What Comes Next

Between Beauty and Destruction by Heidi Barr

What Comes Next was released in paperback and ebook as a part of Wayfarer’s Little Bound Books Essay Series.

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Abstract: Job loss. It’s not something that most people want to think about, whether it happens to them or not—but in modern society, it’s all too common for the words “lay off” and “company downsize” to grace a conversation about how life is going. Through an honest look at the emotions, feelings, and everyday challenges that can come with losing a job, author Heidi Barr illustrates what going through such an event is like. From disbelief to financial concerns to anxiety over the prospect of a two hour commute after ten years of working from home, this essay explores the uncertainty of not knowing what might be coming next, along with the potential for uncovering the beauty that might just be hidden under what feels like destruction.

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Photo by Octavio Fossatti

What Comes Next

Between Beauty and Destruction by Heidi Barr

This is the story of the time
I lost my job.

The story starts well before my last day with an employer of ten years, and it continues well after starting something new. It even continues after the last page you’ll turn in this book. Because the days continue to churn on, and many of them are just like any other ordinary day. But, as it turns out, all of these ordinary days, when strung together make up part of a human life. A life that is full of meaning, uncertainty, and the beautiful contrast that comes with being alive on the earth at this time in history. What comes next? None of us can ever know. We can only live the moments, from those full of beauty to those defined by destruction, as they unfold.

October means it’s peak autumn color in Minnesota once again, and everywhere you look, it’s gorgeous. The leaves in the back of my house blaze yellow and orange, and they create an impressive reflection on the lake when the light is just so and the air is still. It’s kind of like the water is on fire with the vibrancy of the season. Of course, this time of intense beauty is fleeting, only lasting a few weeks each year, but then again, it does come back around every year. I just have to make a point to pay attention to it when it does show up. It’s always interesting to me that such intense beauty can co-exist so easily alongside the things that shake us to the core.

October 19th I walked into my home office after a fabulous morning hiking with my young daughter, ready for a few hours of work before joining her and my spouse in the afternoon for more outside play time. Just as I was getting ready to dial into the weekly staff meeting, my phone rang, and I answered it since I saw it was my supervisor.

“Hello, this is Heidi. How’s your day?” I said, as that was my usual greeting.

“Hello, Heidi. Thanks for taking this call today. We regret to inform you that as of December 2nd, your position is being eliminated.”

Late autumn marks the time of year I got the news that I was being laid off from my job of ten years. While this unexpected turn of events was certainly not a tragedy of the magnitude of trying to remake life in the aftermath of a hurricane or managing a chronic disease or seeing your home go up in flames or losing a child to violence, there have been some studies that show that when people lose a job, it leaves an impact as significant as losing a spouse. I’m not sure I totally buy that, despite what the statistics say, but I can see the parallels. We assign so much meaning to our work, it can feel like our identity and self-worth are stripped away when that job is lost. It feels like I should have been able to prevent it somehow. It invites feelings of inadequacy. And, let’s be honest, having a corporate paycheck and the benefits package that comes with it makes a difference in how easy life feels, especially when the job that goes away is the one that had been the primary support of a family for a long time.

Every time this season of beauty comes around again, I find myself reflecting on the things I’ve learned as a result of what came to pass that autumn that I heard the news that I was being laid off.

I wouldn’t change what happened. Sounds odd, but I don’t know if I would have had the courage to leave when left to my own devices. I was burnt out and every day was stressful. I would have, of course, preferred to leave on my own terms with a heartfelt goodbye and the typical “thanks for all of your service, we wish you well” email that was the typical protocol when an employee resigned by their own choice, (because who wouldn’t?) but I am owning up to the fact that I hadn’t figured out how to do that without the extra push.

The first Monday after the last day at a job you’ve held for nearly ten years is a strange day.

I spent it making scones with my daughter in the morning after running in the frosty sunlight on the gravel roads of the neighborhood. My little family and I got ready for the day, and then my spouse Nick and our daughter Eva left for an appointment in the city. At about the time that I had always started the workday in my home office, I loaded my work computer into the Jeep, spent a few too many minutes wasting time on social media, and eventually made my way to the closest FedEx ship spot. Two trips back and forth to the car, plus ten dollars and twenty minutes later, I was done. Aside from one more paycheck and collecting a modest severance package, my title as a corporate health coach was a thing of the past.

I didn’t really know what to think about it that day—I was rather tired of thinking about the transition since it had been on my mind since I got the news of the layoff six weeks before. After saying farewell to the computer, I drove home and cleaned out the office that had hosted my work for so many years. I thought about burning some sage to cleanse the space of negative energy, and though I never actually got around to doing that, I did light some old paperwork on fire and created a small altar: a rock that I picked up in Malta 20 years ago, a feather, a little statue of a person holding their hands to the sky. I added a yoga mat, some more house plants and told myself this was just another opportunity to deepen my practice and get clear on what I wanted to do next. Some days I even believed myself.

I have always worked in healthcare. The job I lost was that of “corporate health coach.” So perhaps that’s a good place to start, with a glimpse into the industry of “health” —because all stories need a foundation.

When you work in the healthcare field, whether it’s in a fitness center, in customer service, in management, in coaching (as I have), as a physician, as a nurse, or as an administrative assistant, you are reminded on a regular basis that life is hard for people. People are stressed out, people are managing chronic conditions, people have financial issues, people are grieving, people are angry, people are unsure. People are also happy, satisfied, healthy, and thriving, but folks tend to share their struggles before they share their joys. Interacting with humanity, especially when it comes to something as intimate as one’s health and wellbeing, is messy and unpredictable no matter how hard we try to make it into a program, sell a product, round out the edges, or meet our outcomes goals. So often we, myself included, have the urge to swoop in to offer a solution, to look at the numbers and provide a suggestion, or to give advice based on what we see or hear. There is nothing wrong with doing these things, and often times, doing these things is good and necessary. But the other side is that we miss something when we don’t allow space for witnessing what needs to be witnessed and providing support in a way that can’t be measured.

As Parker Palmer writes, “The human [soul] doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed—to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through.”

One of our best offerings to other humans, no matter what our vocation but especially in healthcare, is the gift of presence, of listening, and of showing up in a way that is authentic. When I can get past my own fear of being uncomfortable with hard situations and to the place where I can give someone a period of real connection, I offer those with whom I interact something that is more valuable than any piece of advice could ever be. Poet Mary Oliver writes, “This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”

When I can get to that place of attentiveness, I can bear witness to what is going on, even on the toughest of days, and in doing so acknowledge and honor the deep parts of what being human on this earth is all about. Despite the broken pieces of our conventional healthcare systems, at the core, healthcare is about cultivating wholeness.

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