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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think losing your career is almost like a bereavement

133 replies

misjudgement · 08/08/2017 15:51

I won't go into the ins and outs, but I am struggling with who I am and with what my identity now is.

Yes I am looking into retraining but it isn't what I did. And I have lost something that was a huge huge part of my life.

OP posts:

Anatidae · 09/08/2017 09:28

Definitely not a good choice of words.

It's a blow, a loss? An existential threat? A threat to the self? All those things are serious. I wouldn't use the word bereavement.

Eolian · 09/08/2017 09:33

A loss of faith is probably quite a good comparison.

at all the ex-teachers on here. Maybe all the MN ex-teachers who are lost for career ideas should band together and create some king of awesome virtual learning network thingy .

Catra · 09/08/2017 09:37

I can't relate to this at all. Losing my career (redundancy) was the best thing that ever happened to me. My work no longer defined me and I finally had the headspace to be myself.

rebelnotaslave · 09/08/2017 09:37

The OP is talking about losing a career, not just a job. I think that is a big difference too. Being a teacher defined a lot of who I was, it was part of my whole life, I was always thinking about it, I was always a teacher. I don't have that anymore.

I can't retrain because of the cost, there isn't a huge number of jobs out there right now either. Because of my mental health issues I will never be able to progress far in any career, as history tells me as soon as I get a little bit senior I get ill. I can't really cope with any kind of full time work, which feels like a failure to me. It is hard for me to reconcile all this with the person I thought I would be- the goals I had, the things I wanted to achieve.

Most of my friends are very high achieving (and often high earning) and it hurts a lot that I cannot do that.

NataliaOsipova · 09/08/2017 09:43

It's a blow, a loss? An existential threat? A threat to the self? All those things are serious. I wouldn't use the word bereavement.

Agree. I think comparing anything to a bereavement is inappropriate and likely to cause huge offence to anyone who has lost a child or a close family member. That's not to say it hasn't greatly upset you and left you shaken, anxious, unsure about the future etc.

OwnLittleIsland · 09/08/2017 10:02

rebel - I could have written that word for word. Can't currently see that I can have any career really other than "mum jobs"

rebelnotaslave · 09/08/2017 10:08

But "a bereavement" not necessarily the bereavement of a child. It certainly has affected me far more than the deaths of my grandparents or uncles.

minmooch · 09/08/2017 10:11

I too feel bereavement is the wrong word to use.

Please don't misuse and belittle bereavement as it's hard enough without people comparing it to anything other than the death of a loved one.

My son died aged 18 3 and half years ago.

I have changed my career as I could not go back to it following the death of my son.

The two are nothing alike. I'd take a job loss/career change/lack of money/house loss/almost anything over the death of my child and the bereavement that will last forever.

By comparing bereavement to anything other than the death of a loved one minimises the word to almost nothing.

I understand that change is difficult, and forced changes even more so. But at some point you can spin a positive on the change - life altering, path changing, chance for a change, time to re-educate, re-learn, move house, go travelling. There is little positives to the type of bereavement that I and many others have suffered.

AmyGardner · 09/08/2017 10:14

But if you think of bereavement as a sense of loss, or mourning, or intense grief, then there are obviously different, legitimate ways of feeling bereaved.

I get what you mean OP. There is a huge sense of loss when a job or career ends. What about all your achievements? Wasted. Your work friends? Connections with them weaken over time. Your sense of self as someone who achieves? Now that has no vector.

for everyone who has experienced loss on this thread. It's very moving actually.

Headofthehive55 · 09/08/2017 10:20

IT is a sadness that I would compare with severe illness, perhaps not bereavement, but it does shake your foundations to the core.
Not sure you get over it, but yes time helps. No matter why you had to give up your career, if you have built that into your sense of identity then it hurts and is difficult.
I ended up leaving teaching, accepting that it's really not me - love some aspects of it but it's an unsupportive profession.
Strangely have found serious illness easier to cope with.

OwnLittleIsland · 09/08/2017 10:21

Yep definitely so with sense of "someone who achieves"

rebelnotaslave · 09/08/2017 10:24

It's not about losing a job. Teaching wasn't just a job, it was part of who I was for over a decade. I do have another job, but this time it is just a job and not a career and I am finding that identity part hard to reconcile.

I can't retrain because I don't have the money- please suggest how I get another career with free training?

WinnieTheMe · 09/08/2017 10:28

I don't think bereavement necessarily has to mean 'as bad as the loss of a child'. Bereavement is a loss - I've lost grandparents, for example, and losing my career and the capacity to do that career due to illness was absolutely comparative in terms of hurt and grief.

Nothing like losing a child, of course, but I presume you wouldn't say that other family deaths weren't bereavement because they were not terrible like that either.

histinyhandsarefrozen · 09/08/2017 10:32

I wouldn't be so crass as to say to a mother who lost her child that I knew how she felt because I'd lost my dad.
I wouldn't be so crass to say to the person who'd lost their dad that my losing my career was similar.
Don't be that person!

