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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
You are Not a Line Item: Healing through Storytelling and Community
In this soul-grounding episode, Dr. Anitra Manning opens a new mini-series exploring the often overlooked grief of layoffs. With compassion, clarity, and spiritual depth, she invites listeners to name the moral injury, shame, and identity rupture that follow job loss — and begin the process of healing.
Drawing from her own story, along with wisdom from grief-informed frameworks and faith-based reflection, Dr. Anitra reminds us: you are not a line item. You are not disposable. You are still whole.
Whether you’ve recently been laid off, are quietly grieving a past role, or love someone who is navigating vocational loss — this episode is a companion for the journey back to dignity and truth.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Concepts of moral injury, vocational grief, and communal care
- Spiritual insight: Jesus and rejection, worth beyond systems
- Grief wisdom drawn from Darcy Harris, Alan Wolfelt, Theresa Rando, and others
- A grounding blessing and reflection practice
Key Themes:
#grief #layoffsupport #vocationalgrief #spiritualresilience #careertransition #griefcoach #youarenotalineitem
Listen and share with someone who may need this conversation.
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.
The Everyday Grief Podcast – Season 1, Episode 3
Host: Dr. Anitra Manning
(Begin Transcript)
Dr. Anitra Manning:
Welcome to The Everyday Grief Podcast. I’m Dr. Anitra Manning — grief coach, seminarian, and companion in the sacred work of loss, healing, and becoming.
Today begins a new series I’m calling You Are Not a Line Item. This first episode is for those who have experienced the grief of being laid off — or who love someone who has. Because layoffs aren’t just business decisions. They’re human losses.
And when they happen, we don’t just lose a paycheck. We often lose a piece of our identity, our rhythm, and our sense of worth.
Let’s talk about it.
[00:01:00]
Being laid off feels like rejection.
But the truth is, many layoffs have nothing to do with your performance or value. They’re systemic — and deeply impersonal. But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel personal.
Because when your work is tied to your calling, your creativity, or your sense of community — the loss of it hurts.
For me, it wasn’t just a professional setback. It was a spiritual disruption.
I had to sit with questions like:
“Was I enough?”
“Did I fail?”
“Who am I without this role?”
And that’s when I remembered something important:
Even Jesus was rejected.
Even Jesus was dismissed — by systems, friends, and institutions.
But he never confused rejection with unworthiness.
He never lost sight of his calling.
And neither should we.
[00:04:00]
Let’s name what happens when you’re laid off:
You may experience shame.
Grief.
Loss of confidence.
Isolation.
Even guilt or embarrassment — especially if your community expected more “resilience” from you.
But I want you to hear this:
You were not laid off because you weren’t enough.
You were laid off because a system prioritized metrics over humanity.
And that system does not get to define your worth.
[00:06:30]
This is where grief work comes in.
We must be allowed to tell the truth of what was lost.
To grieve the dreams we had for our careers.
To mourn the daily rhythm that gave us meaning.
And to do so without apology.
The pain you're carrying? It's real.
And it’s worth honoring.
[00:08:00]
So here’s an invitation:
Write this down. Speak it aloud.
Use it as a breath prayer.
“I am not a line item. I am a life. I am still becoming.”
Say it until it begins to feel like truth again.
Because the story of your life does not end with a severance letter.
[00:10:00]
Let’s pause. Breathe with me.
Place your hand on your heart.
Inhale… 2…3…4…
Hold… 2…3…4…
Exhale… 2…3…4…5…6…
Ask yourself:
- What am I grieving?
- What am I still proud of?
- What do I want to remember about myself?
This is the sacred space of re-storying.
It doesn’t erase what happened — it gives it shape.
It helps you move forward with the truth, not in spite of it.
[00:12:00]
Here’s what I want to leave you with today:
You are not broken.
You are not disposable.
You are not a line item.
You are still called.
Still whole.
Still worthy of work that honors your humanity.
May your next season not only restore your income —
but your identity, your voice, and your power.
And may you know:
You are not alone.
If this episode resonated with you,
Share it with someone who’s grieving a layoff in silence.
And join me next time for Part 2 of the series:
“A New Story for a Closed Door.”
Until then,
May you grieve with honesty.
May you tell the truth with tenderness.
And may you know you are not alone.
(End Transcript)