There’s a phrase companies use — “your position has been eliminated” — and it lands like a tsunami. But it’s worth saying plainly, out loud, to yourself, as many times as you need to hear it: Your job was eliminated. You were not.

Your skills didn’t disappear from a memo. Your experience, your expertise, the years you spent getting good at something — none of that vanished because a line was cut from a budget or a company closed its doors. Your credentials are still yours. Your contributions, the ones you made and the ones you’re still capable of making, are intact. What’s gone is a job title and a place on an org chart. That’s a real loss, and it deserves to be grieved. But it is not a verdict on your worth.

I remember this myself. The company I’d worked at for years suddenly went out of business, and I was jobless at 58, going on unemployment, scared about how I’d make money, cover medical benefits, and hold my life together. The fear was real. So was the shock.

What got me through it were good friends who stayed close and let me feel what I was feeling without rushing me out of it. And somewhere in that, I started to see it differently — not just as an ending, but as an opening. An opportunity to see what my next act would be. A chance to see what I actually wanted, and to look for work that had me feeling expressed and useful, not just employed.

Companies often let people feel otherwise. Not always out of malice, but out of haste, discomfort, or a legal team’s instinct to say less rather than more. The exit process itself can be brutally efficient: an email, a meeting, a badge that stops working. Understandable, given what businesses are navigating. But understandable isn’t the same as acceptable, and efficient isn’t the same as humane.

The system needs to change. Goodwill needs to be at the center, from the start — with heartfelt, practical empathy and understanding and care for another person, alongside the paperwork.

Here’s the thing worth remembering, on both sides of that table: you’re always working with other people. Not headcount. Not a line item. A person who has a mortgage, a kid, a Tuesday morning that now looks different than it did last week. That deserves goodwill — kindness, clear communication, real support, some acknowledgment that a life just shifted.

If you’re the one who was let go: the elimination was administrative. You are not.

Be kind to yourself. Know your truth and the facts. Lean on your people. Let the fear be there. And when you’re ready, ask:

What is the opportunity here?

What would make you feel expressed and helpful again?

What do you want?

These questions are where the next thing starts.