Why Did Getting Fired Feel Like Relief?

The day I got fired started like any other workday. I was in Atlanta getting ready for the Kendrick Lamar and SZA concert, sitting in front of the mirror doing my makeup, when a meeting invitation popped up on my calendar. Cameras on, like always. A few minutes later, we were told that our government-funded project was ending. By five o'clock that afternoon, we'd all be out of a job.

I turned my camera off.

The first thing I remember thinking was, "Thank you, God."

That thought surprised me.

I expected to panic. I expected to cry. I expected to feel like I'd just lost something I'd spent years working toward. Instead, I felt relief. It was immediate, and because it came so quickly, I spent a long time trying to understand it. How could losing my job feel like relief?

Looking back, I don't think the answer started that afternoon. I think it had been building for years.

For as long as I can remember, I always felt anxious going to that job. It wasn't because I wasn't capable, and it wasn't because I worked with bad people. It was a feeling I carried with me every morning, even when everything looked fine from the outside. I had a stable career, a master's degree, and work that people respected. On paper, my life looked exactly like I thought it was supposed to.

But there was always a quiet feeling that something didn't fit.

When I first started consulting, I remember trying to convince myself that the discomfort would eventually go away. I enjoyed solving problems and learning new things, but I also knew there was a creative part of me that wasn't being used. I kept assuming that if I became better at the work, I'd eventually feel like I belonged. Years passed, and that feeling never changed. I didn't have language for it then. I only knew that I kept trying to force something that never stopped feeling forced.

Getting fired didn't create that feeling. It interrupted it.

The weeks afterward were much harder than the day I lost my job. I think that's the part people don't talk about enough. There's this idea that once you receive the sign you've been praying for, everything suddenly becomes clear. That wasn't my experience.

It literally felt like God gave me a sign, and then He stopped.

There wasn't another instruction waiting for me.

There wasn't a clear roadmap or a new opportunity that appeared overnight.

There was just silence.

I remember sitting on the couch in Atlanta crying on FaceTime with my best friend. I wasn't thinking about purpose or alignment. I was thinking about money. I was thinking about everything I believed I had just lost. Looking back on that conversation, one sentence still stands out to me because it describes exactly where I was emotionally.

I couldn't focus on the gratitude. I could only focus on what I was losing.

I wish I could tell you that I immediately trusted the process. I didn't. I was scared. I was grieving a future I had spent years building toward, even if I had quietly started questioning whether it still belonged to me.

After we hung up, I made one decision.

I told myself, "Tomorrow I'm not losing. I'm going to win."

At the time, I had no idea what winning would look like. It wasn't a business plan or a five-year vision. It was simply a decision that I wasn't going to let one moment define the rest of my life.

Around that same time, I started noticing something else.

I would open my closet and look at clothes I had spent years collecting, and they didn't feel like me anymore. There wasn't anything wrong with them. They simply belonged to a version of myself that no longer felt current. I found myself thinking, "This is an old version of me."

At first, I thought I needed new clothes. Looking back, I think I was trying to understand why the outside of my life no longer matched what was changing on the inside.

That experience changed the way I think about style.

Before then, I thought clothing was mostly about what people saw. Now, I pay more attention to what clothing reflects back to the person wearing it. Sometimes a closet changes before we know how to explain why. Sometimes a career stops fitting before we're ready to admit it. Sometimes our lives begin shifting long before our circumstances catch up.

Since then, I've started noticing that pattern everywhere.

I've noticed it in my own life. I've noticed it in the women I've worked with. I've noticed it in closets full of beautiful clothes that no longer feel like home, and in careers that look successful but leave someone carrying a quiet sense that something isn't quite right.

I'm still thinking about that feeling of relief.