really will matter to you. What does matter is that you are internalizing a message of unworthiness as you begin to ask yourself the question who am I now? So I'm going to give you some things to think about. I want to share with you some things that I've learned over my experience, because I cannot say to you that that one loss was the last time that I experienced a job loss. You know, the economy is always cyclic and there are those of us who have vulnerable positions to begin with, and so I want to share with you something I've learned Grief isn't just about what we've lost.
Speaker 1:It's about the story that we tell ourselves about that loss. So when you encounter loss, we oftentimes will try to figure out what is really going on, and that story is a thing that kind of gets stuck to us. It evades the heart, it gets into the heart. It is something that you begin to tell others and sometimes, in the telling of a story of a job loss, it makes you sink a little bit more, less able to stand fully in the power of who you really are. So we begin to tell ourselves things like maybe I wasn't good enough, Maybe I should have worked harder, maybe if I had done something different, this wouldn't have happened. And you start going into this spiral of constantly putting yourself down, not seeing that this is something that might be another way of telling yourself the story of you.
Speaker 1:So I had to ask myself, and I want to invite you to ask yourself is the story that you're telling yourself true? Is it really true? Invites us all to ask the question is it true? What is the story that you are telling yourself about your worth, about your performance, about something you could have done differently at your last job, and is what you've been telling yourself really true? Can I absolutely know that it is true? What evidence are you using to come up with the story that you're telling yourself? Is it really true? And I want to ask you, who would you be without that story? So I'm going to flip it back to you who would I be without that story?
Speaker 1:I want you to think about this, because oftentimes we create a story that puts us in a position that it's really difficult to get out of. Sometimes the story we're telling ourselves about why the job ended is harsher than reality. So we're not really being compassionate with ourselves, we're not really giving ourselves grace. It's not like we've been lying to ourselves. I want to invite you to begin to find a story that holds truth with compassion. I want you to begin to bring in truth with compassion, to begin to bring in truth with compassion.
Speaker 1:And here's something else your story will be asked Friends, family, future employers. They will ask questions like what happened? Why did you leave? So I want to invite you to begin practicing how you want to tell your story, not because you have to be the hero today, but because how you tell your story, how you tell yourself your story, will shape how you heal. So I want to give you some questions that you might explore as you are thinking about your story. The first question is what is the story I'm telling myself about? Why this job ended? Is that story true? Is it kind? What is still true about me, even though this role is gone? How do I want to tell this story to myself, to others, in a way that honors my dignity? And if you don't have the answers to any of these yet, that's okay. You don't have to figure it all out today.
Speaker 1:As we close, I want to offer you a blessing. May you know that you are more than a title. May you remember that your worth is not tied to your productivity. May you be gentle with the part of you that feels lost right now, and may you begin to write a new story, one that holds both the grief and the truth of your value. Take a deep breath with me now, in and out. Let's take another deep breath together, in and out. You are worthy, you are seen, you are not alone.
Speaker 1:If today's conversation spoke to you, I want to invite you to take my grief resilience assessment.
Speaker 1:It is a free tool to help you understand how you grieve and what kind of care you need, and you might listen to me say that and think is my grief really worthwhile? Who really cares about my grief? And I want you to consider that you should care about your grief enough to know how you grieve and what kind of care you need to ask for from others in your community, in your family and for yourself, and you can find the link in the show notes. If you're looking for a community that is having these conversations, we are building that space right now within the everyday grief community, and so you will also see a way to connect with the everyday grief community in the show notes. In our next episode, we'll be talking about why leaders and companies need to take grief seriously and how unspoken grief is shaping workplaces more than we know. Until then, I want you to take good care of yourself, be gentle with your story, and I want you to be gentle with your life. Be well.