MelaniaMacron · 09/08/2017 10:47

"People can retrain and find fulfilling (maybe even better!) careers in the future. If can't just go and find another dad. So it's not comparable to bereavement. It's just losing a job..."

Not necessarily. A disabling accident or serious MH problems can mean the absolute and terminal end of a particular career path. Speaking as someone who has lost her career and lost her father, I don't think the comparison is at all inappropriate. If anything, I found losing my father easier: everyone expects to lose their parents at some point, but few expect to lose their career.

FountainOfYouth · 09/08/2017 10:54

I hear you OP. As someone who is career-focused, the second redundancy in 4 years has left me feeling bereft. I grieve my loss of career and loss of identity, it is tough going.

My CV does not look how I want it to, with bits & pieces of jobs instead of a strong career trajectory. I find it embarrassing trying to explain it in interviews, hoping they don't assume the problem is me.

The main problem is I moved to where DH is from, it's rural and there is a lack of opportunity. We have started a family and building a house so stuck here. In 4 years my CV has gone to pretty much every company within a commutable radius, now I'm hitting a wall.

Amazing how many people here are experiencing the same feelings.

corythatwas · 09/08/2017 11:01

Agree with WinnieTheMe: bereavements come in degrees, not every bereavement involves the loss of a child.

As for retraining and finding a better career, for some people what they do is so much part of their identity that they feel completely lost without it. When I lost my job I carried on doing it (research) unpaid because I have never not done it: I don't know who the Me not doing research would be. A different career would just be about earning enough money to fund my real work.

When my db had to give up his instrument (physical problems) it hurt him terribly: he did go on to make the most of it by working hard (and successfully) on another career, but I don't think he's ever got over the loss. As far as shock and impact on quality of life go, I am not convinced losing his parents at the age of 90 (though deeply loved and much missed) was a greater bereavement to dh than losing his music was to db.

kingfishergreen · 09/08/2017 11:29

I agree Cory - when I lost my job I felt that a core part of my identity had gone. I'd given that job so much of my time and care, and then there was nothing.

My attitude to work wasn't healthy, definitely. And it really showed in the following weeks, I lost weight, I just drifted in and out of interviews, meetings, semi-planning what to do next. And this coming from someone who definitely did not 'drift', anywhere, for the entirety of my career until then.

I was genuinely bereft.

Of course it doesn't compare to the loss of a child. But there are no rules for grief, some people grieve their cat as hard as they would their sister, some people are stoic about the timely death of a grandparent, some people find a divorce or losing their home as painful as losing a parent. People have their own trials, their own pains.

Headofthehive55 · 09/08/2017 11:50

I think it's about reconciling what we thought would happen to what did. Whether you had in mind a boy and girl child, and feeling the loss of having boys only, or not having a career when you were the achiever at school and you thought you would go onto great things. Or not meeting anyone special when you imagined being married when you grew up!

Original poster

misjudgement · 09/08/2017 11:52

I am so sorry to those who have lost children, in particular. And I am sorry if my wording caused offence. But I had a nervous breakdown after a loss - well, two losses actually - and then my career went. And I'm left with an empty space and I simply don't know who I am any more!

ilovesootys words have echoed.

OP posts:

MeMeMeMe123 · 09/08/2017 12:07

mis I understand and sympathise.

I feel bereft right now. Divorce looming after separation... the job that held my head above water has ended unexpectedly (funding)

It kept me sane whilst I was coming to terms with end of marriage.

No redundancy payments to fall back on, either. Nothing spare to invest in initial training which would help my career massively.

I'm trying to balance being positive and hopeful with the sheer unadulterated frustration at my situation.

Talk about feeling outside and looking in at the world.

Original poster

misjudgement · 09/08/2017 12:09

Un-MNetty hugs xx

[brew[]

OP posts:

Morphene · 09/08/2017 12:40

role loss is a key component of many people's depression. YANBU to feel you have been bereaved at all. Of course with any talk of loss there will be people playing top trumps and claiming your loss isn't the same as their's but honestly I wouldn't bother giving that kind of behaviour the time of day.

What matters is how your loss is impacting you.

The fact worse things happen in the world doesn't change the fact that you could spiral into depression.

Be kind to yourself

corythatwas · 09/08/2017 12:44

Very sorry to hear about your situation, OP, and totally understand.

(and for the record, I have known widowed husbands to be very happy in second marriages to women they started dating only a few months after their first wife's death: I wouldn't take that to mean that nobody minds about losing a spouse though. Or even that they didn't mind, just because their wife turned out to be, in one sense, replacable)

histinyhandsarefrozen · 09/08/2017 12:48

I'm not playing top trumps. You freely chose how to express yourself of course.

if you say it's the toughest thing you've gone through and you can't reconcile what you thought you would be with what you are now and you feel a huge loss then I can connect with you and understand.

If you say 'it's like a bereavement' then I - and I'm not speaking for everyone although several posters have said they also don't like it- think it's an insensitive and imprecise way of expressing yourself. Which I doubt is what most people are trying to achieve.

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